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 working towards the development of a city-wide master plan for health care access and delivery that considers what type of care is needed in all parts of the city.
Marin Organizing Committee (MOC), Marin County
In the summer of 2005, a public assembly of 300 representatives from diverse institutions gathered to commit to building an IAF affiliate in Marin County.
In May 2008, the Marin Organizing Committee held its first "Action Assembly," with a standing room crowd of over 600 delegates representing twenty-five Catholic, Jewish and Protestant congregations as well as non-profit organizations. MOC leaders briefed local and state elected officials on MOC's action agenda and secured their commitments to work together. According to long-time Marin County observers, the assembly on May 8th was the largest non-partisan political gathering in the history of Marin County. (Press coverage of the Action Assembly can be found here).
Current action is focused on building leadership within our institutions, researching issues for action, recruiting new member institutions and moving toward a founding convention.
North Bay Sponsoring Committee, Napa and Sonoma Counties
The IAF has nearly a decade of history in the Sonoma and Napa Counties beginning with the "Sonoma County Faith-Based Organizing Project" and later the "Sonoma-Napa Action Project". These efforts had a history of effective social action impacting immigrant rights, affordable housing and worker cooperatives among 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 in Napa and Sonoma Counties. 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.