The long-term goal of California Calls is to develop a statewide alliance of local community based organizations that qualitatively increases the civic participation and leadership of low-income communities to have a powerful voice in shaping the public policies that affect their lives.
Founded in 2009, California Calls has now grown into a statewide alliance of 30 member organizations organized in 16 “anchor” groups spanning 14 counties of the state. Constituencies represented by alliance organizations include low income communities of color, poor and working class communities, immigrants, and young people. Alliance organizations use a broad range of strategies to pursue their work: grassroots community organizing, leadership development, policy research, direct action, advocacy, and public policy campaigns.
California Calls builds relationships with new and infrequent voters and residents in under-represented communities, engaging them not just during elections, but year round. By centering this work within local anchor organizations, we build ongoing civic engagement infrastructure that doesn’t disappear after an election cycle. By engaging voters and residents year-round, our anchor organizations build deeper relationships as a trusted messenger with individuals and can motivate them around issues they care about and that affect their lives.
A regional anchor group is an organization, or coalition of organizations, with the strategic commitment and capacity to lead the work of the alliance in a defined local region of the state.
A state anchor group is a statewide organization that has a membership and affiliates in multiple areas of the state, makes a statewide strategic commitment to California Calls and whose affiliates function as regional anchors, in collaboration with other regional anchor groups, in at least two areas of the state.
Inland Empire
San Bernardino and Riverside Counties make up the Inland Empire — the fourth most populous region in California. The sprawling mix of suburban and rural communities has had their share of problems, such as the country’s highest foreclosure and unemployment rates. However, the traditional political landscape of the Inland Empire has also been shifting in recent years.
Demographic shifts are creating opportunities to re-shape the future in the Inland Empire and California Calls’ civic engagement work has been crucial in creating movement infrastructure to sustain a new generation of civic engagement organizers.
Communities for a New California
Communities for a New California is a statewide civil and human rights organization committed to achieving public policy that is socially, economically, and environmentally just for California’s families. Their areas of expertise include strategic organizing and public policy advocacy. Their geographic focus is in the Central Coast, San Joaquin Valley, Imperial and Coachella Valley, but they work in 13 counties from Yolo to Imperial and have offices in Fresno, Indio, Merced, and Sacramento.
CONTACT:
www.anewcalifornia.org
Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE)
COPE’s focus is to build a collaboration of proactive and prophetic leadership to address and serve neglected African American neighborhoods. They have trained over 350 clergy, lay leaders, parents, and community leaders in the art of faith-based community organizing. Their areas of expertise include faith-based community organizing, public policy formation, program development, mentoring relationships, development of regional and local public policy initiatives. They work in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.
CONTACT:
600 North Arrowhead Ave. Suite 300
San Bernardino, CA 92401
909-888-7881
https://copesite.org/
The Bay Area
The Bay area is known for its diversity, progressive politics, social movement history, and innovation in the tech sector. It is home to large immigrant communities and over 112 languages are spoken in this region. Although many residents profited during the tech boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, their less wealthy neighbors are dealing with fallout resulting from gentrification, loss of jobs and the rising cost of living. Many have moved out to areas like the Central Valley where housing is cheaper.
California Calls anchors work to ensure that Bay Area voters are actively engaged in the decision-making process that impacts their lives and deal head-on with issues like affordable housing and quality job creation. These organizations have been instrumental in increasing the local minimum wage, creating an affordable housing trust fund, passing a parcel tax to save community colleges, ensuring access to good jobs for formerly incarcerated residents, and much more.
Working Partnerships, USA
Working Partnerships USA, founded in 1995, is an independently funded social change organization founded by labor and community groups that equips everyday people to participate and win in developing a fair and free society. Their areas of expertise include economic research and analysis, government accountability and reform, health care, organizing and leadership development. Their work is centered in Santa Clara County.
CONTACT:
2102 Almaden Rd.
San Jose, CA 95125
(408) 269-7872
www.wpusa.org
Oakland Rising
Oakland Rising educates and mobilizes voters in East and West Oakland’s neighborhood. Their current work focuses on building a permanent political/electoral infrastructure; exercising and expanding political influence; and aligning organizations and coordinating with other progressive forces. Their areas of expertise include the City of Oakland, Oakland politics, local tax and fiscal policy, voter engagement/field, instant run-off voting, and Oakland elections.
CONTACT:
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 261-2600
www.oaklandrising.org
San Francisco Rising
San Francisco Rising is an alliance of base-building organizations rooted in San Francisco’s working-class communities and communities of color. Their multiracial electoral field campaigns amplify existing organizing in our communities and bring that power to the ballot box Their areas of expertise include: San Francisco politics, community organizing, youth programs.
CONTACT:
San Francisco Rising
c/o Causa Justa :: Just Cause
2301 Mission St., Suite 201
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 684-3473
www.sfrising.org
San Diego
As the second largest county in the state, San Diego plays a critical role in the statewide landscape and recent demographic shifts in the region have created new possibilities. In more recent years, the region has begun to shift politically, thanks to a wave of strong community and labor organizing.
California Calls’ anchor in San Diego has focused on voter engagement and grassroots organizing efforts in precincts with high concentrations of people of color, particularly the growing Asian/Latinx populations and predominately African American neighborhoods. These districts overlap with large concentrations of low income and infrequent voters.
Alliance San Diego
Alliance San Diego focuses on building coalitions to promote social justice and social change. Hundreds of Alliance San Diego volunteers have brought tens of thousands of voters into the election process. In a county with nearly 1.5 million voters but regular participation rates of only 60%, their efforts have made a decisive difference in election after election. Their areas of expertise include strategic organizing, public policy advocacy, immigration reform and educational equity.
CONTACT:
3750 30th St.
San Diego, CA. 92104
(619) 269-1823
www.alliancesd.org
Central Valley
The Central Valley region is the birthplace of the farm worker movement of the 60’s and 70’s, led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. But despite its movement history, the Central Valley has long been a stronghold for traditional power brokers. In recent years, a budding movement of young activists and rural residents, concerned about their local schools and public safety, have begun to make permanent inroads into the landscape of the region.
In what was once a region dominated by agriculture and dotted with sleepy farm towns, the Central Valley has seen an influx of people who have been priced out of the housing markets in LA and the Bay Area and who are moving into the region searching for good jobs and affordable housing. As a result, the electorate is also shifting fast along with the growing potential to organize a new vision for the California Dream in the Central Valley.
Communities for a New California
Communities for a New California is a statewide civil and human rights organization committed to achieving public policy that is socially, economically, and environmentally just for California’s families. Their areas of expertise include strategic organizing and public policy advocacy. Their geographic focus is in the Central Coast, San Joaquin Valley, Imperial and Coachella Valley, but they work in 13 counties from Yolo to Imperial and have offices in Fresno, Indio, Merced, and Sacramento.
CONTACT:
www.anewcalifornia.org
Dolores Huerta Foundation (DHF)
The Dolores Huerta Foundation was established in 2003 by Camila Chávez, daughter of civil rights leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta. DHF oversees training for low-income community members in the areas of leadership and organizing skills specific to civic and electoral participation so that they can become catalysts for change in their own communities. Areas of expertise include education and youth development and economic development. Their geographic focus is in the Central Valley (Kern, Tulare, and Fresno counties).
CONTACT:
P.O. Box 2087
Bakersfield, CA 93303
(661) 322- 3033
www.doloreshuerta.org
The landscape of the Central Coast is undergoing a major shift. This amazing region of the state is home to a struggling working class of immigrant farm workers and low-wage service workers—people who are coming together at a new scale, which is quickly re-shaping the political landscape of the Central Coast.
This is the result of intense organizing, alliance building, and the use of new technologies to reach out to voters. Through economic and environmental justice community campaigns, the California Calls Anchor, CAUSE, has built an army of grassroots leaders, both young and old, to mobilize voters year-round. From farm workers to college students to struggling young families, the new face of the Central Coast electorate is paving the way to a new future for all of California.
Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
CAUSE’s mission is to build grassroots power to realize social, economic and environmental justice for the people of California’s Central Coast Region through policy research, leadership development, organizing, and advocacy. Their areas of expertise include community organizing and policy advocacy, leadership development, redistricting and voting rights, immigration reform, environmental justice, non-profit organizational development, social justice philanthropy, urban planning and smart growth, educational reform, and economic justice campaigns that bring together diverse community and labor organizations. Their geographic focus is in the Central Coast region consisting of Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties.
CONTACT:
2021 Sperry Ave. #18
Ventura, CA 93003
(805) 658-0810
www.causenow.org
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a pivotal region for California Calls’ organizing work. It is the most populous county in the state and one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the United States. It’s also home to over 26% of all registered voters in California. From downtown skyscrapers to sprawling suburbs, from Hollywood to the Harbor, Los Angeles is a tale of two cities where there’s a large gap between the rich and the poor. It is also a tale of how organizing can succeed to bring communities together and support solutions that work.
In the LA region, California Calls’ anchors have pioneered innovative campaigns to create green jobs, improve inner city schools and make the streets safer without criminalizing the youth who call these streets home. Most importantly, these organizations have been successful in building multi-racial, multi-sector alliances with the power to win these changes and move Angelenos beyond the balkanization and racial strife which has characterized this region in years past.
Community Coalition
Founded in 1990, Community Coalition is best known for leading nationally recognized grassroots campaigns that include groundbreaking nuisance abatement work to close over 150 liquor stores and educational justice campaigns to transform the quality of public education. Their areas of expertise include strategic organizing, public policy advocacy, civic engagement, education, child welfare reform. They work in South Los Angeles.
CONTACT:
8101 S. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90044
(323) 750-9087
www.cocosouthla.org
InnerCity Struggle
InnerCity Struggle has worked with youth and community residents since 1994 to promote safe, healthy and non-violent communities in the Eastside. Their areas of expertise include education, LatinX politics, civic engagement trends among people of color, youth organizing, campaign development, grassroots fundraising, strategic planning processes and coalition building. Their geographic focus is in Boyle Heights, unincorporated East Los Angeles, El Sereno, and Lincoln Heights.
CONTACT:
3467 Whittier Boulevard.
Los Angeles, CA 90023
(323) 780-7605
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE)
SCOPE works to reduce barriers to social and economic opportunities for poor and working class communities by creating public sector jobs and training programs. The organization has identified over 34,000 voters in Los Angeles County who believe that government must invest in family supporting jobs, quality education, and clean air and water. Their areas of expertise include strategic grassroots organizing, public policy advocacy, grassroots leadership development, civic engagement, job training.
CONTACT:
1715 W. Florence Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90047
(323) 789-7920
www.scopela.org