Perhaps one of the most consistently present grassroots organizations at the Arizona State Capitol is LUCHA. 

Living United for Change in Arizona is a statewide organization that advocates for minority communities and fights for social, racial and economic transformation. Currently, the organization is 90% women, about 70% LGBTQIA+ and has many members that are from the multi-racial working class. The organization has chapters in Phoenix, Maricopa County, Tucson and the Douglas area. 

Alejandra Gomez, LUCHA’s executive director, has led the grassroots organization through turbulent legislative sessions and community building through social, economic and government changes. 

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for style and clarity. 

Tell me about LUCHA. Beyond legislative efforts, what else does it do?

LUCHA is a space where we dream with our members, and those dreams become reality because our members are now learning how to share their story. It’s a really important space where we’re learning how to be visible, learning how to organize, and learning how to build power.

We are teaching our organizers to teach other folks out in the community how to organize with their neighbors, with their family members, with their friends, and that for us is how you actually build power.

We also work on making sure that communities are supported with naturalization with DACA assistance. We do an entrepreneur program for folks that want to learn how to start a business and run it. We also do voter registration work. We do a significant amount of work that is engaging in electoral work, so we scale very large during elections to make sure that we are helping Democrats win in the state. 

We also engage in accountability, both against Republicans and to have really thoughtful conversations with Democrats if we’re not seeing eye to eye, and so that’s what we consider co-governance. 

LUCHA was one of the most consistently present grassroots groups down at the Capitol this year. Why is it important to make yourselves known down there?

I started organizing against Sheriff Arpaio in 2009. That fight quickly led to having to be present at the state Legislature because (former Governor) Jan Brewer enacted Senate Bill 1070. After 2010, it was important to make sure that if we were to stop future bills like SB 1070 and so many more that have come up, we needed to build a blueprint inside of the Legislature. All paths led back to the Legislature, from budget to policies to the previous experiences of really bad pieces of legislation that were enacted in the state. It really was important for us to engage in the power arena at the Legislature.

Several people, including members of LUCHA, got trespassed from the Capitol this session. How did you interpret that?  

People that are of the multiracial working class, people that look Latino in particular, every single person that was trespassed were Latinos, are not welcome. That’s the message that Republicans want to send. Republicans in particular are trying to intimidate our communities, and that is part of the larger federal charge that Republicans in this state have really been trying to move. 

The misinformation and disinformation around the safety of our elections, also sending a message that certain people are trying to affect the outcome of elections, that Latinos are all undocumented, and that we’re stealing elections or voting fraudulently. This is time and again what we keep hearing from MAGA Republicans, and despite the fact that nine of our staff got trespassed, our members were in the chambers full force. You also saw members from the faith community in the chambers full force, and we were able to stop the bill. No matter how much MAGA Republicans try to stop, intimidate or create narratives about our community, our community is there. They’re going to fight, they’re not intimidated and they’re also going to win.

Do you think people getting trespassed will affect people speaking out next year? 

Oh my gosh, no. I think it’s probably going to double the amount of people that are ready to go to the Legislature. People felt so fired up after that. We had a debrief with our members and they were so energized by the fact that they hear so many negative comments about everyday people, about Latinos, about immigrants. When we fight together, we win together. 

Now our organizing has been supercharged with so many more people, because they’re learning how to build power in places in their neighborhoods, and then bringing those neighbors out to fights like this at the Legislature, but also fights at the Board of Supervisors, where we’re also now having to weigh in on a lot of the misinformation and disinformation and hate messaging that’s coming from our Maricopa County Elections Administrator — and communities are not backing down.

What are the biggest wins from the Legislature this session? 

The most significant win was the data center three-year moratorium (on tax exemptions). From all of our members across the state, data centers were a top issue for our communities. Our policy team, which are incredible young women that are leading the efforts down at the Legislature, they drafted policy with legislators to be able to do a full tax repeal. We didn’t win that, so the effort continues on the fight against the corporate welfare that data centers receive. 

But for now we have one of the most progressive wins in the country, and hopefully now it claws back $57 million for Arizona taxpayers that now can go back to what we say we don’t have money for: schools, utilities, housing and healthcare. 

I also really want to mention the ICE at the polls bill, which was an incredibly draconian law. We have seen this kind of intimidation and pressure before from legislators on the Republican side that want to harm the democratic process, that want to intimidate a segment of the community that are immigrants. 

When we engaged in that fight with community partners that are part of the People First Economy Coalition, we won it … that was the ability to work directly with Democrats, our community showing up in droves to the Legislature and not leaving until their voices were heard. 

What were the biggest losses?

We were trying to weigh in on so many fronts, and one of the biggest losses I think for us is definitely some of the corporate giveaways that still happened, the attacking of voting rights that also made it through, and then the targeting of vulnerable communities. We still have an affordability crisis, and so that is something that MAGA Republicans continue to ignore and also try to stifle the voice of the community. They try to stop people from testifying, they try to stop people in the middle of testimony from sharing the fact that they can’t pay utilities, that they’re having challenges with their rent or food assistance, so there is no humanity from MAGA Republicans at the Legislature. It is so important for community members right now to get involved, because we need those voices more than ever.

What keeps you going during these times? 

The fact that young people, like Stephanie and Lena, our political director and our policy director, are now really leading the charge at the Legislature with people like Dee, who is a grandmother of five and lives in Mesa, and she is out there making sure that legislators hear that she’s struggling, and that she expects policymakers to be able to deliver for her. People like Monica, who is fighting for murdered and Indigenous women. Those stories, these leaders, our community, and seeing how energized they are, they give me fortitude.

On elections?

This year LUCHA is going to knock on 850,000 doors. Those 850,000 doors are people, our stories, our folks that we’re inviting in to exercise their most fundamental right, which is their right to vote. The hope is that these are people that are also going to fight during the next legislative session, and so these are the people that are “surround sound” during an election and into the moment that we have to turn into advocates at the Legislature. 

It’s really important for us to create the continuation of the work, and so LUCHA, for these 12 years, has been really working on ensuring that we listen, and so through the LUCHA Listens process, which now also we call Cupcakes and Taxes, and then we also have Money Talks. The idea is that we’re both providing education, but that we’re also learning, and that we’re working with legislators to understand that everyday people have the solutions, and that everyday people pay taxes. 

When we’re saying that there is no money or that we’re at a deficit, this moratorium on data center tax incentives shows that Arizona actually is not broke, it’s being robbed. There is an Arizona we deserve, and we’re gonna fight for it.