Interim Executive Director Leena Odeh Reflects on FDLA’s Transformation

As we pass through the Winter Solstice and approach the end of the year, we find ourselves in a time of rebirth - pausing and reflecting as we prepare for the emerging spring. 

We ask you, our supporters, to invest in this period of FDLA's rebuilding in 2023.

Leena Odeh, Interim Executive Director

FDLA is an organization I worked alongside as a youth organizer decades ago. Now, as FDLA’s interim executive director, I have the privilege of stewarding a 27-year-old community institution through a moment of profound transformation, growth, and evolution. 

The world is in a time of great transition and change. Around the globe we see unprecedented climate disruption, and upheaval across economic, political and cultural systems. The expansion of state violence and police power. We see people—entire populations—facing this great, unknowable landscape and seeking paths to a future they can believe in. 

In this time there is also a calling, an invitation, a possibility beyond what we can presently see. We have the capacity to answer this call. We have the capacity to bring forth a future that is kicking to be born. We have the capacity to be that future, to be the power and strength of our vision, our purpose, and our relationships. 

The movements of today are calling us to make a courageous commitment to love, generative power, and our undeniable interdependence. Leading with bold vision and purpose, they are moving beyond the question of “what do we need to do?” to “who do we need to be to bring forth the transformation we seek?” How do we embody our values, and how do we imagine liberation as just the beginning, not the culmination?

In this way, movements are learning the art of time travel -- starting at the end of the story, they are accelerating change by embodying and manifesting the values they seek in the world right here and now. They are not asking people to believe another world is possible, they are asking us to generate and experience it through transformative practice and strategy. 

Teachings from movement elders rooted in Indigenous wisdom and the Black Radical Tradition have guided my stewardship of FDLA to think seven generations forward and back. The wisdom of this framework, as mentor Norma Wong often says, is to understand ourselves situated within the long arc of time, those who came before us, and the descendants yet to come, 7 generations. 

We ask ourselves:

• On whose shoulders are we standing? 

• Who do we need to be to bring about the world we want and need? What do we need to consciously practice to be the people who reflect the vision? 

• How are we connected? How do we honor our connections? What is the “We” for building a community of trust?

• How do we make choices that bring our whole selves, whole communities forward within changing and unpredictable conditions?

• How do we invest in the leadership of those most impacted, and resource and nourish our communities and staff so that we operate from a place of abundance - with the long-view in mind?

Transformative movements recognize that because our problems are interconnected our systemic solutions and movements must be as well. Transformative movements builders imagine the path forward to possible futures we cannot yet see. 

Patterns of injustice are maintained through repeated day to day actions; taking on injustice requires new forms of culture and new modes of relating to ourselves and each other.

Transformative movement builders foster collaborative action that is nonlinear, synergistic, and highly networked. 

Since I came on in 2021, we have navigated leadership shifts, the pivots of the pandemic, and more resounding calls for abolition and liberation led by Black people resisting conditions of oppression. 

FDLA’s critical success this year - ending incommunicado detention and ensuring legal representation for detainees at all Chicago police stations - came directly out of the leadership of Black and community-based organizations and organizers across the city and from decades of work by FDLA to provide 24/7 legal counsel to Chicagoans. 

And we‘ve doubled our staff to ensure the beating heart of FDLA—our community-centered lawyering and education—reaches our communities and continues to evolve towards the emergent needs of those most impacted by over-policing and surveillance. 

With this critical work behind us, we’re now focusing on the internal shifts necessary to ensure FDLA’s longevity and relevance to the needs of Chicagoans. 

We are halfway through an intentional three-year leadership transition plan (LTP) and have launched a permanent Executive Director search with stakeholders, staff, and the long-time organizational development firm, ARISE consulting. 

Unlike a traditional executive search, our LTP is much more comprehensive, ensuring that a wide range of stakeholders is engaged and that the organization undergoes an extensive reflection process. If done well, a leadership transition can be inspiring and create conditions that propel the organization to an even higher level of impact. 

We’d like to thank everyone who has supported us over the past year, and I’d like to invite others of you to invest in this period of rebuilding and evolution of FDLA.