Dear Friends,
Wasn’t 2011 inspiring?
At Causa Justa :: Just Cause, we entered 2011 raring to go, feeling the foundation of our merger solidly supporting us, and the vision of Black and Brown unity pushing us forward.
We focused on our core commitment of developing leadership from our base, declaring 2011 to be “The Year of the Membership,” and dedicating ourselves to having real impact on policies that affect everyday people’s lives.
We supported and challenged members to lead our program work, forming our first Steering Committee and recruiting hundreds of Black, Latino, and other low-income people into our organization. We served our community with know-your-rights information and advocacy to solve their daily problems in their homes. We connected leaky faucets to bank accountability, lacking budgets to progressive taxation, and deeds of sale to executive bonuses, building pathways from individual crisis to collective action.
The second half of the year, our hearts and hands were dedicated to the budding Occupy Wall Street movement, joining thousands in a timely critique and in new opportunities for social change. We led the way in developing models of collaboration between community organizing groups like ours and occupy activists, working alongside dozens of organizations and thousands of activists towards a movement too big to fail.
We enjoyed the most satisfying year-end evaluation to date, checking off everything on our list, and watching our campaign work take on a life of its own. Wells Fargo bank, long time target of our work, was shut down by civil disobedience, sued by taxpayers, and exposed as a foreclosure factory and immigrant detention profiteer. Fannie Mae, now government owned, was put on the spot by an occupation of one of the thousands of vacant properties they own, and challenged to return the deed to the home of CJJC member Margarita Hernandez. And this is just the beginning.
2012 is ripe with opportunities for even more creative convergence, for leadership from affected communities of color in a broader movement of the 99%, and for policy impact in response to grassroots people’s power.
We are Unstoppable! Another World is Possible!
In Solidarity,
María Poblet
Executive Director, Causa Justa :: Just Cause
