Neighborhoods Now! graduate Katrina Mendoza Garcia's story demonstrates how community leadership and organizing can transform individuals and communities
When Katrina Mendoza Garcia joined the board of the West Side Community Organization (WSCO) in 2018, she couldn’t have predicted how it would shape not only her future but the landscape of tenant rights in Saint Paul. Shortly after joining the board, she was selected to participate in Neighborhoods Now!, a project of CURA’s Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing (NLO) program. The program creates spaces where community organizers at various experience levels can share and learn organizing skills together.
“Neighborhoods Now! was the first learning space I entered as an organizer,” Mendoza Garcia reflected. “It felt like an investment in my growth and also an investment in my reach.”
What distinguished the program for her was its collaborative approach. “All of us were joining at different levels of knowledge around organizing. It was really helpful being on that journey together, strengthening and deepening our connection with each other.”
From Training to Transformative Action
The skills Mendoza Garcia developed through Neighborhoods Now! directly translated to concrete community organizing. In 2022, now in a staff leadership role at WSCO, Katrina helped build a strong team of organizers to deepen and expand the organization’s work on issues of housing justice, equitable development, and community care. Organizers Mayra Avila (Neighborhoods Now! Spring 2023) and Joshua Toor (Neighborhoods Now! Spring 2022) worked with neighborhood residents and leaders to conceptualize and establish the West Side Tenants Union, creating a powerful platform for neighborhood renters to share experiences, combat landlord abuses, and assert their rights.
This groundbreaking work didn’t happen in isolation. Mendoza Garcia credits the “continuous support, coaching, and mentoring from Ned Wik Moore and Ishmail Malik Holt-Shabazz,” NLO’s Program Directors. Their guidance exemplified CURA’s commitment to partnership, collective learning, and community leadership—values embedded in the Neighborhoods Now! approach.
“This was all a direct result of the work and the skills that we learned in Neighborhoods Now!,” she emphasized. “Being able to send our leaders there—it was a model for us.”
Building Lasting Networks
The connections formed through Neighborhoods Now! have proven invaluable for alumni like Mendoza Garcia. These relationships transcend individual organizations and campaigns, creating a robust support system of like-minded organizers across the Twin Cities.
Mendoza Garcia has maintained strong ties with the program, serving as a graduation speaker, guest trainer and participating in the planning for the inaugural Neighborhoods Next! Summit in 2024, NLO’s new initiative for program alumni.
“You build deep relationships with other folks who then are your allies across the state, and you can lean on those folks to help move the campaigns that you’re working on,” she explained. “It’s a blessing—I cannot think of another word to describe it.”
Resilience and Healing through Organizing
Perhaps most poignantly, Mendoza Garcia found that organizing skills served her during the profound personal tragedy. Following the murder of her son, Gabe, she applied what she had learned about power mapping to seek answers and demand justice.
“The skills I learned through Neighborhoods Now!, they became a part of who I am, and then I was able to transfer those skills in all these different areas of my life,” she said. Her organizing background enabled her to coordinate phone and email campaigns targeting local officials and to mobilize community members, spread flyers, and conduct door-knocking efforts.
The Lasting Impacts of Community Leadership
Mendoza Garcia's story illustrates how investing in community leadership creates a far-reaching impact. From her initial experience with Neighborhoods Now! to the present, her journey demonstrates how equipped community members can transform neighborhoods.
“The program is transformational, both professionally and personally,” she concluded.
Continuing the Journey: New Ventures in Community Building
Katrina Mendoza Garcia left WSCO in the summer of 2024 to pursue new avenues for community impact. Today, she focuses on launching The Blue House (TBH), an organization born from her personal experience with tragedy.
The Blue House’s mission is to provide “a compassionate sanctuary for those suffering from the sudden loss of a loved one to violence.” Through peer-led advocacy, the organization supports people navigating complex systems during times of overwhelming heartache. Their creative support programs aim to build strength, skills, and permission to cope, fostering resilience, connection, and hope.
story by Cirien Saadeh and Somayeh (Nikoo) Nikoonazari
Ishmail Malik Holt-Shabazz
Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities’ Center for Urban and Regional Affairs and its Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Program as its now Co-Director, Ishmail Malik started as a Union Organizer for the AFL-CIO Wisconsin Statewide and with Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition to promote access, equity, and community benefits of bicycle infrastructure, policy, and engagement.
He also served as the Executive Director and Economic Development Organizer of North Minneapolis’s Harrison Neighborhood Association for 11 years and three years as the City of Saint Paul’s Director of District 6 Planning Council leading in both organizations community engagement projects, racial equitable development initiatives, business development, community benefits agreements, equitable development scorecard strategies, and land use planning. He also served as statewide supervisor for AmeriCorps in the early 2000s.
Also, as of June 10th, 2022, Malik is a registered civil mediator through the Conflict Resolution Center of Minnesota. He received an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts in Human Services with a minor in Sociology from the University of Minnesota Morris. Malik currently sits on the Board of Directors for Twin Cities’ Men’s Center and the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability. He is a former long-standing member on multiple grant review committees; multiple Minneapolis neighborhood association and Saint Paul district council volunteer boards as an officer plus in committee positions; is a 2004 graduate of Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing's Neighborhood Organizing Training Program, and is a past member of the Neighborhood Leadership and Organizing Advisory Committee. He is also a former Emergency Services Director for American Red Cross, Northwest Illinois-Rockford chapter.
Malik is a native of Chicago but has lived in Minnesota for over 28 years. His life has centered on family, spirituality, music, dance, and his love for learning, community capacity building, systems change, reparative racial justice, equitable economic development with local community benefits, and direct service. I'm honored.
Ned Wik Moore
Ned Wik Moore has over 20 years of leadership and organizing experience for racial, social, and economic justice. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Global Studies. In college, he studied liberation theology, social movements, and sustainable development in Cuba, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragaua. During and after college, he also participated in numerous human rights and international solidarity initiatives including serving as a student delegate, human rights and elections observer in Cuba, El Salvador and Colombia.
Ned worked for 7 years to build power in manufactured home neighborhoods in the Twin Cities suburbs and in Greater Minnesota, as a Community Organizer and Organizing Director at All Parks Alliance for Change (APAC). During that time he organized two dozen resident associations across the state to fight against displacement and parklord abuse which led to dozens local ordinances, successful lawsuits to expand and protect residents rights, improved living conditions, affordable housing preservation and cooperative ownership.
From 2009-2011 he was the Campus Minister for Social Justice at St. Catherine University where he led Justice Immersion Trips with students to El Paso and Denver exploring issues of immigration and homelessnes while exploring the connections between faith, social justice and leadership. He also supported and mentored students organizing in response to US militarism and human rights abuses in Latin America, food justice, 2010 Census, racial justice concerns on campus, and connections to critical community-led initiatives off campus.
For over a decade, Ned assumed various leadership roles in faith-based organizing to advance a relentless struggle demanding a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, training hundreds of community leaders, registering Latinx voters, and organizing countless direct actions in Congressional offices in Minnesota, Washington, D.C. and across the country, also conducting raid response and know your rights trainings, and offering direct support to families at risk of deportation.
Ned’s CURA involvement began in 2004 when he graduated from the Twin Cities Training Program for Neighborhood Organizers, later serving as an Advisory Committee member for CURA’s Minnesota Center for Neighborhood Organizing in 2007. He joined CURA staff in 2011, leading initiatives promoting racial equity and community organizing in response to the proposed build out of the regional light rail transit system in partnership with The Alliance and Nexus Community Partners. In partnership with The Alliance, CURA also supported the founding of Equity in Place, a regional wide coalition and diverse group of strategic partners from organizations led by people of color and housing advocacy organizations.
In 2015, Ned and colleague Malik Holt-Shabazz launched Neighborhoods Now! to support and develop neighborhood organizers and leaders in place-based organizing through a racial equity lens. To date, the program has seen nearly 300 graduates, and Ned has continued to coach, support and mentor dozens of program alumni.
Ned lives in Minneapolis, is a parent and spouse, and writes music.
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