Who We Are — History
Bay Area Organizing Committee (BAOC),
San Francisco
Since 1993, BAOC has been successfully working on issues such as healthcare, employment, redevelopment, housing and immigration. Some of BAOC's major accomplishments include:
- Organized to help pass the Healthy San Francisco health access plan, benefiting 82,000 low-income residents and workers.
- Worked to secure passage of the S.F. Health Care Accountability Ordinance that mandated health coverage for city workers and contract employees.
- Fought to keep San Francisco General Hospital in the Mission district, accessible to working poor and low-income residents.
- Worked to establish a Living Wage Law in San Francisco that applies to 18,000 low-income workers.
- Helped save the jobs of 1200 largely immigrant baggage screeners at San Francisco International Airport after the backlash of 9/11/2001.
- Organized community members to oppose development plans that called for the demolition of housing for 240 immigrant and minority families in San Bruno.
- Increased affordable housing citywide and secured an ordinance calling for 1000 new affordable homes including 500 at Mission Bay developments.
- Expedited 75,000 local citizenship applications and held Citizenship Days to file applications at local sites, increasing the passing rate from 65% to 90%.
Most recently, BAOC leaders successfully organized alongside civic and labor leaders to keep St. Luke's Hospital open - one of only two acute-care hospitals serving the predominantly working class and immigrant neighborhoods in the Southern portion of San Francisco. BAOC is committed to building citizen power for ordinary people in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
Marin Organizing Committee (MOC), Marin County
In 2005, three hundred delegates from synagogues, churches, and other non-profits gathered to commit to building a broad-based, non-partisan political organization in Marin County. After four years of relationship building, leadership development, research, and initial actions, the Marin Organizing Committee celebrated its Founding Convention in October of 2009. With 1,100 delegates from 20 dues-paying member institutions representing over 15,000 families, MOC organized the largest non-partisan political gathering in county history.
Since the convention MOC successfully negotiated with Marin County to provide an interim open shelter for the homeless during the winter months and have organized nearly a million dollars of public investment in shelter and safety net measures over the last two years. Leaders in the Marin cluster of the Bay Area IAF are now focused on continuing their movement into action especially around issues related to immigrants and affordable housing.
North Bay Sponsoring Committee, Sonoma County
The IAF has nearly decade of history in Sonoma County taking effective social action to impact immigrant rights, affordable housing and other issues.
Today, the North Bay Sponsoring Committee (NBSC) is building a broad base of diverse religious and civic institutions representing a mix of interests. The work of NBSC is twofold: strengthening the relationships, leadership and mission of each member institution while also creating a base of relational power from which local leaders can act together across Sonoma County. In particular, the NBSC is focused on building alliances between institutions representing predominantly younger, immigrant, farm and service workers and those serving an older, well-educated, white collar professional class in order to develop the broad-based institutional power necessary to address the great disparities between rich and poor in the region.
On May 25, 2010, NBSC held its’ first public action with over a thousand delegates and launched a campaign toward their own founding convention to celebrate their place in the regional mission of the Bay Area IAF. Issues related to immigration, police relations, transportation and mental health have emerged in house meetings across the counties.