LUCHA Is Doing Essential Work For Arizona’s Essential Workers
by David Ford
(All “From The Frontlines Of COVID” articles are summaries based on Zoom calls between Airlift and group leaders. Full audio is available upon request from donors.)
The folks at LUCHA can see that the Covid-19 crisis is a game changer.
Tomas Robles, LUCHA co-director, describes this shift in a recent conversation with Airlift staff:
“The essential workers are the grocery store workers and our farm workers, they are the ones who are feeding America. We’ve really been able to show that undocumented communities, low-wage communities, working family communities are much more necessary than the CEOs! I think you’ll have a lot more individuals, voters, community members who will feel more empathy towards those workers than they did last February.”
Arizona, with its Republican governor and state legislature, has not responded to the changes the crisis has brought. The administration has been reluctant to act in order to reduce health impacts or to provide support to Arizonans who are reeling under the economic effects of the crisis. And Arizona has the resources to do more. The state has a 1.5 billion dollar ‘rainy day fund’ but Governor Ducey, stuck in old ways of thinking, wants to use that for tax cuts.
Fellow co-director, Alejandra Gomez, outlined some of what LUCHA is doing to change the political landscape. “We are doing ‘LUCHA Listens’ work online to understand what resources our communities need at this time and that’s catapulting the legislative fight to really push Governor Ducey.” Like the other grassroots organizations Airlift supports, LUCHA is effective because they pay attention to what the community members say they need.
LUCHA doesn’t just reach out to workers:
“LAZOS is our network of small businesses that focuses on small business owners of color, who traditionally have very little say in landlord-tenant rights, contract procurement for state contracts, or state tax breaks that larger corporations receive. And most of them want to improve things in the community. They were very helpful in defeating the referendum to ban sanctuary cities that the Republican governor attempted to pass this year. It’s really helped to get our small and micro-business owners to see that they have influence that yields power. Mitzi, our LAZOS coordinator has done webinars on how to apply for small business loans during the crisis.”
But of course, LUCHA itself has been hit hard by the crisis. All their work had been door-to-door and now it all has to move online. It’s a complete change of their tactics. You can watch this Facebook Live meeting to see exactly how they are effectively and efficiently pivoting to online grassroots work. We’re so proud of LUCHA.