Peoples Defense Initiative

The Peoples Defense Initiative is a community-led grassroots organization focused on uplifting and implementing progressive and inclusive policies which promote community engagement and defend human rights. Through direct action organizing, transformative leadership development, advocacy, coalition building, and education, PDI seeks to defend and uplift the voices of marginalized communities by catapulting their leadership directly to positions of public office.Social & economic justice for all people regardless of their gender, socioeconomic background, ability, or immigration status. We are committed to purposeful and radical inclusivity of all people regardless of their sex, gender, class, education, immigration status, sexuality, physical ability, and faith.Since PDIs founding in 2018, our efforts have been largely dedicated to building mass capacity by galvanizing, mobilizing, and educating our community around Tucsons most pressing issues: immigration, poverty, criminalization, and housing insecurity. Its these issues which we have centered in our Sanctuary for All campaign. This multi-year campaign aims to push for policies which ensure that our local government is committed to uplifting and defending all its residents regardless of their immigration or socioeconomic status. Here, our dedicated team has led efforts such as End Stonegarden, Feeding the Hungry is Never a Crime, Rescind Ordinance 11746, Defund TPD, End the GPLETs, Feeding Those Who Feed Us, Extend Eviction Moratorium, and Prop 205 Tucson Families Free and TogetherThis trailblazing work laid the foundation for an incredibly successful year in 2021. Most notably, PDI helped author, launch, and pass Tucsons Fight for $15 The Tucson Minimum Wage Act proposition (Prop 206) in November. The bill won 2-1 at the ballot box and will provide roughly 85,000 Tucsonans with a pay raise as well as establish Tucsons first office of wage enforcement and labor protection. Further, Prop 206 will protect workers in other measurable and material ways: -Prevents employers of misclassifying workers as independent contractors-Prevents employers from shaving off time from a shift. -Provides workers with more stable work hoursPDIs team and base of dedicated volunteers played a key role in qualifying Prop 206 for the ballot, with over 30,000 signatures collected. Here, our team mobilized at least 130 volunteers, completed over 2,200 canvassing shifts, and knocked on almost 40,000 doors with over 246,745 voter impressions made (including texts). Further, in March of 2021, PDI wrote an eviction defense proposal which would provide legal representation to all tenants facing eviction in Pima County. This public pressure campaign was led by PDI and uplifted by a coalition of community partners including some members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. In April, our Tucson Eviction Defense proposal was brought up for a vote and passed with only one Pima County Supervisor (Republican) voting against. This vote led to the founding of Pima Countys Emergency Eviction Legal Services (EELS) office, which is the only one of its kind in Arizona. This office provides FREE legal help to tenants in need of legal advice and representation in eviction cases. Additionally, EELS provides navigators to explain the process and connect tenants with other county and community resources, like rent assistance, help finding a job and much more.Further, in 2021, PDI helped pass the Our Water Tucson resolution. Here, a diverse coalition of community partners came together to demand that the Tucson City Council implement a differential water rate for Tucsons surrounding area. The resolution demanded that revenue collected from this new rate would cancel water bill debt for over 10,000 low income families, expand the Low Income Assistance Program, and invest in climate resiliency. After mobilizing our community with a public pressure campaign, the Tucson City Council passed the Our Water Tucson resolution, unanimously, on June 23rd. The resolution did not go into detail about how the Low Income Assist. Program would be improved, so we will keep organizing to ensure that low income families in Tucson see lower bills, low income families outside city limits see the new rates offset, renters become eligible for assistance, and barriers to enrollment are removed. This was a tremendous winfor climate justice, ecosocialism, and the equitable use of natural resources in our Sonoran Desert. In 2022, we will continue to focus largely on housing and its many intersections with our housing justice program the Tucson Tenants Union which PDI established at the start of 2020. The Tucson Tenants Union was founded to address the alarming housing crisis growing rapidly within our community. At the time of its creation, the number of forcibly displaced families was already staggering with hundreds of evictions taking place every single week. In the wake of this crisis, lack of safe, affordable, and secure housing had become an existential threat for many tenants in Tucson.Since the implementation of this program, PDI has brought together a multi-racial and cross-generational base of community members and tenants that have been directly involved in the planning, building, and implementation of our core values and short term/long term goals. These goals include:-Housing for All: Construct and advance transitional and transformative solutions to the housing crisis to defend and fight for affordable and accessible community-controlled housing, and remove land and housing from markets that put profit before people.-End Displacement: Assert renters rights locally and nationally through organizing mass numbers of renters into tenants unions and mass-resident associations to win collective-negotiations with Landlords, and push for the passing of local, city, and state-wide renters rights legislation to defend against displacement and gentrification.-Educate and Mobilize Communities:Shift popular thought around land and housing to build support for equitable planning of our cities that ensures that the people who live, work, and exist in communities can thrive.-End Criminalization of Houselessness: Dismantle policies that single-out and cast-aside houseless residents and which deepen the criminalization and dehumanization of poverty. -Legal Representation for All Tenants: Guarantee the right to free independent counsel for those facing eviction,while providing community access to legal advice and representation As we move into our 2022 plan, we are in a great position to influence local elections as well as mobilize our base around issue-based campaigns like Become Arizona, Healthcare Rising Arizona, and Justice for All in Pima County. Our small, dedicated team has made great strides in the area of intersectional organizing, coalition work, and infrastructure building. Further, our campaigns have led to measurable and valuable shifts in narrative and local policy. In three short years PDI has done the on-the-ground work to become a local authority on social justice issues such as policing, housing, and poverty. With continued support from MVP, we will have the opportunity to expand our staff which will help sustain/expand our programs. Our issue-based advocacy will play a decisive factor during the 2022 election cycle locally, with so many PDI platform issues on the front line. We are committed to continue building toward a Tucson where everyone can thrive