When he was 19, George Goehl walked into a soup kitchen to eat. Four years later, he left a community organizer and has been organizing ever since. He has run campaigns to take on the biggest banks in the world, the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of the Treasury, and the Deputy Commissioner of Rodent Control for the City of Chicago. In 2017, he led the largest progressive rural organizing program in the country, culminating in 280,000 deep-canvass conversations with swing voters in the lead up to the 2020 election. He is the author of Fundamentals of Organizing, and under contract with One World of Penguin Random House for a book about how to bring more working-class white people into the progressive coalition. Today he is focused on organizing working-class people unlikely to be reached by today’s progressive sector, including rural people, the elderly, working class moms who are not progressive, moderate Chicanos in the Southwest, and beyond. Because if we want nice things – we need an aligned working class. George’s organizing has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone.
His podcast, To See Each Other, a documentary series that complicates the narrative about rural Americans in our most misunderstood, and often abandoned, communities and showcases how they work together to fight for everything from clean water and racial justice to immigrant rights and climate change. Its new season, which travels to Wisconsin, launches September 24.
*Room 8417 is located at the north end of the building. To access it, enter the building at the main doors on Observatory Drive located to the left of the bell tower, the Carillon. Once inside, walk down the hallway, through the set of glass doors, and take the elevator on your left to the 8th floor.