Interview conducted by Varrio Voices

Our Story

Latinos United for a New America (LUNA) was founded in San Jose in 2013 by a group of retired Latino labor organizers and social workers. They wanted to use organizing methods they had employed throughout their careers as labor leaders to empower neighborhoods inhabited by immigrants and low-income Latino families.
Our organizing began around March 7th 2013. Around this time organizers were designing and implement a survey campaign that would be conducted in person with the intention of having discussions with community members around what issues were affecting them. A year later the survey results were included in a formal document that was titled: "“We Cannot Accomplish Anything Alone", in it was presented concerns over healthcare, education, jobs and housing. After the completion of this survey, neighbors in the Tropicana-Lanai community began to meet more frequently in house meetings to talk about their concerns and began to plan ways to address them. 

The founders understood that lasting positive change comes to a community when its members have the tools to act effectively on their own behalf. Those tools include understanding the forces that impinge on their quality of life, ability to identify pivotal points of leverage, skill in interacting with and making a case to elected and appointed civic leaders, using the ballot to elect responsive officials, and working with those officials to assure that needed changes occur. LUNA efforts are focused on neighborhoods on the EastSide of San Jose.
To date LUNA has organized in six neighborhoods: Tropicana-Lanai, Santee, Gramercy, Valley Palms, and San Antonio, and Wooster/26th. LUNA organizes by canvassing households to learn individual concerns, holds home meetings to help residents prioritize concerns, trains residents willing to lead, helps residents create neighborhood associations, organize and evaluate actions, and incorporates each new neighborhood association into the LUNA organizational framework. This incorporation into LUNA guarantees that identifying needs, providing leadership, and taking action will remain in the hands of residents themselves. Our hope is that by moving forward like this, we are doing the most globally responsible thing: to liberate our own neighborhoods by empowering visionaries who are building towards long term solutions around housing, immigration, and environmental justice.

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