AROMA - creating sustainable activism across Atlanta movements

"I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do." - I'd Love to Change the World, Ten Years After, 1971, by Alvin Lee Affecting change is hard. Screaming for social justice can be frustrating. As anyone who has ever been involved in social and political activism can tell you, making sure that you have a consistent pool of people to continually put the pressure on politicians and society is the most difficult part of creating and maintaining a sustainable movement. This is especially true for liberals and progressives working in red states, where you have to pick yourself up off the ground, lick your wounds and start again, more times than you'd like.

A new movement in one Deep South state is trying to change that. It's called Activist Recruitment, Organizing and Mentoring in Atlanta, or AROMA.

"Recruiting, organizing and mentoring, that’s something each organization does on its own," explained Misty Novitch, a long time Atlanta activist and co-founder of AROMA. "You do your own outreach. You get your own people. You mentor them, you pull them in. You make them into leaders. But we have so few activists, and so much work to do, especially in Georgia, that people don’t necessarily have time to do that."

What AROMA seeks to do, she said, is "to build community and solidarity across existing groups, and across the entire social justice movement." AROMA will "recruit for all of our organizations, all of our movements, and help new activists get involved more easily and comfortably, and really invest in their growth and their development as leaders."

That has the potential for a huge effect on the changing political climate in Georgia, and has local activists very excited. "I think it’s really going to help people be able to see their power," declared AROMA member Troya Ole'badd, an activist who works against economic disparity in Atlanta. She believes that, if successful, the group will "expand the base of people who are activists" and help create "a paradigm shift and a social construct shift in the state."

AROMA is the brainchild of Novitch and fellow activist Guled Abdilahi, who leads the group's website development team.