After 45 years with Iowa CCI, Hugh Espey—who served as executive director for 20 years—retired at the end of 2024.

How do you wrap a decades long commitment to the craft of community organizing, to Iowa CCI and the broader movement into one email?

We'll do our best. And I hope you'll take a few minutes to read this great piece written by former CCI organizer David Goodner: Tough and Tenacious: Learn More about the Iconic and Transcendent Career of Iowa CCI’s Retiring Director Hugh Espey

Hugh joined Iowa CCI staff in 1979 as an organizer in Council Bluffs and then Sioux City working on housing and utility issues.

He became CCI's first farm organizer in the early 80s, and led that body of work before taking the executive director reins from founding director Joe Fagan in 2003. 

Hugh has trained and mentored hundreds of leaders and organizers here in Iowa and across the country, several of whom have gone on to lead their own organizing groups.

Hugh's notable organizing wins and accomplishments: 

• In the early 80s, Hugh's tenant organizing was a part of CCI winning a ban on winter heat and electricity shut-offs, and even a $1.5 million emergency fund, from Iowa's largest utility company. 
  
  
• During the 1980s Farm Crisis, Hugh launched our first statewide farm organizing campaign. CCI stopped farm foreclosures and renegotiated over 200 loans that saved family farmers $4 million.
  
  
• In 1990, CCI was the first group in the country to use the Community Reinvestment Act to negotiate nearly $37 million in credit for 1,200 small and midsized farms. 
  
  
• In the mid 90s, CCI turned to helping communities fight the influx of factory farms. CCI members have stopped over 125 corporate hog factories and spearheaded efforts on a number of local, state and federal fronts.
  
  
• In 1995, Hugh was instrumental in the formation of the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment (CFFE), a Midwest coalition of farm groups united to fight factory farm expansion. 
  • The first campaign included 1,000 people participating in a 7-day "Journey for Justice" from northern Missouri, across Iowa, to a meeting with the US Secretary of Ag, garnering press in every town.
    
    
• Starting in 1997, CFFE groups organized hog farmers to gather 19,000 signatures, representing 20% of hog farmers in the country, to force a vote on the Mandatory Pork Checkoff, a tax paid by farmers on every hog they sold. Checkoff funds were used to prop up corporate ag and factory farms. The campaign would go on to win a national vote of hog farmers 53% to 47%.
  
  
• CCI became the first group in our national network to become an individual dues-paying membership organization in 1995. And a staff- and member-led capital campaign allowed us to purchase and rehab our headquarters in 2000.
  
  
• Under Hugh's leadership CCI became one of the first organizations in our national network to start a sister 501c4 organization (CCI Action) to give us unlimited lobbying power and the ability to raise our issues in the electoral arena. 
  
  
• Together with national partners, CCI and CCI Action has hosted three powerful presidential forums uniquely designed to put our leaders on a national stage sharing their stories and asking their questions - no candidate stump speeches. 
  
  
• In 2004, Hugh was awarded the Leadership for a Changing World award from the Ford Foundation, an award that came with a $100,000 gift for the organization.  
  
  
• Iowa CCI was awarded the 2009 Most Valuable Progressive grassroots advocacy group by The Nation magazine, and we were spotlighted twice on esteemed journalist Bill Moyers's television program.
  
  
• In 2023, Hugh was given the Spirit of Farm Aid’s Activist Award for his decades of organizing farmers and farm communities in Iowa as well as his leadership within the Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment.

Known to say there is no "I" in CCI (which is funny), Hugh is quick to point out that so much of his story is CCI's story, and it was done alongside our incredible members and leaders. And he's correct. 

But the countless staff and leaders he's trained, mentored, supported, and shaped over the years are equally quick to point out the unique talent, energy, and generosity behind Hugh's leadership. Indefatigable drive and determination, a seriousness paired with humility, humor and a loud laugh, and the unmatched ability to make time to listen to people and ask curious questions. 

"We both know that many mistakenly thought your job was as an activist, but that was the fun other people got to do.  Your job as an organizer was to build organization.  And that you have done so well.  Both up close and from afar the organizing community holds Iowa CCI at the pinnacle and an example for the rest of us to strive for.  And that wasn’t by magic, but through your leadership in good times and bad over these many decades.

...when we started organizing together, not knowing what we didn’t know, but relying that everyday people were the starting and ending point.  We learned the hard way how to do the work, but you always knew the “why”. The countless leaders and organizers you’ve worked with recognized that in you, and that flame still burns bright."

Speaking on behalf of the board and current leadership at Iowa CCI, I can say that we are deeply honored and wholeheartedly committed to keeping that flame burning bright. It's a role we take seriously. And we count ourselves lucky to have learned from the very best: Hugh Espey & Joe Fagan. 

Thanks for all you've done, Hugh, to make Iowa CCI the healthy and durable powerhouse of a people's organization that it is today. And, thanks for passing us the torch.

As Hugh would say - onward! 

Katie Bryan 
Membership Development Director

P.S. To know Hugh, is to know he's also an incredible fundraiser. When we shared the Bernie recognition he replied, "This is triple awesome! Let’s use it to raise money for the organization — and also remind members/funders/donors that we’re making a difference, we’re a force to be reckoned with." If you'd like to make a gift in Hugh's honor, you can do so here.