Category: My Blog

I’ve buried men who died on park benches. Not in some far-off city you see in the headlines. Right here, in our own neighborhoods. I presided over the funeral of a man named Richard. He was 58. His body gave out during a cold snap, but honestly, his spirit had been fraying for years—worn thin by a constant search for a place to call home. At the graveside, a handful of us from St. Joseph’s sang “Amazing Grace.” I remember standing there thinking, This isn’t grace. This is a policy failure we dressed up with a hymn.

Faith communities sit in a strange, uncomfortable spot when it comes to the housing mess. Not because we have all the answers—we don’t. But because we already carry a reason to care, tucked right into our sacred texts. Leviticus, Luke, you name it: our scriptures are stuffed with commands to shelter the stranger and look after the vulnerable. The real question is whether we’ll stay in the shallow end of charity—handing out sandwiches and sleeping bags—or wade into the harder, murkier work of advocacy. I believe my calling pushes me toward the latter.

Why the Church Has to Move Past Charity

For decades, plenty of congregations have run beautiful mercy ministries. Food pantries. Clothing closets. Winter shelters set up in church basements. These efforts keep people alive—I’ve watched a hot meal pull a man back from the edge of despair more than once. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: charity by itself can’t keep up with the structural forces that push folks onto the streets to begin with.

When a parish runs a rotating shelter, we’re basically putting a bandage on a wound the wider community refuses to treat. Rising rents, zoning laws that shut people out, wages that never quite catch up, a brutal shortage of affordable units—these are the real engines of homelessness. No amount of casseroles can fix a system where a two-bedroom apartment eats 70% of a working family’s income. If we honestly believe in the dignity of every person—made in the image of God—then we have to start challenging the machinery that grinds that dignity down.

From the Pulpit to the Planning Commission

I stumbled into local housing advocacy after a young mother in our congregation, Elena, got an eviction notice. She worked full-time as a home health aide. Her rent had jumped $300 a month, and she just couldn’t keep up. We scraped together emergency funds for her, but her situation wasn’t some rare hiccup. So I started showing up at city council meetings, asking questions. I testified at planning commission hearings. What I found was a process that’s technically open to the public but practically closed to the people who are getting hammered by it.

Faith leaders carry a peculiar kind of moral weight. When a pastor or priest stands up at a public hearing, folks tend to lean in—not because we’re zoning wizards, but because we represent a tradition that won’t shut up about justice. I’ve learned to speak plainly: “The current proposal will displace 200 families. That’s not progress; that’s a moral wound.” We can frame housing as a matter of human worth, not some political football. That shift changes the conversation in a way that data and charts alone never will.

Building Coalitions Across the Divides

One of the unexpected gifts of this work has been the relationships that sprouted across lines that usually keep us apart. I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with Baptist preachers, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim imams at zoning board meetings. I’ve partnered with secular nonprofit leaders who don’t share my theology but definitely share my conviction that housing is a right. This isn’t ecumenical window-dressing. It’s practical solidarity. When a broad, mixed coalition speaks with one voice, elected officials start to pay real attention.

In our city, a group of us—the Interfaith Housing Coalition—pushed for an inclusionary zoning ordinance that would require new developments to include a slice of affordable units. We organized letter-writing campaigns from the pews. We held prayer vigils outside city hall. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but the final policy landed stronger because we refused to stay quiet. That whole experience taught me that advocacy is just prayer with its sleeves rolled up.

What Congregations Can Do Right Now

I hear from clergy all the time who feel swamped. They’re already stretched paper-thin, and housing advocacy sounds like a specialist’s game. It doesn’t have to be. Here are a few concrete steps any faith community can take, starting small.

1. Learn the local lay of the land

Invite a housing policy wonk or a city planner to speak at an adult forum. Get the numbers straight: What’s the median rent in your area? How many people are lingering on the waitlist for housing vouchers? Knowing that 40% of renters in the county are cost-burdened turns an abstract problem into a shared weight. Knowledge isn’t everything, but it’s the floor we build on.

2. Show up and speak out

Just being at public meetings is a form of witness. Bring five people from your congregation to a planning commission hearing. Prepare a short, respectful statement. Say, “Our faith community supports this affordable housing development because we believe everyone deserves a safe place to live.” That simple act can offset the loud, angry voices that usually dominate those rooms.

3. Use your land and buildings

A lot of congregations sit on underused property—parking lots, old convents, empty rectories. Some are exploring ways to develop affordable housing right on their own land. Not every church can pull this off, but even a tiny pilot project can show what’s possible. A Lutheran church two towns over turned a vacant school building into 12 units for low-income seniors. That whole thing started because a few members asked, “What else could this space become?”

4. Offer relational support, not just stuff

Advocacy isn’t only about policy. It’s about people. Pair your housing work with intentional relationship-building. Create a ministry where volunteers walk alongside families who are navigating the housing system. Help them fill out paperwork, understand their rights, and connect to legal aid. This kind of accompaniment preserves dignity and pushes back against isolation.

Facing Opposition with Grace

Let me be straight with you: you will hit resistance. Some of it will come from inside your own congregation. I’ve had parishioners tell me, “Father, we should stick to spiritual matters.” Others worry that affordable housing will tank property values or change the neighborhood’s character. Those fears are real, and they deserve a pastoral ear, not a brush-off.

When I bump into resistance, I try to listen first. Then I gently invite people to see the faces behind the policy. I tell them about Elena, about Richard. I ask, “If not here, where? If not us, who?” I remind them that the early Church was known for a kind of scandalous hospitality—taking in orphans, widows, the destitute when nobody else would. That legacy still belongs to us.

We also face opposition from powerful interests in development and real estate. I’ve been called a socialist, a meddler, a priest who should “mind his own business.” I wear those labels with a strange sort of peace. The prophets were called far worse. Our job isn’t to be liked. Our job is to be faithful.

A Vision Rooted in Hope

I’m not naive. The housing crisis is vast and tangled. No single congregation can solve it. But we can chip away at it, act by act, and we can build a culture where housing starts to look like a common good rather than a commodity. The goal isn’t some perfect city. The goal is a community where nobody has to die on a bench because a roof costs too much.

This vision demands persistence. Showing up at the unglamorous meetings, writing the letters, having the awkward conversations. It demands a willingness to sit in discomfort—to examine our own complicity in systems that shut people out. And it demands prayer, because this work will crack your heart open. But a cracked-open heart is exactly the kind of place God can work.

I’ll close with a story. Last year, a man named David came to our shelter. He was gruff, suspicious, hadn’t set foot in a church for thirty years. Over time, he started to trust us. With help from our housing navigator, he found a studio apartment. On the day he moved in, he handed me a small, folded note. It read: “You didn’t just give me a key. You gave me back my name.” That’s what housing advocacy is about. Restoring names. Restoring lives. And if the Church won’t fight for that, I don’t know who will.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn’t housing advocacy too political for a church?

Housing policy gets shaped by political decisions, sure, but our motivation is theological, not partisan. We advocate for the dignity of every person, a principle sunk deep into Scripture and Catholic social teaching. We can engage the process without endorsing candidates or parties, keeping our focus on the moral dimensions of the issue.

What if my congregation is small and short on resources?

You don’t need a fat budget or a big staff. A small group can write letters, attend public meetings, or partner with other congregations. Start with one concrete action—maybe a prayer vigil or a community education evening. The real power lies in faithful, consistent presence, not in numbers alone.

How do I respond to neighbors who fear affordable housing will hurt the area?

Hear their concerns without judging, then share what the evidence actually shows: well-designed affordable housing doesn’t drag down property values and often strengthens neighborhoods. More importantly, tell the human stories. Introduce them, if you can, to people who would benefit. Fear often fades when we see the faces of our own neighbors reaching for stability.

Can spiritual practices really shift a systemic crisis?

Prayer and reflection keep us in the fight for the long haul. They ground our action in love rather than anger, and they help us stay hopeful when progress crawls. Prayer also reshapes our community’s imagination, letting us envision a world where housing is a right, not a privilege. That vision is always the first step toward real change.

I’ve buried a man who died of exposure behind the old feed store. I’ve baptized a child whose family sleeps six to a room in a motel on the highway. I listened to a mother’s confession—not of sin, but of sheer exhaustion—as she told me she works two jobs and still can’t scrape together a deposit on an apartment. These aren’t policy abstracts. They’re my parishioners.

I’m Father Tomás Guerrero, and I serve a small Catholic parish in a community that—like so many others—is getting squeezed by a housing crisis. It doesn’t arrive with trumpets. It hangs in the voices of elders living on fixed incomes, young families doubled up with relatives, veterans who slip through every crack in the system. It’s a crisis of dignity, stability, hope. And I’m sure of this much: faith communities aren’t bystanders. We’re called to be advocates, anchors, and agents of real change.

That conviction doesn’t spring from a political playbook. It comes straight out of the Gospel. When Christ says whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Him, He’s not speaking in airy metaphors. He’s giving a direct, unrelenting command. Housing isn’t a luxury. It’s the floor families build on—their health, education, spiritual growth. When that floor gives way, the soul gets battered. Our faith isn’t a Sunday-only affair. It needs a street address.

From the Pulpit to the Public Square

For too long, a lot of us in the clergy have treated housing like a secular thing—something for city council meetings and economic development boards, not for homilies or parish bulletins. That’s a deep mistake. The separation of church and state doesn’t mean we check our moral voice at the door. It means the state can’t tell us what to believe. But our belief has to shape our action. And our belief insists every person is made in the image of God and deserves a safe, steady place to lay their head.

How does a faith community start advocating? By listening. Before we speak, we hear. In my own parish, we set up a string of listening sessions. We didn’t invite experts first. We invited the people in the pews—and, just as importantly, those who’d stopped coming because the weight of their housing burden was too heavy to carry into a sanctuary. We heard from a single father who sleeps in his car so his daughter can have the room in his sister’s apartment. We heard from a retired teacher whose rent swallows three-quarters of her pension. Their stories are our marching orders.

Armed with those truths, we can speak with authority—not as politicians, but as prophets. We can walk into city council meetings and zoning board hearings, not to grandstand, but to testify that a community’s moral measure is found in how it treats its most fragile members. I’ve stood before our local planning commission and said, simply, “My parish sees the human cost of your decisions. Here are their names. Here are their faces. How will you answer to them?” That’s advocacy rooted in pastoral care.

Land, Assets, and the Practical Gospel

Faith communities often hold something more powerful than a petition: we hold land. Many of us sit on underused parcels—empty rectories, surplus parking lots, sprawling lawns that host nothing but crickets after Sunday Mass. What if we saw these as seeds for God’s kingdom, right here, right now? Across the country, congregations are teaming up with nonprofit developers to build mixed-income housing on their property. They aren’t losing their identity; they’re living it out loud.

It’s not simple. There’s complicated financing, zoning variances, and often pushback from within the congregation. I’ve faced the question: “Father, why risk our land for people who don’t even show up for Mass?” My answer never changes: because we don’t serve only those who sit in our pews. We serve Christ, who shows up in every person in need. Our property is a gift, held in trust. Using it to shelter the homeless is one of the highest forms of stewardship.

Beyond land, we have networks. A faith community is a web of relationships: contractors, electricians, real estate agents, lawyers, social workers, retired folks aching for a way to use their skills toward something that goes beyond profit. We can organize them. I’ve seen a retired plumber from our Knights of Columbus council give his time to fix a leak in a low-income senior’s home, heading off a crisis that would have led to eviction. That’s the corporal work of mercy with its sleeves rolled up. Direct, immediate, and quietly transformative.

The Hard Conversations Inside Our Walls

Advocacy doesn’t just point outward, though. Some of the hardest, most necessary conversations happen right inside our own congregations. I’ve had parishioners tell me, “Father, I worked hard for my house. Why should I back affordable housing that might drag down my property values?” I don’t brush off that fear. It’s real and rooted in a lifetime of labor. But I also ask them to think about whose interests the housing market really serves as it stands. I ask them to remember that their own ancestors—whether they passed through Ellis Island or crossed the Rio Grande—likely crowded into humble quarters and leaned on the kindness of others.

We’ve got to face the subtle prejudices that often dress up as fiscal responsibility. When we oppose a multi-family development because of worries about “the wrong kind of people,” we need to be honest about what we’re actually saying. Faith communities have to be places where those biases get gently but firmly challenged—always with love, never with cowardice. A homily that never unsettles the comfortable isn’t a homily; it’s a lullaby.

Permanent Supportive Housing and the Long Haul

Emergency shelters are a necessary bandage, but they’re no cure. The chronically homeless—people wrestling mental illness and addiction—need more than a cot and a meal. They need permanent supportive housing: a home of their own, with wraparound services that help them stay housed. The model works, and over time it saves public money by cutting down on emergency room visits and jail stays.

Faith communities can be loud champions for this. We can teach our congregations what actually works. We can volunteer with organizations that provide the supportive services—mentoring a formerly homeless person, helping them furnish a first apartment. I think of a young man in our community, Lucas, who spent years on the streets. When he finally got the key to his own small apartment through a supportive housing program, he came to me and asked if I’d bless it. As I sprinkled holy water in that humble room, it hit me: this wasn’t a policy win. This was a resurrection.

A Call to Specific Action

My call to you—whether you’re a person of faith or simply a person of good will—is this: don’t look away. The size of this crisis can feel crushing, but despair is a luxury we can’t afford. Start where you are. If you belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque, ask your leadership what the congregation is doing about housing. Start a conversation. Form a housing ministry. If you don’t belong to a faith community, find a local advocacy group and lend your voice, your time, or your resources.

We have to reject the lie that the housing market is some inevitable force of nature, like the weather. It’s the product of human choices—zoning codes, tax policies, public investments. And choices can change. A city that decides to prioritize luxury condos over workforce housing is making a moral decision. A state that slashes funding for rental assistance is making a moral decision. Faith communities have to make our own moral decision: to stand unapologetically with the people who are getting crushed by these systems.

I think often of the stable in Bethlehem. No room at the inn. The Holy Family knew the fragility of being unhoused, dependent on the mercy of a stranger. When we work for housing justice, we’re not just doing charity. We’re clearing a path for God to enter our world again, in the lives of those who are waiting for a door to open.

Frequently Asked Questions

Isn’t housing a government issue, not a church issue?

Housing is a human dignity issue, which makes it deeply moral and spiritual. Government has a necessary role in policy and funding, but faith communities bring the moral voice, the trust, and often the direct services that bureaucracies can’t. We speak up because our sacred texts order us to care for the poor and shelter the homeless. It’s not about partisanship; it’s about prophecy.

Our congregation is small and has limited funds. What can we really do?

You don’t need a fat budget to make a real dent. Start by building relationships. Partner with other congregations. Host a forum on housing with local experts and officials. Open your space for community meetings. Often the most powerful thing a small church can offer is its prophetic voice at a city council meeting, amplified by the moral weight of a gathered community. Never underestimate a steady, compassionate presence.

How do we talk to parishioners who oppose affordable housing in our neighborhood?

Listen first, without judgment. Acknowledge their fears—they’re often rooted in genuine worries about safety and property values. Then, gently, offer facts: research keeps showing that well-managed affordable housing doesn’t tank property values or spike crime. More than that, share stories of the people who need this housing—who they are, how they live, why a stable home would turn their lives around. Lead with relationship, not rebuke.

The work is slow. It’s often thankless. But we’re not called to be successful; we’re called to be faithful. And there’s no greater faithfulness than making sure every child of God has a place to call home.

I have spent nearly two decades walking alongside communities in the Rio Grande Valley, and if there is one confusion I encounter more than any other, it is this: people treat community organizing and activism as though they are the same thing. They are not. Both matter. Both carry real weight. But they ask different things of us, they build different kinds of power, and they yield different fruit. Understanding the distinction can save you years of frustration and help you serve your neighbors more faithfully.

What Activism Looks Like

Activism is the loud, visible, public response to injustice. It is the protest march down Main Street. It is the petition circulating on doorsteps. It is the student standing alone in front of a government building with a handmade sign. Activism says, in no uncertain terms, this is wrong, and we demand change.

There is a righteous energy in activism. It draws its strength from moral clarity and the refusal to stay silent. When a family is about to be evicted because a landlord refuses to fix the plumbing, activism shows up at that landlord’s office. When a city council votes to close the only clinic in a low-income neighborhood, activism fills the council chambers with angry, determined residents.

Activism tends to be issue-focused and time-bound. It rises in response to a specific harm. It seeks a specific outcome: a policy reversed, a vote won, a decision undone. And when that outcome is achieved—or when the moment passes—activism often recedes until the next crisis demands attention.

I have marched alongside activists many times. I have prayed with them before they stepped onto the street. Their courage is real, and their witness matters. But I also know what happens after the march ends, after the cameras leave, after the signs are folded and stored. Without something more durable underneath, the energy fades, and the conditions that produced the injustice in the first place remain untouched.

What Community Organizing Looks Like

Community organizing moves in a different rhythm. It does not ignore injustice, but it does not begin with protest either. It begins with listening. It begins with the slow, patient work of building relationships strong enough to hold people together when the work gets hard.

When I first came to San Juan Diego Parish, I spent six months doing almost nothing but drinking coffee in people’s kitchens. I heard about failing septic systems, about children walking three miles to school because the bus route skipped their colonia, about elderly residents choosing between medication and electricity. Those conversations were not wasted time. They were the foundation of everything that came after.

Organizing asks: Who are the people most affected? What do they already know? What can they do together that none of them could do alone? It is less about speaking for people and more about creating the conditions where people speak for themselves. It develops leaders from within, rather than relying on outside voices to carry the message.

The structures organizing builds—leadership teams, neighborhood associations, coalition networks—are designed to last. They become the infrastructure that can respond to the next crisis and the one after that. They give a community the capacity to act, not just react.

The Key Differences

1. Focus: Issues Versus People

Activism centers on an issue. Organizing centers on people. This is not a small distinction. An activist group fighting against environmental contamination might dissolve once the polluter is held accountable. An organization built on relationships between affected residents will still exist when the next threat appears—and it will appear.

I have seen it happen. In 2016, a cluster of colonias near McAllen organized to secure paved roads, something they had been denied for decades. The campaign took two years. When it succeeded, the same leadership committee turned their attention to flooding infrastructure, because the relationships and the structure were already in place. The issue changed. The people remained.

2. Power: Protesting Versus Building

Activism protests existing power. Organizing builds new power. Both are necessary, but they are not the same. Protest says no to what is being done to us. Organizing says yes to what we can do together. Protest is often defensive. Organizing creates the capacity to go on offense.

Power in organizing comes from numbers, discipline, and the willingness to act as a united body. It is not symbolic. It is the real ability to negotiate, to bargain, to hold decision-makers accountable over time, not just in a single dramatic moment.

3. Timeframe: Urgent Versus Long-Term

Activism responds to urgency. A child has been detained. A forest is being cleared today. A vote happens tomorrow. Activism moves fast because it has to. The moral stakes do not allow for delay.

Organizing is slow by comparison, sometimes frustratingly slow. Building trust takes time. Developing leaders takes time. Creating the kind of organization that can sustain a campaign for years takes time. But that slowness is also a strength. It means the work is rooted in something deeper than outrage, something that can outlast a news cycle.

4. Leadership: Spokespeople Versus Many Leaders

Activist movements often depend on charismatic individuals who can rally public attention. There is nothing wrong with that—some people have a genuine gift for it. But it creates vulnerability. When that person steps back, the movement can lose momentum.

Organizing deliberately spreads leadership across many people. The organizer’s deepest calling is to develop others, not to be the one standing at the microphone. If your organization collapses when you leave, you were not organizing. You were performing.

Why the Distinction Matters

I am not drawing this line to rank one above the other. God knows we need both. But confusing them causes real harm. When people bring activist expectations into an organizing space, they grow impatient with the relationship-building and the meetings and the slow consensus process. They want action now. And when people bring organizing habits into a moment that demands immediate public witness, they can get stuck in process while people suffer.

I have watched good people burn out because they expected an organizing structure to produce activist-style victories on an activist timeline. I have also watched promising organizations collapse because they treated organizing as just another form of protest and never built the foundation that would hold them together after the march.

Know which work you are doing. Be honest about it. If the moment calls for activism, then be an activist with everything you have. If the moment calls for organizing, then commit to the long, unglamorous labor of building people and structures. And recognize that both callings are part of the same witness: that our neighbors deserve more than survival, and that we are responsible to one another.

The Industrial Areas Foundation, the network that trained me and countless others, has said it plainly for decades: organizing is not about issues; it is about building a constituency that can act on its own behalf. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s work on community resistance similarly documents how sustained local organizing creates lasting change that protest alone rarely achieves.

How to Know Which Approach Fits

Ask yourself a few honest questions:

• Is there an immediate threat that requires a rapid public response? If yes, activism may be what the moment demands.
• Is there a chronic condition that keeps producing the same harm over and over? If yes, organizing is likely the deeper call.
• Do you have relationships with the people most affected, or are you acting on their behalf without knowing them? If the latter, stop and listen before you act.
• What will remain after the current campaign ends? If the answer is nothing, you are practicing activism. That may be appropriate. But if you want something to remain, you need to organize.

There is no shame in either answer. The shame lies in pretending they are the same and then wondering why the results do not match your hopes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can someone be both an activist and a community organizer?

Absolutely. Most people I work with move between both roles depending on the situation. The key is knowing which role you are inhabiting at any given moment. The skills overlap—public speaking, coalition-building, strategic thinking—but the posture is different. Activism speaks truth to power. Organizing builds power from truth. You can do both, but you should not confuse them.

Why does organizing take so long?

Because people are not tools to be deployed. They are human beings with histories, fears, obligations, and wisdom that deserves to be honored. Building the trust that makes collective action possible cannot be rushed. I have seen organizers try to shortcut this work, and the results are always fragile—campaigns that look impressive from the outside but crumble the moment pressure is applied. The time you spend building relationships is not wasted. It is the very thing that makes everything else possible.

What if my community is facing an emergency right now?

Then act. Organize later if you must, but act now. When a family is about to lose their home, when a child is in danger, when a policy will do irreparable harm if it passes tomorrow, the moral demand is clear. Respond with urgency. Simultaneously, recognize that the emergency did not appear from nowhere. Conditions created it. If you only ever respond to emergencies, you will spend your entire life reacting. At some point, you must build something that reduces the frequency and severity of those emergencies. That is what organizing is for.

May God grant us the courage to protest when protest is needed, the patience to organize when organizing is called for, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I have spent nearly two decades walking alongside communities in struggle. In that time, I have witnessed well-meaning people pour their hearts into causes that flicker brightly and then fade. I have also seen quiet, persistent work transform neighborhoods from the inside out. The difference often comes down to this: activism raises its voice, but community organizing builds a table long enough for everyone to sit down together.

Both activism and community organizing matter. I believe that with my whole heart. But confusing the two—or expecting one to do the work of the other—leads to burnout, disappointment, and fractured communities. Let me speak plainly about what separates these two callings, and why understanding that distinction can change how we show up for our neighbors.

What Is Activism?

Activism is the public cry for change. It is the march through downtown, the petition on the doorstep, the sign planted in the front yard. When a community sees injustice—and refuses to stay silent—activism is the first response of a conscience that will not rest.

I have marched alongside parishioners holding signs that read “Justice for Our Children” and “Homes Not Highways.” I have watched young people find their voice for the first time at a rally, their faces lit with the conviction that the world can change. That fire is real. That fire is holy.

Activism operates on urgency. It responds to a specific harm—a police shooting, a factory closing, a policy that punishes the poor. Its strength lies in visibility and moral clarity. When activists take to the streets, they force a community to look at what it would rather ignore.

But activism, by its nature, tends to be reactive. It rises when the crisis rises. And when the cameras leave, when the signs are taken home, the energy can dissipate if there is no structure left behind to carry the work forward.

What Is Community Organizing?

Community organizing is slower, less glamorous, and often invisible. It is the work of building relationships, developing leaders, and creating institutions that can sustain change over years—not just news cycles.

When I first learned about organizing, I encountered the tradition rooted in the Industrial Areas Foundation, the network founded by Saul Alinsky and carried forward by generations of organizers who understood that power comes from organized people, not from charismatic individuals. This tradition taught me that before you can demand anything from a city council or a landlord, you must first know who is in your own congregation, what keeps them awake at night, and what they are willing to risk for one another.

Organizing begins with one-on-one conversations—sometimes over coffee, sometimes on a porch, sometimes in the back pews after Mass. It means asking not just what angers people, but what they love, what they hope for, and where their pain lives. An organizer does not recruit. An organizer listens, and then helps people discover that they already have the capacity to act together.

The Key Differences

Relationship vs. Message

Activism centers on the message. The chant must be clear. The demand must be specific. The poster must be legible from across the street. This is necessary work—without clear moral demands, power will not budge.

Community organizing centers on the relationship. Before a demand is made, the organizer asks: Who are we? What do we hold in common? Who here has the credibility to speak for this block, this parish, this workplace? The message emerges from the people, not the other way around.

I have seen activist campaigns built in days, launched with energy and righteous anger. I have also seen them collapse when the energy fades, because no one had done the slow work of building trust across race, language, and neighborhood lines. Organizing, by contrast, takes months—sometimes years—before a single public action. But when that action comes, it carries the weight of a community that has learned to move together.

Issue vs. Institution

Activism typically organizes around an issue: save the river, stop the eviction, defend the school. These are worthy fights. But when the fight ends—whether in victory or defeat—the organization often dissolves.

Community organizing builds institutions that outlast any single campaign. A tenants’ association that wins rent protections can still exist five years later to demand better building maintenance. A faith-based coalition that secures a living wage ordinance can turn next to affordable housing or immigration reform. The institution becomes a vehicle for whatever the community needs next.

This is why organizers speak of power rather than progress. Progress can be reversed when the opposition regroups. But organized people—people who know each other, trust each other, and have won together—retain the capacity to act again and again.

Visibility vs. Sustainability

Activism needs visibility. A protest that no one notices has failed at its purpose. Activists depend on media, on spectacle, on the moral weight of public witness.

Organizing depends on sustainability. The work happens in living rooms and church basements. It is not always photogenic. But it builds something that can survive the departure of any single leader, the loss of any single grant, the outcome of any single election.

I tell the young organizers I mentor: if your campaign cannot continue without you, it is not yet organized. It may be inspired. It may be just. But it is not organized.

When They Work Together

Here is what I want to be clear about: activism and community organizing are not opponents. They are companions on the same road. The best movements I have witnessed know how to use both.

When the Industrial Areas Foundation helped organize communities in East Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s, the daily work was relationship-building—house meetings, leadership training, research actions. But when the moment called for it, those organized communities took to the streets. Their activism carried authority because it came from an organized base. Their demands carried weight because thousands of relationships stood behind them.

Consider the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King’s moral witness was activism in its purest form—the sermons, the marches, the willingness to be arrested. But that movement was also built on organizing: the citizenship schools of Septima Clark, the voter registration drives led by local people across the South, the church networks that housed and fed those who traveled to join the cause. The activism opened the door; the organizing built the hallway, the rooms, the foundation.

When we forget the organizing, our activism becomes a gesture. When we forget the activism, our organizing becomes a meeting that never leads to action. We need both.

Our Calling as Community Members

I write this not as an academic, but as a pastor who has sat with families after the rally ended and asked, “What now?” That question—what now—is where organizing begins.

If you feel called to justice work, I encourage you to ask yourself honestly: Am I drawn to the march, or am I willing to knock on doors? Am I motivated by the crowd’s energy, or by the quiet discipline of building relationships that last? Both are needed. But know which one you are doing, and do not mistake one for the other.

The most resilient communities I know are the ones that have learned to organize. They have built tenant councils, neighborhood associations, and faith-based coalitions that can respond to crisis—but also prevent it. They have leaders at every level, not just at the front of the room. They argue, they struggle, they disagree. But they stay at the table.

That is the work. That is the slow, unglamorous, beautiful work of building a community that does not just resist harm, but creates the conditions for flourishing. And it begins with a single question, asked across a kitchen table: What do you care about enough to act on?

Frequently Asked Questions

Can someone be both an activist and a community organizer?

Absolutely. Many people move between both roles. The key is understanding which role a given moment requires. A rally calls for activist energy—visibility, urgency, moral clarity. The day after the rally calls for organizer discipline—follow-up conversations, leadership development, strategic planning. The problems arise when we try to use activist tools for organizer work, or when we expect organizing to produce the immediate public impact that activism can generate.

Why does community organizing take so long?

Because trust cannot be rushed. Organizing depends on real relationships between real people—people who have been hurt, who have reason to be suspicious, who have seen promises broken. Building that trust means showing up consistently, listening more than speaking, and proving over time that you mean what you say. This work cannot be accelerated by social media or good intentions alone. It moves at the speed of human connection.

What if my community only knows activism? How do we begin organizing?

Start with conversations. Not meetings with agendas—conversations. Sit with people one at a time. Ask about their lives, their worries, their hopes. Take notes. Remember what they tell you. Then bring those people together around what they share. Organizing begins when someone says, “You are not alone in this, and together we can do something about it.” You do not need a grant or a nonprofit. You need a kitchen table, a few neighbors, and the willingness to listen.

Every time another tragedy hits the news, the same cycle begins. People demand accountability. Officials promise reform. Commissions are formed, policies rewritten, body cameras distributed. And then we wait for the next headline. I have been a pastor in this neighborhood for nineteen years, and I can tell you: better policing, while necessary, will never be enough on its own. Not because police cannot improve—they can and they must—but because the problems we ask policing to solve are not problems that policing can solve.

The Limits of Reform

I want to be clear about something: I am not opposed to police reform. When officers abuse their authority, when patterns of discrimination reveal themselves, when accountability fails—these things demand response. Our brothers and sisters who have suffered under unjust policing deserve justice. No honest person can argue otherwise.

But reforming policing addresses only what happens after a crisis erupts. It does not ask why the crisis erupted in the first place. It does not ask why young men in my parish feel that the streets hold more promise than the classroom. It does not ask why a mother working two jobs still cannot afford to keep her electricity on. It treats symptoms while the underlying illness goes on.

Think of it this way. If a house has a leaking roof, you can put buckets under the drips, and you should—the buckets matter. But eventually, you have to fix the roof. You have to ask why the roof failed and what it will take to make it sound. Better policing is the bucket. It catches what falls. It does not repair what is broken above.

What Neighborhoods Actually Need

1. Economic Justice That Reaches the Ground

When I walk through the neighborhoods surrounding our parish, I see blocks where the only businesses are liquor stores, payday lenders, and dollar shops selling processed food at inflated prices. I see families paying more for less. I see young people who have never seen a local business owned by someone who looks like them, who speaks their language, who understands their struggles.

According to research from the Brookings Institution, concentrated poverty does not simply mean a lack of money. It means a lack of access—to groceries, to banking, to healthcare, to the networks that help people find work. When we talk about safer neighborhoods, we have to talk about investment that reaches the people who actually live there, not investment that displaces them.

A living wage job is a form of prevention. A grocery store is a form of safety. A community land trust that keeps housing affordable is a kind of security no patrol car can provide.

2. Schools That See Our Children

I visit the local high school twice a month. The counselors are stretched thin—ratios of four hundred students to one counselor are not unusual. Teachers buy supplies from their own salaries. The building itself communicates a message: you are not worth maintaining.

And then we wonder why young people drift. We wonder why gangs offer what institutions do not: belonging, purpose, a place where someone knows your name. The solution is not to send more police to catch them when they fall. The solution is to build something worth staying for.

Schools need funding that matches the challenges their students face. They need mental health professionals, not metal detectors. They need art programs and trade training and after-school activities that give young people a reason to be present rather than a reason to disappear. When a school fails a child, the entire community pays the cost. We usually send that bill to the police department.

3. Mental Health and Healing

Before COVID, our parish ran a support group for men recently released from incarceration. The stories were consistent: trauma that began in childhood, no access to counseling, self-medication with whatever was available, and then the criminal justice system as the only response. Over and over, the same pattern.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that communities of color receive mental health care at significantly lower rates than white communities, while experiencing trauma at higher rates due to systemic inequities. This is not a policing problem. It is a failure of care. When we send armed officers to respond to mental health crises, we have already admitted that we would rather contain suffering than tend to it.

What would it look like to invest in crisis response teams trained in de-escalation and trauma care? What would it mean to have community health workers who know the neighborhood, who speak the language, who can sit with someone in crisis without triggering the chain of events that ends in a jail cell?

Community-Led Solutions Are Not Naive

I have heard the skepticism. That sounds nice, Father, but this is the real world. I understand the doubt. Violence is real. Harm is real. People want immediate protection, and they deserve it.

But community-led solutions are not utopian fantasies. They are practical. Violence interruption programs, like those documented by Cure Violence Global, have reduced shootings in neighborhoods where they operate by thirty to seventy percent. These programs treat violence like a public health epidemic—identifying the sources, interrupting transmission, and changing the conditions that allow it to spread. They work because they are rooted in relationships, not just authority.

When someone from the neighborhood mediates a dispute before it escalates, that is prevention. When a former participant in street life reaches a young person who trusts them because they have walked the same road, that is intervention. These approaches do not replace law enforcement. They reduce the need for it by addressing the causes before the emergency arrives.

The Question We Keep Avoiding

Here is the question that makes people uncomfortable: What are we willing to invest in people before they become statistics?

We know what works. Early childhood education reduces crime. Stable housing reduces crime. Employment reduces crime. Belonging reduces crime. These are not guesses. The evidence has been available for decades. And yet funding continues to flow toward reaction rather than prevention, toward punishment rather than care.

I believe this is ultimately a question of who we think deserves investment. When we say we want safer neighborhoods but refuse to fund the things that actually make neighborhoods safe, we reveal that our priority is containment, not flourishing. We reveal that we believe some communities are problems to be managed rather than people to be supported.

That is a moral judgment, not just a policy failure. And as a pastor, I cannot stay silent about it.

A Different Vision

I dream of neighborhoods where children walk to schools that welcome them, where parents find work that sustains them, where mental health care is as accessible as emergency rooms, where conflict is mediated by people who understand the stakes because they have lived them. I dream of communities where the police are one resource among many, called when truly necessary, trusted because they are part of the neighborhood rather than an occupying force within it.

This vision requires more than better policing. It requires better priorities. It requires the political will to invest in people rather than only in systems that respond to their suffering. It requires all of us—parishioners, neighbors, voters, leaders—to insist that safety means more than the absence of crime. It means the presence of care.

I know this is slow work. I know it does not fit neatly into a press conference or a campaign slogan. But I also know what I have seen in nineteen years: the people who change neighborhoods are not the ones who arrive with authority. They are the ones who arrive with love and stay long enough to prove it.

That is what our neighborhoods need. Not just better policing. Better investment. Better care. Better love.

— Father Tomás Guerrero

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this mean policing reform does not matter?

No. Policing reform is essential. When officers cause harm without accountability, trust erodes and communities suffer. What this article argues is that reform alone is insufficient. We must also address the conditions that lead to crisis—poverty, underfunded schools, lack of mental health care, disinvestment. Both are necessary. One without the other will fail.

How can I support community-led safety programs?

Look for local organizations already doing this work in your area—violence interruption programs, restorative justice initiatives, community mediation centers. Volunteer, donate, and advocate for city funding to support them. Attend city council meetings and ask why the budget allocates more to policing than to housing, education, and health. Your voice in those rooms matters.

What can churches and faith communities do?

Plenty. Churches can host support groups, provide meeting space for community organizing, connect parishioners to resources, and build relationships that cross the lines of race and class that divide our cities. Faith communities can also use their moral authority to challenge elected officials who talk about safety but refuse to fund the things that actually create it. The work begins with presence—showing up, listening, and staying.