Sacramento ACT is the leaven in life for families determined to make their neighborhoods safe, reform outdated school programs and provide health care to the marginalized.

The North Valley Sponsoring Committee is empowering Latino immigrants and other low- income families to become U.S. citizens, as well as civic leaders who can bring about economic and social change in their communities.

Now the two community organizing groups are joining forces in a diocesan-wide community organizing strategy that encourages parishioners to put their faith into action.

The collaboration occurred after the North Valley Sponsoring Committee, formerly a part of the Industrial Areas Formation community organizing network, began the process in July 2003 of joining with Sacramento ACT as an affiliate of PICO, the Pacific Institute for Community Organization network.

“When we looked at the Sacramento situation some years back, we recognized ACT was doing excellent work with Hmong immigrants and other people we were not working with at SVOC,” said Uli Schmidt-Culp, a former leader in SVOC who currently serves as an organizer with the PICO California Project. “It looked to us that we needed to establish a dynamic collaborative relationship rather than an opposing posture.”

On April 25 of this year, ACT and NVSC members came together for a community action meeting at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Sacramento and made a formal commitment to work together.

Gloria Hernandez said pooling the talents of the two organizing groups will improve the quality of life for working families in a more broad-based way. She has been an ACT leader since 1995 and is currently the community organizing group’s director.

“What ACT can bring to the table is we are truly diverse, with a lot of Latino, African-American, and Hmong families,” she said. “One group can never win for themselves without support from the other community.”

Hernandez’s comment was shaped in part by her experience as an organizer working with Latinos at St. Joseph Parish to clean up a very poor, blighted north Sacramento neighborhood.

“These are hard-working folks very committed to their kids, their church and school, and parents who walked their kids to school every day because of the danger,” Hernandez said.

The heart of the problem was an empty field that served as a dumping ground filled with broken beer bottles and trash.

ACT organizers worked with Latino and Hmong families in the neighborhood who came together with a plan to transform the field into a multicultural garden. After obtaining an agreement to use the field, neighborhood families teamed up to plant 56 vegetable gardens.

“Community leaders stood together, created an alliance and then took it to another level,” said ACT organizer Leslie Adorno. “Everyone congregates around their lots — kids work side by side. You see generations coming together to share their harvest.”

Hernandez sees the continued success of this project benefiting from North Valley’s broad base of organizers throughout the Latino community.

North Valley community organizers have also made a commitment to making the process of seeking U.S. citizenship easier.

Alberto Velazquez, lead organizer of the North Valley Sponsoring Committee, said with a waiting list of more than 400 people seeking citizenship, there is more than enough work for everyone.

“We’re all working for needy people,” he said.

He explained that Sacramento-based community organizers have helped applicants for citizenship to complete the interview and examination process at parishes including Holy Cross in West Sacramento, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Joseph, St. Peter and St. Anne in Sacramento, and St. Joseph Parish in Elk Grove.

Fruits of this approach led to the naturalization on July 9 in Sacramento of 87 people. Among them was Verbum Dei Father Rodolfo Llamas, co-pastor of All Hallows and St. Peter Parishes in Sacramento.

Father Llamas said it was Velazquez who encouraged him to actively pursue citizenship. “I’m here, part of the family, and belong more to the family now,” said Father Llamas, who joked that he had prepared one answer in advance of the naturalization ceremony. “If I’m asked if I’m ready to take up arms, I’ll say no. My weapon is the work of God, and I will do much for that.”

With the arrival this summer of 1,500 Hmong refugees in the Sacramento area, ACT and North Valley organizers will find much work ahead in the area of immigration issues.

On July 1, statewide PICO groups met with representatives from several California dioceses at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in Sacramento to discuss a joint faithful citizenship project. The pilot project will involve 100 churches, including 10 parishes in the Sacramento Diocese, who will be actively involved in voter education and registration.

Father Michael Kiernan, vicar for social services for the diocese, is currently working with North Valley and ACT leaders to identify parishes for this project.

Msgr. James Church, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Sacramento, believes that collaboration in community organizing is a winning proposition. He is one of the priests who took a leadership role in bringing ACT to the diocese 12 years ago.

“It is based on bringing people together, giving them power and confidence so they can do something about problems themselves and in the process become real leaders,” Msgr. Church said.

Schmidt-Culp said the collaboration of North Valley and ACT as partners in the PICO network promises “to build a broader vision” throughout the diocese’s 20-county geographic area.

“It will be worthwhile to create an infrastructure to accommodate people in outlying areas who have a feeling of being left behind,” Schmidt-Culp said.

To that end, Velazquez is currently working with Father Manuel Soria, pastor of St. Isidore Parish in Yuba City, and Father Robert Copsey, pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Marysville, in doing leadership training.

In the Redding area, Jim Keddy, former executive director of ACT and current director of the PICO California Project, has met with clergy and religious leaders to explore the possibility of starting a local PICO group to add to the community organizing network.

“We hope to create a positive synergy in the diocese in a much broader way,” he said. “People in the northern part of the state will have a voice within their own community.”

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