By now it is a cliché to say that 2020 has been a year like no other. Back in March, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on VIP's organizing was at first impossible to comprehend. The organizing we do is built on face-to-face conversations and deep attention to relationships, how could tools like Zoom replace that personal touch?  But, impressively, you all, the VIP leaders, adapted and forged ahead, responding to the pandemic and so many other challenges of 2020.

Valley Interfaith Project and Arizona Interfaith Network Statement
on Unwarranted Electoral Provocation

Nov 5, 2020

The Arizona Interfaith Network strongly denounces last evening’s attempt to interfere with the ballot counting in Phoenix and calls upon all candidates and public officials to do likewise.  We must allow our election officials to do their job to tabulate the vote and ensure that every vote is counted. Partisanship and extremism must not contaminate the tabulation process.

Valley Interfaith Project and Arizona Interfaith Network leaders have been in conversations with the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) and Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS) since the Spring, urging them to protect prison staff, inmates, and their families during the COVID-19 crisis.

Excerpts from Arizona Daily Star,  8/31/2020:

A late-July spike in Pima County COVID-19 cases shown on the Arizona Department of Health COVID-19 webpage... [on] July 30 shows 642 cases, the highest number of cases by far that month.

On July 2, Barbara Hudson died in the San Carlos Unit in Perryville Women’s Prison in Goodyear. Before her death, she sought medical care for shortness of breath and chest pain, said Kim Crecca, convenor of the Diocesan Prison Ministry, who has volunteered at Perryville and communicates often with prisoners.

Crecca is part of the Arizona Interfaith Network, a group of faith-based leaders across the state that organizes people for social and economic improvement.

“We feel that her death is a rallying cry, not only to help with the release of inmates as possible but also about the underlying conditions there that make them really vulnerable to the virus,” Crecca said.