PICO affiliates in the San Francisco Bay Area are teaming up to reach out to the region's 387,000 legal permanent residents and encourage them to become citizens and active members in their communities. The PICO Bay Area Citizenship and Civic Participation Campaign is a coordinated effort by seven PICO affiliates to assist legal permanent residents in the process of becoming citizens, and to train them in the skills necessary to effectively participate in public life. The campaign will include 25 citizenship drives in 12 cities in five counties across the region.

On January 20, Congregations Organizing for Renewal (COR) held the first citizenship drive in Hayward, a community paralyzed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids over the past year. Before a crowd of 600 people, COR leaders received strong commitments from members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to work closely with COR to implement their vision of active citizenship and immigrant integration. Afterwards, COR and its allies trained hundreds of immigrants on their civil rights and assisted eligible residents in initiating the process to become citizens. One hundred people initiated the citizenship process at the event.

The goal of the campaign is to develop community-based pathways to citizenship, where eligible residents will go through the citizenship process together in their local schools and congregations.  To accomplish this, PICO Bay Area organizations are forming partnerships with dozens of local educational and legal service providers, as well as engaging new citizens in ongoing community organizing efforts.

Across the country, PICO affiliates are addressing the increasing polarization around the issue of immigration by promoting civic engagement and leadership within immigrant communities, while also actively building bridges between new immigrants and other residents. 

"Today is just the beginning!" declared COR leader Esperanza Alcantar at the event. "PICO Bay Area will not stop until we have helped thousands of people in counties across the Bay Area – from Contra Costa County, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco--to become citizens.  And we won't stop there –we aim to register these folks to vote, so look for these new citizens at the polls!"

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PICO Bay Area is made up of seven congregation-based community organizations in five counties across the Bay Area, including: Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action (BOCA); Congregations Organizing for Renewal (COR); Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization (CCISCO); Oakland Community Organizations (OCO); People Acting in Community Together (PACT-San Jose); Peninsula Interfaith Action (PIA); and the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP).  Collectively, PICO Bay Area has 173 member institutions representing 219,000 families from diverse communities across the region.