Albuquerque Interfaith (AI) believes that for community leaders to be truly effective, they must be educated and informed citizens. True politics is not about polls, focus groups and television ads. It is about engaging in public discourse and initiating collective action guided by that discourse. AI leaders hold that active citizenship and real political action create opportunities for ordinary people to effect real and dramatic change in the community.
We believe that learning must lead to action. Albuquerque Interfaith organizes in congregations, schools, and caring communities to develop leaders who, through building relationships that lead to action, reweave the social fabric of community life. Without intentional leadership development to sustain and strengthen local institutions, member families remain isolated and disconnected in weakened institutions. However Albuquerque Interfaith organizes a caring community into a powerful constituency to impact policy locally, statewide and nationally. AI is part of the Industrial Areas Foundation, an 80-year old community organizing network that has trained organizers including Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, and Barack Obama.
2021/2022 Issue Priorities
Albuquerque Interfaith’s organizing cycle begins with relational organizing within our institutions and is formed through a process of “house meetings,” or small group
conversations about the day-to-day struggles facing our families. We transform that private pain into public action at the local and state level, where we can see through meaningful change. Candidates and elected officials on our October 2021 Accountability Session
committed to work with us on the following:
• Doubling the size of the City’s Community
Safety Department to address root causes of the city’s crime challenges
• Maximizing the City’s Workforce Housing Trust Fund to build several hundred more
units of affordable housing each year.
• Creating a $100M Behavioral Health Trust for workforce development leveraging the
state’s surplus
• Trianing education funding to public schools identified as historically under-funded in the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit, like those in our South Valley communities