What We Do
We invite Minnesotans across race, class, gender, faith, and place to step into their power as protagonists who can transform their communities and the systems that shape their lives.
ISAIAH is a community organizing group, which means our work isn’t about speaking on behalf of others — it’s about developing the leadership of everyday people and whole communities to speak for themselves. We believe lasting change happens when people recognize their agency, organize collectively, and act strategically.
By connecting lived experience to collective action and systemic change, we are creating a statewide, multiracial, multifaith movement that reshapes public systems and politics in general.
Our vision is a multiracial democracy, a caring economy, and a thriving planet where every Minnesotan has voice, dignity, and opportunity. In order to get there, we are creating a new civic culture — one where democracy is owned and practiced by the people, not something done to us.
This is not charity.
This is people realizing their power, coming together, and reshaping our collective future.
We develop leaders.
Through one-on-one conversations, community organizing trainings, and leadership pathways, individuals discover their agency and grow into leaders who can develop other leaders.
We build collective vehicles.
We organize groups of people — faith congregations, barbershops, mosques, childcare centers, manufactured home parks, and community networks — into durable vehicles for collective action.
We create shared agendas.
We help leaders surface issues that matter most in their communities and turn them into campaigns that link personal experiences to systemic change. Through conventions and organization-wide gatherings, we bring ISAIAH’s diverse constituencies together around a shared agenda for Minnesota.
We engage with public officials.
We build strong, long-term relationships with public officials based on trust, accountability, and shared leadership. Through these partnerships, we can work side by side to design and advance policies that improve the lives of Minnesotans.
We shift narratives.
We use — and train others in — a research-backed Race Class Gender Narrative strategy that pushes back against divide-and-conquer tactics and brings Minnesotans together across differences to build momentum for collective solutions.