Mid Year Report 2024/Reporte de Medio Año
It’s been a busy first half of the year at SWU! Here’s a little of what we’ve been up to January to July.
Organizing School of Justice (OSJ) is our youth internship that works with older youth aged 18-24 who want to learn more about social justice and organizing in their communities. This year we had 14 interns join us! They met 3 times a week for 7 weeks and learned popular education, organizing skills, data collection strategies, and so much more. They also joined the organization at an out of state convening of social justice organizers from around the globe. There they got hands on networking and organizing skills as well as the chance to learn organizing from multiple different backgrounds. Most recently the interns started a canvassing campaign to study and track temperatures around the city. They hope to use this data to get local government to address climate change affecting some of San Antonio’s most disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods. The interns graduated on July 25th.
Círculo de Abuela is a group of of SWU members who are primarily Spanish speaking current and former domestic workers. They meet weekly to learn skills from each other and learn popular education. Currently they are learning embroidery as a feminist act of resistance. The Circulo members made pins from felt and other fabrics to show their support of the Palestinian peoples and their struggle for freedom. If you came to our movie night at Tandem coffeehouse, you had the chance to make your own pin!
Building Updates: Construction on the building that will become our Resiliency and Healing Hub continues. This year windows, roof, elevator, doors, stair case, and framing were completed. In the next month first floor windows, doors, and electrical system will be completed as well as foundation for extension. We are also working with Development Services, Sustainability Office, City Public Service Energy Utility, and San Antonio Water Systems to develop the community center with eco features such as solar panels on roof and acequia water catchment systems in the garden. As we continue to fund-raise to complete Phase One of construction, we have also began the process of creating a cohort to apply for an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant to help with construction costs as well.
Board of Directors Updates: We recently welcomed 5 new members to our board of directors. These new board members are made up of people from the community and were voted on by our member base. We had 52 people cast votes at our 36th anniversary party. The board, staff, and leadership have also been working together for the past few months to update our bylaws from 1993. These new bylaws clarify key timelines for voting on important decisions and some other personnel policies. Currently the board is working on integrating the new members.
SB4 Campaign: SB4 (Senate Bill 4) also known as Operation Lonestar went into affect this year. This bill allows peace officers to stop and ask for ID from anyone who looks like they illegally crossed the border into the US. Essentially this is racial profiling and erodes the rights of citizens and undocumented people alike. Our outreach efforts included several weeks of canvassing and collecting data which we used to host 2 Know Your Rights workshops. We used these workshops to inform our communities of how to handle being stopped and what their rights are as citizens and also as an undocumented person. We also published 2 informative videos (1 in English and 1 in Spanish), a binder with templates and presentation, and a half page booklet with more information. Because this bill ultimately targets Spanish speakers, SWU took efforts to present the info in Spanish and English. This included having translators at our workshops and reaching out to lawyers who were informed on immigration laws.
Civic Engagement: GOTV is our Get Out The Vote campaign. Every year we go door to door and canvass to inform community members about upcoming elections and important topics. Campaign #1: We attempted to contact 24,271 people and talked to 2055 people. 2331 People told us they planned to vote in the next election. Creation of Pocket Know Your Rights & Voter Guides. Campaign #2: Lasted 6 weeks and included 4 canvassers. We ultimately got 150 people to sign up to take action on immigration.
