Temporary Migrants Team hosting a forum with the Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation Director Joe Rubio

Hosted by:

Tuesday 18th November

11:00- 1:15 meeting, 1:15- 2:00 community lunch

St Patricks Cathedral, Parramatta- Cloisters

Goal:

Catholic organisations and leaders leave understanding that community organising is core business
Make the case to catholic organisations and leaders to invest more time and resources into community organising
Leaders across the Alliance with an interest in immigration issues to leave understanding the power of community organising to WIN on these issues
Make the case to migration/refugee orgs or leaders to invest more time and resources into community organising
Uplift the leadership (especially those with lived and living experience as temporary migrants) of the temporary migrants team
Leaders leave with more energy to take action!

Speaker: Joe Rubio

Biography:

Director, West/Southwest Industrial Areas

Foundation

Joe Rubio leads the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation (WSWIAF), a broad-based network that builds power in some of the most politically polarised states in the U.S. Under his leadership, the foundation has delivered tangible wins by turning grassroots pressure into policy change, even in hostile

environments. Alliances in Aotearoa and Australia are connected with the IAF W/SW through the Industrial Areas Foundation.

Some wins of the network under Joe’s leadership:

• Tax reform in Texas (2023): WSWIAF defeated a major corporate tax giveaway program (known as Chapter 313), halving maximum tax abatements and removing “kickbacks” to school districts. This reclaimed public resources for schools. swiaf.org

• Legal / Health Access for Immigrants: California IAF leaders mobilised dozens

of institutions and travelled hundreds of miles to the state capitol to ensure

undocumented immigrants kept access to Medi-Cal, the state health insurance. They successfully restored protections threatened by proposed cuts.

• Housing Rights & Tenant Protections: Through Recognizing the Stranger, tenant leaders (including immigrants) have pressured local governments to crack down on predatory housing practices. Both documented and undocumented residents saw more security in housing during times of crisis.

• Labor & Careers: WSWIAF’s labour market intermediary institutions have moved over 16,000 people out of poverty-level jobs into living wage careers, especially in Texas, Arizona and Louisiana.

• Community Safety & Local Accountability: In San Antonio, WSWIAF-affiliated

groups led campaigns for gun safety including safe storage and local measure

reforms; won commitments from school boards to expand mental health

supports; changed street and road planning when proposals threatened

displacement of low-income residents.

Pope Francis recognizes the work of W/SW

Through the Catholic community lens, Joe Rubio has helped scale a parish-centered organizing strategy that trains immigrant and parish leaders to turn pastoral care into civic power. Recognizing the Stranger—supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the U.S. bishops—has worked with roughly 350 parishes in about 20 dioceses and trained ~4,000 leaders, beginning in Spanish-speaking Hispanic/Latino congregations and intentionally bringing documented and undocumented parishioners together with non-immigrant allies and clergy to address housing, public safety, health

access and drug-related harms. The work is deeply embedded in parish life (listening sessions, small-group formation and leadership mentoring) and was deemed significant enough that W/SW IAF delegations, including Rubio, had extended conversations with Pope Francis in Rome in 2022 and again in 2023–24—encounters the pope framed as encouragement for a “concrete,” grassroots approach to solidarity.

Pope Francis has repeatedly affirmed the work of Recognizing the Stranger as central to Catholic social teaching and solidarity. At a convocation in San Antonio in 2023, where over 300 leaders, clergy, religious, and bishops from 20 dioceses gathered to mark five years of the program, the Pope sent video greetings expressing his “closeness and support” for the work to uplift immigrants and those on the margins. In two 90 minute private meetings in Rome he sat with Joe Rubio and parish leaders from W/SW IAF, listening quietly as they shared stories of community organising for water access in

colonias, defending immigrant rights, and building leadership in parishes. He praised their ministry of listening to the “fatigues and hopes” of people,

stressed that their work is about cultivating “a culture of solidarity,” and encouraged them not to rest on early successes.

https://www.swiaf.org/