Lily Dinsmoor is “honestly surprised” to see where she is now. One of her main goals during college was to earn her Ph.D. in psychology and perhaps become a therapist.
Social justice work had always lingered at the back of her mind, but the community organizer never imagined her postgrad life to look the way it does today.
Dinsmoor studied psychology and visual arts at Bowdoin College in Maine. She joined Jews United For Justice as a Baltimore community organizer through Avodah Jewish Service Corps fresh out of college, where she works once a week onsite and the remainder of the week from JUFJ’s Washington, D.C., office.
Originally from Arlington, Dinsmoor lives in Petworth with other Service Corps members.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
My mom is Jewish and my dad is not. I was raised in a Conservative synagogue in Arlington. I would say it was a pretty standard Conservative upbringing. I went to the synagogue’s Hebrew school and a day camp.
What prompted you to pursue a JUFJ position right after finishing college?
I found JUFJ through this fellowship program that I’m doing called Avodah, which I’d heard about because a friend of mine from Arlington did it the previous year. I was looking for things to do after college and I was not really sure what was next; I wasn’t ready to commit to a grad school.
Avodah was always at the back of my mind as a way to get involved in social justice work because they place Jewish young adults at various nonprofits, and they’re usually social justice-related and I always thought that was cool, but I didn’t have experience at that point in social justice fields at all. I applied to Avodah and interviewed with JUFJ as one of the placement options. The culture really stood out to me and the idea of doing local-level advocacy work was really appealing.
Why did you want to pursue social justice?
I just always felt like I should be doing something to contribute to the community that I’m a part of. A very easy way to do that would be [through] the place I’m going to work. If I’m going to be working a full-time job, it might as well be in service of the community that I’m a part of.
What are your responsibilities as a Baltimore community organizer?
I do a lot of outreach and recruitment for different events. I help plan and execute JUFJ events or events we do with coalition partners — JUFJ partners with a lot of organizations in the area. Broadly, what I do is try to get the Jewish community, which is our base, involved in different justice issues that we’re working on. I meet with prospective volunteers or current volunteers one-on-one and try to involve them by building a genuine relationship based on your shared interest in social justice work.
What causes are most important to you right now and why?
This year I’ve been learning a lot about economic justice, which affects different people differently. It intersects with a lot of different justice issues, like your economic circumstance might be impacted by your racial identity or by any number of different things. Economic justice is really interesting to me because nothing impacts your day-to-day more than your economic circumstance, so I’m really interested in working on that.
Why is social justice important from a Jewish perspective?
There’s a ton of different quotes and values that I could point to, but … growing up going to Hebrew school, that’s really where I would say I was taught lessons about fairness more so than any other environment I’ve been part of.
How does your current work relate to psychology?
[In] this work, I keep learning about relationship building and how important it is. In general, I feel like social justice work takes a lot of empathy; there are people who share your opinions and those who don’t. That, in my mind, is also a reason I like psychology, understanding different people and why they are the way they are [and] how they got to be where they are.
What’s next for you?
I don’t really know yet. I want to work some more; I’m liking what I’m doing right now a lot. I think that I would like to have more experience with more types of work, whether that’s direct service or advocacy stuff. And maybe one day I’ll go to grad school.
