Tough and Tenacious: Learn More about the Iconic and Transcendent Career of Iowa CCI’s Retiring Director Hugh Espey
Written by David Goodner, 12/15/2024
Hugh Espey, the retiring director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, is one of the most impactful community organizers the world has never heard of. Like the best organizers, he always meant to keep it that way.
But on the eve of his retirement, the inauguration of the second Trump Administration, and the 50th anniversary of Iowa CCI - one of the most durable activist groups in the country - Hugh Espey’s lessons in grassroots leadership development and hard-hitting organizing are too important to forget.
“We don’t want a seat at the table, we want to run the table,” Hugh often said, one of many mantras he frequently repeated, sometimes pounding on the table for emphasis, sometimes running around it gesturing.
“Hugh always gets fired up at meetings, and I’m like that too,” said Misty Rebik, the chief of staff for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and a former Iowa CCI immigrant rights organizer.
“He’s like a coach before you go out on the football field and you’re going to get slammed on the ground. We need an adrenaline rush going against corporate America, big pharma, you name it.”
Hugh was executive director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa CCI) for twenty years, from 2003 to 2023.
He started at CCI in 1979 and, during his 45-year tenure there, trained thousands of leaders, hundreds of organizers, and helped win millions of dollars in victories for family farmers, immigrant workers, and low-income communities.
The group’s current issue campaigns bring urban and rural Iowans together to fight for clean air and water, affordable housing, public education, and racial justice.
One of the many leaders Espey helped train was Misty Rebik, who worked as an Iowa CCI immigrant rights organizer in 2010 before leading Bernie’s 2020 presidential campaign.
“I grew up in a poor, working-class family, a meatpacking family, from rural Iowa, dealing with what Bernie calls the diseases of poverty,” Rebik said. She continued:
“I grew up with a lot of righteous anger and for the first time in my life someone validated my feelings and gave me something constructive to do with it. More than anything, Hugh taught me that I had worth, that my voice and my experience mattered. Hugh instilled in me that every experience and every human voice does matter and that’s something that I have carried forward in everything I do. Hugh was the first person to make me feel like that and help me teach others how to have that power that is in all of us.”
Unlike advocacy or mobilization, organizing is the slow and steady process of building relationships with directly impacted people, recruiting community leaders, and training them to advocate for themselves. Organizers don’t do the work directly. That would be taking power out of the hands of people.
Rather, an organizer facilitates an inclusive process for everyday people to identify their own issues, take effective action to address them, and evaluate the changes.
When done right, organizing builds community, leadership capacity, and grassroots power. For 50 years, nobody has done it better than Espey and Iowa CCI.
Hugh Espey (center) served as Iowa CCI executive director for 20 years. After 45 years with the organization, he retired at the end of 2024. Photo with Missouri Rural Crisis Center director and long-time organizing coalition parter Rhonda Perry (left) and long-time CCI member, board member Dartanyan Brown at the organization’s 2018 annual membership gathering.
People power is how we win
Together, with CCI’s founding director Joe Fagan, Hugh helped grow Iowa CCI from a scrappy, upstart group of a few churches and people to a million dollar organization, with member-led decision-making structures, a dozen professional staff, and its own office.
In 1995, CCI became one of the first network-affiliated groups in the country to transition to an individual membership model.
While a departure from the community organizing tradition CCI came from, many successful groups have shifted to it now because it can give everyday people more ownership in the organization. More members means more money to help fully fund the budget with sustainable, grassroots revenue.
“Before we had individual members, folks thought CCI was us, the staff, but now they see themselves as CCI,” Hugh once said. He often preached “we” instead of “I” at membership meetings.
In 2011, Hugh led Iowa CCI to be one of the first community organizations in a national network to spin-off a 501(c)4 and Political Action Committee.
“There’s no person who understands the importance of financial stability and how to grow money more than Hugh Espey,” Rebik said. “Hugh taught me how to fundraise for an organization, how to run a good budget, how to be conservative with what you're going to bring in and liberal about what you’re going to spend.”
“I’ve been part of huge operations since then with millions of dollars and I feel equipped to do those jobs,” Misty said. “As I watch other organizations and campaigns struggle, I do think what Hugh has done by making CCI such a long-standing organization financially is remarkable.”
1986: Then a CCI community organizer, Hugh holds the bullhorn for Iowa CCI leader and farmer Virginia Genzen. Iowa CCI organized over 200 farmers to rally on the steps of the Iowa House Chambers for fair farm prices. In 1985, Iowa CCI members succeeded in winning the support of the Iowa House and Senate on a minimum price bill that would have set a reasonable floor under corn and soybean prices (similar to a minimum wage), a critical issue in the fight to save family farms. After the bill pass both chambers, then-Governor Terry Branstad vetoed the bill.
From Quincy, Illinois to Des Moines, Iowa
Espey was born in Quincy, Illinois in 1954 at Blessing Hospital.
He was hired on as a community organizer in Council Bluffs, IA in 1979, then later in Sioux City working with members on neighborhood and utility issues.
During the Farm Crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s, Hugh became Iowa CCI’s first rural organizer and project director. Iowa CCI negotiated lending agreements worth $32 million, helping family farmers stay on the land. CCI members stopped 200 farm foreclosures and won millions in home loans for low-income poor people in Iowa’s biggest cities.
In the 1990s, the farm crisis in the countryside turned to helping communities fight the influx of factory farms and hog farmers fight to win the pork checkoff campaign.
A natural communicator, Espey spent his career framing every issue with simple, easy-to-understand language, avoiding all jargon and dogma, and going straight to the point. He taught thousands of people again and again to never back down, never give in, never concede, and never surrender.
“That I can think of, we’ve never as an organization compromised, and that’s something we’re pretty proud of,” Hugh said.
If the decision-maker said no, CCI members showed up unannounced en masse at their office, or even their home, to deliver a letter and win another meeting.
This basic strategy has led to countless victories for people against bankers, bosses, landlords, and elected officials over the years, often defying conventional wisdom about being polite and asking nicely.
“We have to be the junkyard dog, if we can’t beat them we’re going to bite their ankles,” Espey said.
2011: Hugh (right, in the front row, pointing) guides trained leaders in the red hats, as 200 Iowans follow in a march to on the home of a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage president. Following the Occupy uprisings, Iowa CCI absorbed the heightened interest to confront corporate power, trained hundreds, and contributed to national actions against the banks following the damage they created for families and our communities in the housing crash they created.
What Hugh Espey Taught Me
“Hugh Espey taught me since the day I walked into CCI to trust my gut and that instinct I try to teach anybody I mentor or supervise directly,” Sen. Sanders chief of staff Misty Rebik said.
When I first met Hugh in 2009, I was a 28-year old college graduate and former low-wage worker, who had lived paycheck to paycheck for six years making $11/hour in a call center.
When I applied to be a community organizer at Iowa CCI, I thought it was a typical nonprofit advocacy job.
When I showed up to my first day on the job, I wore a suit and tie. In contrast, Hugh was wearing blue sweatpants and a matching blue hooded sweatshirt and a stocking cap.
The group’s members were flannel-wearing family farmers, retired nurses and teachers, and everyday people from all walks of life. The type of folks you see in Iowa at the grocery store or at church, out drinking coffee at Hardees at 5am, or walking their dogs on a snow-covered winter afternoon.
“Everyday people don’t dress that way, and neither do we,” Hugh told me on my first day, laughing. That was my first lesson.
The second lesson he taught me was, organizers are not advocates. Organizers work with directly impacted leaders to advocate for themselves.
In the six summers I worked there, CCI received calls from hundreds of rural Iowans concerned about a new factory farm being built in their community.
We narrowed down where to focus by asking the caller to join as a member, and then by asking them if they could get all of their neighbors to sign a petition and come to a meeting.
If the caller could do that, an organizer would drive to the meeting to help share successful strategies to pressure developers, regulators, and elected officials into stopping or changing their plans. A community member had to facilitate the meeting.
Through this process, Espey and CCI built a membership base of thousands of people and became a force to be reckoned with across the state, from local fights to state policy and enforcement.
“We never do for anyone what they can do for themselves,” Espey said to me and others more than once. He embodied the Fred Ross saying, “never make a statement when you can ask a question.”
The third lesson Hugh taught me was to always ask for a meeting. Our corporate targets are not faceless, we have to find the person who can make the decisions and meet with them to win our demands.
Hugh always taught by asking questions and inviting others to take on the work, then providing feedback.
This method makes people feel like they are in the driver seat, their voice is being heard, and that they are trusted to take it on.
Espey facilitated grassroots leaders to be up front, but while he stayed out of the limelight, he was always there with his leaders and organizers, ready to give support. This was especially true during meetings and actions when everyday people need extra confidence not to back down to powerful business executives or elected officials.
The last side standing wins, and Hugh instilled a “fight-back mentality” into communities across Iowa. At CCI, members, not staff, always led negotiation meetings.
Prep sessions with Hugh would typically include discussions about different ways the decision-maker could say no, call us names, or push-back during the meeting.
Just as a labor organizer inoculates workers against the attacks of the boss, Espey trained CCI members to brainstorm ways they would stand strong in their demands, no matter what.
On a personal level, Hugh can genuinely remember the names of virtually everyone he’s ever met, and usually one or two key details about them. He often spends an extra minute or two connecting with a person before digging into business. This gentle personal style is critical to building close relationships and effective teams and says a lot about the true heart underneath the fighter.
Hugh holding the bullhorn for longtime Iowa CCI leader Brenda La Blanc, where members demonstrated outside the gates of Glen Oaks Country Club, where Iowa Select CEO was hosting a political fundraiser at one of the Hansen’s gated-community homes. Under Hugh’s leadership, Iowa CCI became synonymous in rural Iowa with grassroots resistance to factory farms and has spearheaded decades of policy changes at the state legislature.
Dan Gable-style
After I started at CCI, I quickly started joking that the group, and Hugh especially, had a “Dan Gable-style” of community organizing.
Let me explain what I mean. I grew up as a high school wrestler in Iowa City, Iowa - known as Wrestletown, USA. And I loved the style of wrestling taught by Dan Gable, the Olympic gold medalist and winningest NCAA coach of all time.
Dan Gable was known for his high-intensity training methods and in-your-face style of attack. Gable’s wrestling success revolved around superior conditioning and constant pressure until his opponents wilted.
During his Olympic gold medal run in 1972, he didn’t allow a single point to be scored on him. After he won, he went for a run.
But Gable was an even better coach than he was a competitor, leading the Iowa Hawkeyes to 15 NCAA titles.
In the book, A Season on the Mat: Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection, about Gable’s last championship season in 1996-97, author Nolan Zavoral writes that Gable’s real skill as a coach was his individually-tailored approach to each one of his athletes.
A master of psychology, Gable knew which wrestlers needed encouragement, like Jessie Whitmer, whose 118-pound run at the title was one of the most improbable in the sport’s history. Always an underdog, Gable constantly told Jessie he was the strongest in the world, and Whitmer believed it so much he went out and did it.
Dan Gable also knew who needed to be pushed, and how to push them. With my high school wrestling coach Brad Smith, the winningest high school coach of all time, Gable took the opposite approach as he did with Whitmer.
Thinking Smith lacked a mental edge on his opponents during the 1975-76 season, Gable started making Brad get off the bus ten miles outside of town every time the team came back from away meets. Smith was forced to run the ten miles back to town. Later that year, he won the 1976 national title in his weight class.
In a similar way, Hugh Espey is the Dan Gable of community organizing, with a personable and powerful style that has helped guide grassroots people to numerous victories.
As an organizing “coach”, Hugh Espey transformed leaders and organizers into a fighting force effective enough to win, in the same way Gable cultivated student-athletes on his team.
“Hugh’s tough, this is a word I’m teaching my son,” Misty Rebik said. “He can be tough on you but he can also be tough for you.”
“Hugh cultivated me as a leader, learning how to public speak, how to run an effective meeting, always be on time, always have an agenda. He’s never too busy to talk, he always picks up the phone. He exemplifies what it means to build strong relationships with people,” Rebik said.
The last lesson Hugh taught was how to pass the torch. After over twenty years as executive director, Hugh was succeeded by another of his proteges, Lisa Whelan, who will lead CCI into a new era.
Now it’s our turn to continue the mission.
David Goodner worked for Iowa CCI from 2009 to 2014 and is the founding executive director of the immigrant-led, base-building group Escucha Mi Voz Iowa and a founding trustee of the Iowa City Catholic Worker.
Below is a flashback video used to honor Hugh Espey at his retirement party. Hugh retired at the end of 2024 after decades of commitment to the craft of community organizing and his dedication to Iowa CCI and the broader movement. This video features some of Hugh's farm organizing wins of the 80s and early 90s.