Kathryn Sears
Tired of hearing the Inland Empire reduced to crime, homelessness and warehouses, three community-led nonprofits have launched the Our IE campaign, using polling, canvassing, billboards and roughly 900,000 digital ad impressions to shift how residents see their 49-city region — and their power to change it.
The campaign brings together Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE), Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IC4IJ) and Starting Over Inc., a Riverside-based organization led by formerly incarcerated people. The three groups teamed up after attending a narrative change convening in Long Beach as part of a Million Voters Project grant and its MVP Echoes Academy, deciding to build a regional effort focused squarely on how people talk and think about the Inland Empire.
“Our participation in this, Our IE, is really to combat the negativity that circles around San Bernardino, Riverside counties, the totality of the Inland Empire,” said Stanette Dixon, civic engagement project manager at COPE. “Knowing that there are resources here, there are services here, there is a community here and advocacy here, we wanted to just be part of shifting that narrative for folks so they could see the beauty and the things that we get to experience every day.”
Dixon said San Bernardino, the city that shares its name with the county, often shoulders the brunt of those stereotypes while receiving less funding than surrounding communities.
“When people think of San Bernardino, they think of the crime, the gun violence, the drugs, the homelessness, the lack of community and things to do,” she said. “People are always driving to L.A. or somewhere else to find things to do, and we have a plethora of greatness here.”
COPE civic engagement coordinator Tamez Nolley said part of the work is reminding people just how vast and varied the region really is.
Nolley said part of the work is simply helping residents grasp the scale of the region. “We actually found out that it was 49 cities,” he said, “and we want people to know how big it is and how many positive resources are available.”
To test messages and better understand how residents feel about their communities and their political power, the Our IE partners worked with the MVP Echoes Academy to conduct large-scale polling.
“We got the opportunity to do some polling,” said Emma Lee, media and communications specialist at Starting Over Inc. “We did see that in the IE, compared to the average California voter, people in the IE were more likely to feel that they have less of a say, less of an impact when they vote. They’re less likely to think that their voice matters.”
Dixon later clarified that, with support from the academy, the coalition reached about 90,000 residents between August and October 2025 through phone banking, door-to-door canvassing and outreach at community events such as Black August and gatherings hosted by the Inland Region Reentry Collaborative.
“We collected stories from the phone banking and the canvassing to ask folks why they love living in the Inland Empire or some positive things about living in the Inland Empire,” Dixon said. “We did capture a couple of stories and quotes from people sharing some positive lights on it.”
At the same time, she said, many respondents said they had moved from places such as Los Angeles County for economic reasons yet “don’t feel like there is funding here” or feel unsupported by local systems.
Nolley said the phone banking revealed both challenges and nostalgia.
“We were just trying to uplift positivity,” he said. “We’re not a bill collector. We’re not trying to sell you anything. Once we say what we’re calling for, a lot of people just sparked their childhood memories… where they used to attend the same festival. So it’s like, we do need to bring that back.”
Some callers shared frustrations, he added, and organizers pushed them to think about solutions. “Even like that, some people did have some negative things to say,” Nolley said. “Then we would ask them, ‘Well, do you have a solution to that?’”
When residents talked about what they love, Nolley said they often mentioned longstanding community events. “A lot of the positive feedback was bringing the community back,” he said, recalling Route 66 activities and weekly talent shows downtown. “Just sharing and connecting resources… to bring back a sense of community”
Dixon said people also uplifted “the Black History Parade we used to do in San Bernardino, the farmers markets throughout Redlands and Riverside, the Lavender Festival, the seasonal events that take place throughout Riverside and San Bernardino.”
On top of conversations, the campaign is betting big on visuals and digital media.
IC4IJ multimedia lead Daniel Reyes designed the Our IE logo and the “swag” — T-shirts and other items organizers wear and hand out at events.
“As far as the logo, I think we wanted it to be something bold and easy on the eyes,” Reyes said. He added a silhouette of the Inland Empire and a tagline suggested by the group: “Beauty in our fight.”
“Our efforts, they are to fight for,” Reyes said. “We want to emphasize that there is beauty in the region. There’s a reason to fight through it.”
Billboards with campaign messages have gone up in Riverside, Fontana, Rialto and near San Bernardino, driving people to the website at our-ie.com. Digital ads across Facebook, Instagram and Nextdoor are amplifying that message even further.
“On my end, I’ve been running the digital ads… and we’ve reached 900,000 people at this point,” Lee said. She said the campaign targets people who live in the Inland Empire, and in particular a segment described as “secure suburbanites” — residents who are expected to be more politically active but “can be tougher on crime,” and whom the group hopes to reach with a different message.
“Some messaging I’ve really been leaning into is, ‘We love it, so we fight for it,’” Lee said. The ads ask questions such as “What do you think of the IE?” and declare “We’re proud to live in the IE. Are you?”
Not every comment has been flattering — “I think someone just wrote, ‘stinky,’” she said — but organizers see the engagement as an opportunity to invite people into a different vision of the region “that you can be really proud to live in.”
The campaign has also intersected with more traditional civic engagement. Ahead of the Nov. 4 special election on Proposition 50, the Our IE team focused on voter education in Bloomington, Rialto, Fontana and San Bernardino, knocking on doors to explain the measure and flag the unusual election date.
“We canvassed, but we really just did voter education,” Dixon said. “We wanted people to know that there was a special election going on… so people could vote on their values.” She said some residents had seen texts and commercials, while others “did not know that there was a special election.”
Nolley recalled that on one of the final days of canvassing, the last person he spoke with “didn’t know” about the election. “He needed the information,” Nolley said, adding that the encounter “just stapled everything” and showed “it was much needed for everybody to know what’s going on.”
Only after building this shared project do the organizers circle back to their home missions.
Dixon described COPE as an Inland Empire–based, faith-rooted group founded “back in the 2000s by a core group of pastors,” with a main focus “to address mass incarceration and to reduce that mass incarceration.” She said the organization works through multiple pillars, including education, faith organizing, “justice transformation,” housing and civic engagement.
Reyes said IC4IJ’s work centers on immigrant communities in the region. “Our goal is to serve the immigrant communities in the Inland region,” he said. “We do it through policy advocacy, community organizing and… breaking down information for folks and making it more digestible, more accessible.” He pushed back against social media narratives that depict immigrants as “parasites” or criminals, noting that the coalition’s own staff is “mixed status… from all backgrounds.”
Lee said Starting Over Inc. is “formally incarcerated-led” and focuses on transitional housing and reentry services for people coming home from prisons and jails, while organizing around issues such as family separation, second-chance hiring and sheriff oversight. She argued that massive law enforcement budgets and lawsuit payouts are crowding out investments in housing, childcare and public health, and that “divisive and hateful” rhetoric is “turning our neighbors against each other.”
For all three organizations, Our IE has become a shared vehicle to connect those issues and constituencies.
“This was a really great starting point for us to collaborate,” Dixon said. “Bringing joy back during this climate has been helpful — just giving people something to celebrate, a reminder of gratitude and happiness in the community where they live, and reminding folks that their voice matters.”
Nolley said the campaign is just getting started and credited the Million Voters Project for helping launch it. “I would just like to give a shout out to MVP for bringing this together,” he said. “That was the starting point of it, and I’m just happy to be a part of the movement.”
To learn more, visit our-ie.com.
Kathryn is the main contributor to the quiz section of LaDailyGazette.com. If you have an idea for a quiz, let us know.