#JOINING HANDS INTERFAITH PROFESSIONAL#

You are welcome to join us! About Our Name We offer trainings, education and opportunities for action for everyday people to develop their leadership ability, and we help engage them in a larger social movement for racial justice and human rights. We provide opportunities for people of faith to engage in public life - both those who are directly impacted by racism, poverty, discrimination and criminalization, and those who are allies. We also promote greater accountability by law enforcement. Our “Justice not Jails” program in Los Angeles works to divest resources from jails to investment in effective alternatives. We have created a network of “Beyond Bars” congregations committed to welcoming home formerly incarcerated persons and advocating for criminal justice reform. Currently, the focus of our work is in Los Angeles, home to the world’s largest jail system. We engage communities of faith to transform and dismantle the mass criminalization of people of color. What kind of work are we doing around Mass Incarceration? We promote and nurture the leadership of directly impacted immigrants and faith allies to stand up for human rights and the dignity of all people.

#JOINING HANDS INTERFAITH PROFESSIONAL#

And we bring the voices of faith leaders – both lay and professional – immigrant and non-immigrant – to coalition efforts that advocate for fair and compassionate immigration policies. We host regular prayer vigils at immigration detention centers to make visible the humanity of those detained. We train teams of volunteers to support and accompany people who are in detention or who have to attend frightening immigration hearings or begin their life as newcomers to this country. We help educate and guide people congregations to become sanctuary congregations who can accompany, shelter, and advocate for people threatened by deportation. We organize people of faith to protect the rights, dignity and well-being of immigrants. In the last two years, we trained 1,500 people of faith to take leadership roles, engaged 140 congregations and partner organizations, and reached more than 35,000 people with a message of hope, love and resilience. Today, we are a statewide California organization that connects clergy and people of faith to the work of social justice in Los Angeles County, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Inland Valleys. We work to make the criminal justice system more just, and the immigration system more fair and humane. Our predecessor organizations were Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice of California, which supported unions, worker centers and low-wage workers, and the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. We adopted our current name in 2015, but we grew out of a congregation-based movement for social justice that began in California in the 1990s. We bring a faith voice to social movement coalitions, providing a compassionate religious perspective amidst the clamor of angry political actors.

Working at the intersection of spirituality and social movements, we mobilize congregations to take a stand on issues of social justice like immigration and mass incarceration, and we engage people of faith to develop their own leadership so they can stand up against racism, discrimination and the political challenges of the day. We defend the humanity of the immigrant and fight for the rights of the incarcerated. Love has no walls.įor more than twenty years, the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity has been joining hands with people of faith to act on these core beliefs.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, the Baháʼí faith and many others share a central commitment to the sacredness of every person.

Joining hands interfaith