Ever wonder how Black and Latino communities can come together to organize around common issues? Just ask our grant partner, Causa Justa :: Just Cause (CJJC), and they will tell you how they have unified African American and Latino communities in San Francisco and Oakland to become leaders in the struggle for fair housing, immigrant rights, and electoral power.
Since 2010, CJJC has organized the Mission District and East and West Oakland communities through direct action, rights-based services, and civic engagement. Last year, CJJC fought to win legislative victories in San Francisco to protect tenants against evictions and also connected local housing campaigns to broader national struggles like the Occupy Movement and the Right To The City Alliance (RTC).
Working with RTC, a national coalition of racial, economic, and environmental justice organizations, CJJC will be expanding its civic engagement efforts to boost civic participation in Oakland and San Francisco. Of this work they say, “We are conducting engaged voter organizing to build grassroots leadership and protect resources that sustain the vitality of the neighborhoods we serve, neighborhoods that have historically been under-resourced and under-represented by the electoral arena. We are building off the strong foundations we have helped establish within Oakland Rising and San Francisco Rising to continue developing an electoral organizing model that combines voting and community organizing; the goal being to build power in working class communities.”
Last week, CJJC joined over 1,000 people from North Carolina and more than 150 Right To The City members from across the country to attend and speak at the Urban Congress in Charlotte, NC. We congratulate CJJC for its ongoing local and national coalition-building work and look forward to what is to come!
