In addition to expanding its work into a fourth state by the end of 2025, the Rights, Faith & Democracy Collaborative (RFDC) is also deepening its work in two current states by growing the Georgia and New Mexico cohorts. Bold Futures NM, Dream Team NM, and ACLU NM will be officially welcoming Strong Families New Mexico as a fourth cohort member, and Georgia Equality and SisterSong will welcome the Amplify Georgia Collaborative! Learn more about these new partners.
Strong Families New Mexico has a long history of leading reproductive justice work in the state particularly with rural, immigrant and indigenous communities. They have worked closely with RFDC’s current New Mexico partners for many years to expand access to reproductive healthcare in the state including working to launch a community centered reproductive healthcare center, protecting abortion, and ensuring immigrants have greater access to healthcare.
Strong Families’ community organizing work centers around relationship building – meeting people where they’re at and providing them with tools and information. One way the organization has done this is through small gatherings which they ask volunteers to host and invite at least three people they know. Strong Families provides packets with prompts and kitchen table materials for these gatherings, called Chisme (“gossip” in Spanish) sessions, which are aimed at building people power and helping the organization refine how it talks about issues.
“They’re like focus groups but with people hosting and inviting their own people,” said Director of Strategic Partnerships Adriann Barboa. “It’s building our base and expanding to people we might never reach, because they’re inviting their family members and people they work with.”
The first round of these sessions last year focused on dispelling myths about the planned reproductive healthcare center in Las Cruces. This year’s sessions, which just wrapped up, focused on abortion and gender affirming care. Over a two-month period, 17 Chisme sessions were hosted, reaching more than 180 people.
“Our whole purpose was to be able to improve how we talk about issues around gender affirming care, transgender and queer rights, and abortion access,” said Barboa. “It was great to see our leaders hosting those community conversations and filling us in about how those conversations went, where people stood, and what their concerns are. We were able to get really valuable information from mostly rural communities and people that may have never had this conversation before.”
The Amplify Georgia Collaborative convenes the reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in Georgia to coordinate on strategy, design public education efforts, and support base building. Current grantees SisterSong and Georgia Equality were excited to add Amplify Georgia to the Georgia grantee cohort, because they saw them as a true partner, convener, and strong advocate for queer liberation, reproductive freedom and inclusive faith organizing. The cohort was especially impressed by Amplify Georgia’s work to advocate for gender affirming care last year and are excited to formally partner with them.
“We’re really excited about this cohort,” said Executive Director Danielle Rodriguez. “Now that we have this collaboration with SisterSong and Georgia Equality, we’re able to tap into more people and share how we want to change Georgia into a reproductive justice state. I’ve worked with them numerous times already and know that we’re going to do some great work. We have a town hall coming up. We’re going to do a webinar to talk about the criminalization of pregnant people. We’ve got op-eds and some podcasts.”
Another recent effort from Amplify Georgia is the launch of the Stop Policing Pregnancy website. The site provides education about Georgia’s “pregnancy to prison pipeline” and the ways in which criminalization cuts across every pregnancy experience in the state, which has a six-week abortion ban. It also offers resources and a language guide and will ultimately feature a robust space for storytelling. Amplify Georgia also created a state and local reproductive justice agenda which is designed to be used by the nine partners in its collaborative and other community organizations to push for policies in their cities.
“Local wins are easier than state wins, and this is also going to help the momentum as folks feel like we’re starting to see some progress,” said Rodriguez.
