Our work takes various forms: direct grassroots organizing campaigns to make social or political change, education and skill building to develop leadership within our communities, and mass-based civic engagement strategies to build and demonstrate the collective power we have through voting.
SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) was founded in 1980 with a mission to empower the disenfranchised of the southwest to realize gender and racial equity and social and economic justice. SWOP’s work is built on a foundation of community organizing and mobilization, which means that affected people will continue to identify problems, solutions, and strategies in conjunction with our organizers. Success to us looks like increased community involvement and control over the decision making that affects them. SWOP organizes in low-income communities to develop leaders and solutions, building around identities of workers, healers, educators, growers, families and children. SWOP’s four core issue areas are environmental health and justice in low income communities of color, youth rights with a focus on leadership development, gender justice with a focus on feminisms, and food justice, security and systems throughout New Mexico. We place an emphasis on leadership development with youth organizers from the barrio. Part of the strategic vision of the organization is to invest in our young people, and we are dedicated to an intergenerational approach to community organizing.
211 10th St SW