EBC leader Tita Concepcion Confronts de Blasio
Two women flew to Iowa, courtesy of the organization East Brooklyn Congregations, to confront him on deteriorating conditions in the New York City Housing Authority. They also pressed him on his stalled promise to build more housing for senior citizens on underused NYCHA lots.
“We have been in New York; we have been trying to speak with him,” said resident Tita Concepcion. “All we get are stories from him. He doesn’t listen. He dodges us whenever possible.” Politico story. Great background in CrainsNewYork.com here.
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In the face of a growing humanitarian crisis at the border, Albuquerque Interfaith has been at the forefront of a local response, mobilizing institutions to address the immediate needs of recent arrivals and building a longer-term strategy and constituency for change. This week, Albuquerque Interfaith and partners packed city council chambers in support of a $250,000 appropriation to the humanitarian crisis. 45 speakers spoke in support of the appropriation, including Catholic Archbishop John Wester and leaders from a broad swath of religious and nonprofit institutions. More from SWIAF.
Want to learn more about how to organize the IAF way? Buy one of these great booklets by a master of the craft here.
In a year when countless political campaigns are “staffing up”, recruiting volunteers, and raising money, Central Texas Interfaith is doing the same, but with a different focus: aggressively building a broad and diverse collective of 500 leaders. Over the next 7 months, CTI will attempt to double its base of core leaders at its congregations, schools, unions, and social service organizations to fight for families and the issues affecting them: affordable housing, workforce development, living wages, local control, immigration, safe neighborhoods, and healthcare. Simply put, the goal of our “500 LEADERS CAMPAIGN” is to build the largest non-partisan, broad-based political organization in Central Texas. Full story here.
One month after 300 Texas IAF leaders descended on the Capitol to call for investments in human development, delegations have been visiting the Capitol daily to engage legislators around school finance, the ACE fund, payday lending and infrastructure support for economically distressed areas.
Nevadans for the Common Good
May 10 at 7:02 PM · NCG made their presence known when 50 leaders all wearing white showed up in full force at the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee hearing of SB201 - the payday lending bill that will protect consumers! Leaders shared testimony about the impact of predatory lending practices and left encouraged and optimistic that the community and assembly members are seeing the importance of passing this bill. As Assemblywoman Carlton said, we are tired of waiting for something to be done to protect our families and communities! The fight is not over yet, but we are going in the right direction! Thank you all for showing up in support and for those who testified.
This blog is an attempt to convince community leaders and organizers that writing can be another tool in their power toolbox. It offers examples and suggestions on how to write both artfully and effectively. I have been a publisher for over thirty years and a community leader and organizer for almost fifty years, so the combination of these two topics is a natural for me, as in this piece.
Metro IAF Continues to call out NYC mayor Bill De Blasio; Now backed by the NY Times editorial Board5/9/2019
Tawana Myers, a community activist from Brooklyn who lobbied the mayor for senior housing for years with the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, said the city should simply honor its promise.
“We fought for this money,” she told The Times, recalling years of rallies. “We came out in the rain, in wheelchairs.” It’s distressing that Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Johnson misled older, low-income New Yorkers, 200,000 of whom are on a waiting list for affordable housing. Story here.
Forceful, compassionate and persistent Sarabia helped transform San Antonio, Texas into a better place as the cut out and shut out gained powerful voice. Through more than four decades of work with Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) and continuing with COPS/Metro he helped reinvent IAF organizing during his storied life.
Story in the Rivard Report HERE. Story in San Antonio Express-News.
See books by Michael Gecan HERE.
An estimated 2,000 asylum-seekers have come through Albuquerque in recent months, staying a few days before moving along to meet their sponsors or families in other parts of the country. Several faith-based and community groups have served as hosts, assembling enough volunteer manpower and donations to shelter, feed and clothe them during their short stays.
------------------ Albuquerque Interfaith has so far welcomed 11 busloads of 50 people apiece. Supporting a single busload for two to three days runs about $3,000 in donated cash, according to Carla Lanting Shibuya, a site coordinator with the nonprofit organization. Several restaurants and other entities have supplemented the grass-roots effort by giving food and other goods, she said. Albuquerque Journal story here.
I went to Honduras from March 18 to 25 seeking answers to those questions. I was part of a delegation of 72 faith leaders and immigrant justice advocates who met with grassroots and religious partners to better understand the root causes of migration that have led thousands to flee Honduras. The interfaith delegation was co-sponsored by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, SHARE El Salvador, Sisters of Mercy and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
We found that a war on the poor is being waged in Honduras. The refugees from that war are fleeing for their lives, ending up on our southern border. Entire Opinion piece by AI leader Rev Roger Scott Powers, Pastor, St Andrew Presbyterian Church.
NYCHA tenants and other leaders with South Bronx Churches marched, Saturday from 389 E 150th St. t a vacant lot owned by NYCHA at East 152nd St. between Courtland and Melrose. As they marched, they called for Mayor de Blasio to keep his promise to spend $500 million to build affordable senior housing on vacant or under-used NYCHA land. April 27, 2019. (Gregg Vigliotti/for New York Daily News)
Angrily denouncing Mayor de Blasio over what they call a broken $500 million promise, tenants and church leaders marched in the South Bronx on Saturday to demand more public housing for seniors. Story.
Last Thursday night, PBS NewsHour dedicated a national segment to Louisiana's antiquated & inequitable tax structure and the work that Together Louisiana has done to bring real reform to that system.
View the segment HERE.
Speaking at CONECT’s press conference was Rev Anthony Bennett and Rick DelValle, a former drug addict who now operates five recovery houses for addicts in New Haven.
------------------------------------ “This important legislation will help level the playing field for Connecticut’s racial minorities,” said Rev. Anthony Bennett of Mt. Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport and Co-Chair of CONECT. “Despite important gains in criminal justice reform here in Connecticut, racial minorities are still far more likely to have a criminal record, even surpassing national averages. That’s just unacceptable here in Connecticut.” Story.
Democratic Faith, led by Frank C. Pierson, Jr. and ACTA Publications, led by Gregory F. Augustine Pierce, are teaming up to encourage Industrial Areas Foundation network (IAF) writing and communications. We share a conviction that writing, publishing and broadly communicating stories by and about IAF leaders, organizers and allies is of vital importance right now. To that end we call your attention to a series of community organizing booklets published by ACTA that are premier learning resources for anyone interested in building and/or supporting citizen organizing.
Pierce and Pierson have decades of experience as professional IAF organizers dating back to the early 1970’s. We have renewed our relationship based on a shared commitment to add value to IAF organizing.
When you purchase books on the ACTA website and use coupon code DEMFAITH at final checkout, you will receive a 10% discount on your order, and ACTA Publications will donate 20% of your order total to Dem Faith and the IAF.
WHAT'S NEW:
How to Raise Money for Community Organizing
By Robert Connolly ORDER HERE.
See ACTA's other community organizing booklets displayed on our own new BOOKS page.
Each is linked directly to ACTA.
Martinez (right in photo), an alumna of Adams City High School, has been involved in the district as a leader with the Colorado Industrial Areas Foundation, a coalition of progressive religious and community organizations that often aligns with the teachers union. She also is involved in the community through her church. Chalkbeat story here.
But even the most optimistic commitment from the city doesn’t come close to meeting the current or future needs, says Grant Lindsay, Lead Organizer with East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC), an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) an affordable housing advocacy group.
Lindsay says the mayor’s target of 30,000 senior units by 2026 “isn’t a real number, but a combination of loans to existing housing to maintain the current level of relative affordability, retrofitting some housing, and a few new units.” He says the question to ask is “how many seniors on the current waiting lists will get that housing?” City Limits story. IAF Organizer Ramon Duran on Border "terrorism": The Banality of Evil as an escape from freedom4/23/2019
Thousands of people fleeing situations of murder, rape and gang violence in Central America come to this country seeking asylum. They expect and ought to expect that they will receive a fair hearing. But they are greeted with gimmicks meant to circumvent the law in order to discourage them from pursuing their claims of asylum: people’s children are arbitrarily taken from them; people are told that they must wait in Mexico until their cases are heard; border patrol agents were even instructed by the president himself to lie to judges and say that they are unable to process more cases because they are overwhelmed (their supervisors instructed these same agents to ignore the president).
One might be tempted to say that the administration is administering a policy of terrorism to discourage people from seeking asylum. Terrorism is a political tool. Its aim is to achieve a political aim. It entails perpetrating indiscriminate acts of violence against civilians to create a level of terror that leads to capitulation.
Beloved Ferry 11 Service is rescued. Threat posed by bridge construction neutralized by DICO.
@SOMitUns@DICOGermany@MetroIAF@stark_koeln@WNeukolln@WirsinddaWeMo#BerlinerBürgerplattformen#communityorganizing
By Frank C. Pierson, Jr., Editor and Publisher, www.democraticfaith.com
Kaz (my wife) and I visited Ambos Nogales - twin cities on the Mexican/US border - a couple weeks ago. We support a cross border tennis program for youngsters and wanted to experience its activities first hand. Of course we both had seen pictures of the towering slatted metal fence dressed out with concertina wire snaking through the Nogales twin cities but were still unprepared for the reality.
A tiny % of American citizens will ever share our first hand experience because the vast majority will never go there. Most, for now, will view the attempt at border militarization from a distance through a political lens. That’s too bad. First hand they might gain some insight into why US border policy is broken.
Most "job training" programs have a bad rap for good reason. They're a waste of time and money because they don't work. Project Quest organized by COPS/Metro in San Antonio, Texas is more than just the exception. It turns the job training world upside down by establishing a proven ladder into the middle class for low wage workers. . Read the Houston Chronical story on Project Quest here.
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