"Religious organizations regularly perform key bridge building and political activation tasks in the racialized landscape of living wage organizing in the U.S. As bridge builders, they mediate the varied concerns and cultures of labor, immigrant, and black civil rights organizations through ideology translation, relational repair, and inclusion monitoring. Religious organizations' social location and indigenous leadership development also cultivates levels of political participation among poor people and people of darker colors that often outstrip their economic and educational demographics. Drawing on participant observation and national level data on political engagement, this article assesses the strengths and constraints that religious organizations bring to race conscious organizing in the new coalitions of social movement unionism."

Support: Paper