Bay Rising is a growing alliance of community-led organizations across the Bay Area that knows we have the power to become co-creators of our future alongside our elected officials.
People living in the Bay Area suffer from some of the highest levels of income inequality in the country because rapidly growing corporate interests in the region are putting up barriers to our community political power. They are using what we look like and what’s in our wallets to divide us. In order to address displacement, environmental justice, or any other issue in one city, we have to be on the same page about what the political economy looks like across the region.
Today, certain corporations are offering fewer and fewer jobs that let us earn enough to make ends meet, and attacking our right to join together in a union of working people. That, combined with their contributions to skyrocketing rents and living expenses in the Bay, is threatening to push hundreds of thousands of people out of the region, especially people of color, immigrants, and young people. These shifts threaten to destroy the Bay Area’s progressive strongholds, particularly in communities of color.
We cannot rely on the federal government to protect our communities. We must fight for strong local measures that are coordinated across the Bay Area region. That’s why Bay Rising offers a powerful model: we build power across the region to win community-driven governance centered on racial, economic and environmental justice.
Three local alliances anchor Bay Rising: Oakland Rising, San Francisco Rising and Silicon Valley Rising. Grassroots, community groups that organize communities of color, led by people of color, drive each of our local anchors. Our collective constituencies include tens of thousands of low-income and working-class immigrant, Black, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities. Together, we support each other to increase voter turnout within our communities, educate voters, build the capacity to run electoral campaigns, and develop local leaders.
As we grow beyond our core counties of Alameda, San Francisco, and Santa Clara, we are supporting emerging and existing base-building groups that represent communities of color and working-class people in additional counties. We intend to build a network of alignment and mutual support around the nine Bay Area counties.
Interested in partnering with us? Get in touch.
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“When I think about Bay Rising, I think about… working people and people of color leading their communities—and making sure that regardless of whether you live in Oakland, San Jose, or Mountain View, that you are represented and that you are a part of leading Silicon Valley and leading the Bay Area.” – María Noel Fernandez, Deputy Director, Working Partnerships USA, anchor of Silicon Valley Rising