The community confronted a crossroads. A dangerous intersection near homes outside the Fresno, Calif., city limits had only two stop signs, and accidents were starting to pile up. One resident was still dealing with an injury she had suffered there.
More than 300 community members from different religious, labor and civic groups came together to ask government officials to help. Organizers asked how many others in the room knew someone who was hurt at the same intersection, and more than 30 people stood up. The problem drew concerned members of the community across nationalities and income brackets. After an accident at another intersection under scrutiny, someone had died.
Within months, signs went up and the intersection of Chestnut and South Avenues became a four-way stop. The group then pushed for more stop signs at Cedar and South Avenues.
Street signs may seem like a simple thing. But leaders of United San Joaquin, a community organizing initiative that launched on May 3 at Fresno State University, see this small civic success as an affirmation of their work. Organizers welcomed 700 community members at the United San Joaquin launch, including Bishop Joseph V. Brennan of the Diocese of Fresno and other local Christian leaders. Even a politically fractured community like California’s Central Valley can organize for change, United San Joaquin leaders said.
“That was our first taste of what it’s like to actually have power,” said Martha Rodriguez Torres, a parishioner at St. Anthony Mary Claret Catholic Church in Fresno and a leader of United San Joaquin. “We confronted all of the people in power to say, ‘Are you willing to help us?’”
There are both conservative and progressive congressional districts in the Central Valley, one of the most politically contested regions in the United States. United San Joaquin, which describes itself as nonpartisan, draws members from Catholic parishes, labor unions, nonprofit organizations and other community institutions.
“When families cannot earn a living wage, when communities lack access to basic care, when people are separated from their loved ones, when women and children are not protected and when families are not sacred, we are witnessing both social challenges and moral failures that call for response,” Bishop Brennan said in a recent statement supporting United San Joaquin.
“Catholic social teaching insists that we are not meant to face these realities alone,” he said. “We are called to act together as a united voice of advocacy but also to accompany those in need.”
Many may be tempted to withdraw or grow cynical about efforts to improve their communities, Bishop Brennan said, but he urged people of faith to “choose engagement over indifference, solidarity over isolation, and hope over resignation.”
“To build something that cuts through a lot of the national partisan noise and could actually make an impact on people’s lives is a really important goal of this organization,” Tim McManus, a senior organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation, said. Collaborating with community groups and members, he has been laying the groundwork for United San Joaquin for the last six years.
The Industrial Areas Foundation is the oldest community organizing network, and one of the largest, in the United States. I.A.F. leaders have been working with faith communities across the country for more than 80 years. It implements what organizers call the “iron rule”: Never do for others what they can do for themselves. Working with I.A.F., communities learn to fix problems for themselves rather than rely on outsiders, an echo of Catholic social teaching on subsidiarity—and of the idea that community is about mutually supporting each other, not dependency.
This tradition runs deep in American Catholic life. Catholic Action and the Christian Family Movement brought laypeople into social engagement in the mid-20th century, and the I.A.F. itself has worked with faith communities since Saul Alinsky founded it in Chicago in the 1940s. PICO (the Pacific Institute for Community Organization, now known nationally as Faith in Action), Gamaliel and other community organizing networks built on that foundation in subsequent decades.
As United San Joaquin leaders prepared for its launch, they studied the relationship between Alinsky and the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, who saw in Alinsky’s community-based model a vehicle for human dignity and what he called personalist democracy. Leaders also visited C.O.P.S./Metro Alliance, a longstanding I.A.F. affiliate in San Antonio, for ideas and strategies to apply in Fresno.
“We really built United San Joaquin out of this vision,” Mr. McManus said.
Too often, organizations come in, fix a problem and leave, Ms. Rodriguez Torres said. The community never develops the capacity to address the next problem on its own. “We are an institution of many institutions,” she said, “and we work together.”
Dan Nickerson, a parishioner at St. Paul Catholic Newman Center, said it can be “real easy” to respond directly to community members who need immediate help. “But that only fixes the issue for that one person, like for today.”
Mr. Nickerson, a military veteran, moved to Fresno five years ago with his wife, Ada Jimenez. Shortly after arriving, the couple attended an I.A.F. training at their parish and also got involved with listening sessions for the Synod on Synodality. He believes the two experiences are deeply connected; they are both rooted in careful listening before taking action.
The Nickersons are involved with United San Joaquin, but both continue volunteering to distribute meals to the unhoused. The “two feet” of social justice are direct service and structural change, Mr. Nickerson said, and United San Joaquin embodies the second on a local level.
The need is not abstract. During a recent meeting with young adults at his parish, Mr. Nickerson listened to students, many of whom come from immigrant families, describe working full-time jobs while carrying full course loads, sending money home to their families and living in fear of immigration enforcement. Some said they were selling blood plasma to cover books and room and board.
“We can’t love our neighbor if we don’t know our neighbor,” Mr. Nickerson said, adding that is why community organizations put so much effort into building relationships. “We need to hear each other’s stories.”
What is happening in Fresno reflects a broader trend of Catholic involvement in civic life. Casey Stanton, a leader in the newly formed Catholics in Communion initiative, believes people of faith across the country are recognizing the urgency to act together for urgent civic and moral concerns.
Catholics in Communion is an umbrella organization that includes other national organizing networks. Ms. Stanton believes Catholics are looking for ways to participate in public life beyond elections, and Catholics in Communion is an effort to revive the civic engagement that began among Catholics in the 1940s.
“There are nonpartisan ways to engage in the public arena,” she said, calling attention to Pope Leo XIV’s address to the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Rome last October.
“The church must be with you: a poor church for the poor, a church that reaches out, a church that takes risks, a church that is courageous, prophetic and joyful,” Leo said at that meeting. “The church supports your just struggles for land, housing and work. Like my predecessor Francis, I believe just ways begin from the ground up, from the periphery toward the center.”
Yet some Catholics view the I.A.F.’s model with suspicion, associating Alinsky’s name with political radicalism and arguing that the church should stay out of community organizing efforts. Those criticisms have resurfaced amid broader tensions between Leo, a Chicago native committed to social justice, and President Trump.
Ms. Stanton sees it differently, explaining that Catholics in Communion seeks to put Catholic social teaching into action in the United States. In places without a strong organizing infrastructure, vulnerable populations are often unable to respond to structural injustices.
“We’re really trying to meet the moment and create a way for people who are feeling powerless or tired of doomscrolling on their phones to join with others and do something,” Ms. Stanton said.
Mr. McManus believes Fresno can be seen as something of a national microcosm. Around Fresno, the divisions that define the United States play out in a single region, but the people come together nevertheless.
Ms. Rodriguez Torres immigrated to the United States when she was 5. She moved back to Fresno after her retirement and discovered some of the same problems that had defined her community for decades still persisted.
“We have issues with immigration, issues with affordable housing,” she said, noting that the large immigrant community at her parish works in agriculture, hospitality and construction.
“We’ve been working on building power through organized people and organized money,” she said. “At this point, I think we’re ready to take on some of these big issues.”
Politics
Faith
Culture
Vatican
Scripture
Podcasts