Veatch grantees are continuing to respond to the coronavirus crisis — one that is disproportionately impacting their own memberships — with resolve, action and love.

If there is anything this crisis has made clear, it's this: the issues Veatch grantees work on — ensuring all those who need health care can get it; providing workers with paid time off to care for themselves or a loved one; protecting access to essential services for immigrants and their children — are needed now more than ever before. This past week, we heard from Veatch grantees who are serving members in new ways while, at the same time, fighting to make sure the historic $2 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress met the needs of everyday people, and not corporations. 

And even though the members, leaders and staff of Veatch grantees are distanced from one another, physically, they are finding ways to organize, virtually, to continue their important work. These days, updates from our nearly 200 grantee organizations come almost hourly, and they remind us that we are stronger together. They are among the many heroes of this time that give us hope — the harder the challenge, the harder they work to make a better world for us all.

Joan Minieri
Executive Director


From left to right: Carol Garbarino, Chair; Joan Minieri, Executive Director; Corinne Hayden, Vice Chair   

Last week, the Gamaliel Network — a network of 44 affiliates across 17 states that brings together a diversity of faith and community leaders to advocate for social change — held a Decarceration Virtual Rally to continue its campaign for reforms in the nation's criminal justice system. During the online demonstration, Rev. Dr. Cornell William Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at Harvard, issued a powerful call to action to protect vulnerable people in our jails, prisons, and detention centers from the spread of the coronavirus. He lifted up a series of steps, developed by the Gamaliel Transformational Justice Team, that need to be taken within the next week in order to protect all of our people from the spread of the coronavirus — including the immediate release of all parole-eligible persons, as well as those scheduled to be released within the next 6 months. 

To help support this Veatch grantee's campaign, call the Capitol Switchboard phone number at (202) 224-3121 or (888) 352-3520 and ask for your Member’s office, and then share the action plan included on the Gamaliel Statement on Decarceration.

Following the success of Veatch grantees and other advocates in places in New York, who successfully achieved a temporary suspension on evictions and mortgage payments, the Right to the City Alliance — a national network fighting the gentrification and displacement of low-income communities of color — is calling for such policies to be extended nationally. The group is working with other national housing advocates — including the Alliance for Housing Justice's Grassroots, Partnership for Working Families, People’s Action, and the Center for Popular Democracy — on achieving a Housing Justice Platform amid the coronavirus crisis.