Join the new Colorado Clergy Alliance
In the spirit of all of our traditions, which call us to strengthen relationships, act out of love and in solidarity with community, and be a voice for justice and peace, you are invited to join us to meet this moment to cocreate the Colorado Clergy Alliance.
Together, we will stand up for immigrant rights and lives, including clergy who are immigrants, and respond to what is already happening here in Colorado and prepare for the likelihood of an increased presence of ICE in our communities.
What is the Colorado Clergy Alliance?
The Colorado Clergy Alliance will connect faith leaders in Colorado who are ready and willing to be trained to meet our moment in history with nonviolent direct action and nonviolent resistance.
This could include taking direct action in the streets, press conferences where we can name injustices publicly, and standing up to corporations and organizations that are supporting the repression our communities are facing.
What is the Mutual Aid Sanctuary?
We are building a Mutual Aid Sanctuary, a network of interfaith and ecumenical congregations in Metro Denver to support and provide safe, temporary crisis sheltering and care for targeted populations including immigrants, LGBTQ+, those seeking reproductive healthcare, and other populations who become vulnerable.
These are the people who we know are in imminent need of mutual aid. We don’t know what is coming, but we need to prepare by building and strengthening relationships of trust, mutual aid, and diverse action.
We will identify and share our gifts and talents, partner with one another, skill up, act boldly, learn from our mistakes, pivot and adjust, and have each other’s back.
In order to provide mutual protection and care we will develop geographic localized teams of faith communities to respond to localized crises alongside the wider community. When one team is activated in response to a crisis, surrounding teams offer support to build a deep and robust response that cares for everyone involved.
We have a vision, and also, the Mutual Aid Sanctuary will evolve based on its members and partners.
None of us have all the answers. We are here to cocreate and adapt together.
Together we can build a congregational mutual aid network in partnership with nonprofits and community groups already doing mutual aid and advocacy.
We hope this congregational network model can be replicated in other communities.
How did this all start?
It started with a small group of churches who responded immediately to a sheltering crisis in Aurora.
In the months preceding the City of Aurora's closure of the Edge of Lowry apartment complex, families, including young children, living there experienced multiple instances of trauma from criminal activity, ICE raids, inhumane living conditions, impending forced relocation, and national negative media exposure creating an unsafe environment and an immediate need for crisis sheltering.
This small group of churches organized to provide temporary shelter, safe sanctuary, and care while more permanent housing solutions were already in progress.
While largely successful in protecting 40 families and individuals, there were lessons learned. Church leaders wished they had been better prepared, had existing mutual aid relationships, more training, and better ways to reach out for support from other congregations and community volunteers.
If they had the Mutual Aid Sanctuary beforehand, maybe they wouldn’t have burned out in crisis mode, stressed relationships because there wasn’t a common approach to the work, and maybe they would have the support and care they needed to lessen their own trauma of leading a crisis response.
We are building this Mutual Aid Sanctuary because we know we have the people, gifts, talents, resources, agency, and power to cocreate a new way of living out our faith together in the face of violence, fascism, and white supremacy.
What is
Mutual Aid?
Mutual aid cocreates cultures of collective care in relationship with one another. It is a creative rejection of structures of systemic oppression and inequality, paternalism, and supremacy.
Mutual aid is about:
solidarity, not charity
surviving and thriving in community, not struggling alone
meeting basic needs, while also engaging collective analysis, movement building, and liberation.
being responsive in care, not stipulating or conditional
collaborative and consensus-driven, not hierarchical in decision-making
What is Sanctuary?
Sanctuary is a sacred place of refuge, safety, protection, and care open to all.
Sanctuary is:
needed both by those receiving and giving care
as much a spiritual space as a physcial space
a call to people of faith to live out our shared values of love, solidarity, empathy and compassion, hospitality, truth seeking, justice, peacemaking, and more
a call to every person to recognize the holiness of each others being—our intrinsic value as a human. None of us are disposable. None of us without rights. All of us in need of love, care, and liberation.
Inclusive, and also, committed to shared liberation. "We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist." - James Baldwin
Contact Us
Interested in learning more or want to join the Mutual Aid Sanctuary?