At our 2026 Annual Meeting, Owen Duckworth, Alliance Director of Organizing, led our members in a reflection on our longstanding values as an organization, as well as the principles emerging from our work on the ground. 

• We must build and nurture our organizing ecosystem 
• Our work is multigenerational 
• Our organizations and coalitions are infrastructure for change 
• Power and accountability begin with reciprocal relationships 
• Decentralized and Abundant Leadership 
• Joy, art, culture, creativity, food are essentials to sustaining us 

Members reflections

“I think about grounding ourselves and balancing the perspectives of our past, our present, and our future to help navigate everything that’s going on, to remember how we got here. That ties into the multigenerational work we’re doing. We are not the ones who are going to solve these problems. We are continuing the work done for past generations, for future generations.” —Sabrina Nguyen, Northside Residents Redevelopment Council (pictured, above)

“I think about practice a lot. Practice builds culture, culture builds people, and people build the world. Without practicing what we believe in, we won’t get anywhere. It’s hard to practice in a world that’s eating us up– to practice the deep joy, the deep love, the deep multigenerational work, when you’ve got evals and meetings and agendas. So just slowing down, and practicing can be world-building and looking toward the future.” —Roberto de La Riva, West Side Community Organization

“It is very brave to be joyful in the work that we do. When it feels like the fire is always going, finding joy has sustained me.” —Shana Tomenes, Housing Justice Center (pictured, above)

“I feel gratitude for The Alliance naming the fact that this is multigenerational work. We talk a lot about intergenerational spaces, but really bringing it out to that 30,000-foot level that we really do need to be creating for the future, and looking to our ancestors, in a much broader way than just checking boxes about who’s at the table.” —Beth Gendler, Jewish Community Action

“This is an invitation to be in relationship with us, and amongst us. I would invite you to hold us accountable to these principles, and keep them in mind as you enter our spaces, because its up to us to manifest these principles and I think that intentionality comes from all of us working together to ensure that there is decentralized and abundant leadership, that there is joy, and art and culture. For my peers, other coalitions: how are we holding each other accountable to being in practice with these principles?” —Ricardo Perez, The Alliance

Check out more photos from the Annual Meeting below!