Stop VIA Now!Harrisonburg & Rockingham County, Virginia
Valley Interfaith Action says it speaks for Harrisonburg and Rockingham County families. But look behind the curtain and you'll find a national organizing machine founded on the principles of radical community activist Saul Alinsky, with a well-documented national agenda it rolls out in community after community, from Brooklyn to Baltimore to your backyard.
Read Our Concerns Who Is Behind VIA?Why We're Raising Our Voices
We are your neighbors. We're not against helping families or improving our community. We are against being organized by a national machine and presented with a predetermined agenda as if it were our own idea.
The Bottom Line Up Front VIA Virginia is a local affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a national network founded by Saul Alinsky and dedicated to a well-documented progressive policy agenda including government-run childcare, publicly subsidized transit, living wage mandates, immigrant legal defense funds, criminal justice "reform," and gun control. Right now VIA is starting with childcare and transit, but this is how the IAF playbook works in every city it enters. Our neighbors deserve to know the full picture.
VIA is not a homegrown local group. It is an official affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Metro IAF, a national network of 65+ organizations that trains local organizers, sets tactical playbooks, and advances a consistent national agenda in every community it enters.
The IAF was founded by Saul Alinsky and still operates from his organizing principles: build institutional power through churches, extract "public commitments" from elected officials under pressure, and incrementally advance a broader agenda. These tactics were designed for urban political machines, not rural Virginia counties.
In every city Metro IAF has organized, including Baltimore, DC, New York, and Fairfax County, the agenda expanded after the opening campaigns. Living wage ordinances, immigrant legal defense funds, housing mandates, criminal justice changes, and gun policy followed. This is a documented national pattern.
VIA recruits member congregations and collects dues from them. Individual church members may not know their congregation has become a dues-paying unit in a national political organizing network, or that the network has a broad national policy agenda beyond childcare and transit.
The IAF playbook involves packing public meetings with supporters and demanding that elected officials make on-the-spot "public commitments" before full financial analysis is done. Elected leaders who feel pressured to agree before adequate study can bind taxpayers to costly programs for decades.
VIA's playbook, inherited from the IAF, consistently seeks government program creation and spending as the solution to social challenges. Private, faith-based, employer-driven, and community-funded alternatives are treated as inferior to taxpayer-funded government programs.
Rockingham County is not Baltimore, Fairfax, or Brooklyn. The transit and childcare models VIA is importing were designed for dense urban areas with very different demographics, economies, and cultures. Rockingham deserves solutions built by and for Rockingham, not copied from a national playbook.
Follow the Chain of Command
VIA openly lists its affiliations on its own website. Here is what those affiliations mean and what agenda comes with them.
The IAF trains VIA's professional organizers and provides the strategic playbook. VIA does not operate independently of this structure.
Founded in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, a guide to confrontational community organizing, the IAF describes its own mission as building "organizations whose primary purpose is power" and whose "chief product is social change."
The IAF runs an intensive national training institute, still described by critics as a "school for professional radicals," that trains the organizers who are then deployed to local affiliates like VIA. These are not volunteers. They are professional organizers executing a national strategy.
IAF has openly stated: "In places like San Antonio and Baltimore, we are as close to being a political party as anybody is. We go around organizing people, getting them to agree on an agenda, registering them to vote, interviewing candidates on whether they support our agenda."
Metro IAF is VIA's direct supervisory network, covering 22 affiliates across the eastern United States including Virginia, Maryland, DC, New York, North Carolina, and others. Metro IAF's stated priority issues go far beyond childcare and transit.
According to Metro IAF's own organizational profiles, their active campaigns include: affordable housing mandates, living wage ordinances, immigration legal defense funds, criminal justice reform, gun safety legislation, strengthening labor unions, and universal healthcare, all financed by redirecting public tax dollars and government policy.
Metro IAF affiliates in Fairfax County, Virginia (VOICE) have already won public commitments from elected officials to fund legal defense for undocumented immigrants. Metro IAF has made clear these campaigns are designed to be replicated across all of its affiliates.
The Full Agenda
The childcare and transit campaigns are the opening moves. Here is the full documented national agenda of the IAF and Metro IAF network, the organization that trains VIA's professional organizers and sets the strategic direction.
Taxpayer-funded pre-K expansion and childcare centers. Already underway in Harrisonburg.
Demand-response county-wide transit funded by taxpayers. Already underway in Rockingham County.
Mandated minimum wages above state/federal levels for all city and county employees and contractors.
Government-funded housing development and mandated affordable units in private developments.
Taxpayer-funded legal representation for undocumented immigrants. Already won in Fairfax County, VA by Metro IAF.
Changes to sentencing, bail, fines, and police accountability policies. Won statewide in Massachusetts, Virginia, and other states.
Metro IAF "mobilized a grassroots army" for universal healthcare in Massachusetts, which became a national model for the ACA.
Metro IAF lists "gun safety" as an active campaign area across its affiliates.
Know the Playbook
Understanding the tactics helps our community engage from a position of knowledge, not surprise.
The IAF targets faith communities as its primary institutional base. In the IAF's own words, "the people, the values, and the money." Congregations are signed up as dues-paying member institutions. Individual church members may not realize their congregation has joined a national political organizing network, or that dues are paid to that network.
IAF organizers conduct hundreds of individual "relational" meetings with community members to identify personal grievances, build a network of leaders, and develop an issue agenda. These conversations are organized and systematic, not casual. The goal is to identify which issues will mobilize the most people and generate the most political pressure.
The IAF organizes large public "action" meetings (they call them "actions") designed to place elected officials on the spot before hundreds of organized supporters. Officials are asked yes-or-no questions and expected to make immediate "public commitments." Those who hesitate are publicly pressured. These are not town halls or open discussions. They are carefully scripted pressure events with a predetermined outcome in mind.
The IAF has openly described itself as operating like a political party: organizing people, getting them to agree on an agenda, registering them to vote, and interviewing candidates on whether they support that agenda. While officially "non-partisan," the IAF and its affiliates consistently advance progressive policy positions and hold candidates accountable to their agenda commitments.
The IAF does not present its full agenda at once. It selects "winnable" issues for each community, issues that feel broadly sympathetic (who's against helping children or seniors get rides?), to build credibility, organizational strength, and political relationships. Once the first victories are secured, the organization uses that momentum and those political relationships to advance the next items on the broader agenda.
VIA's professional organizers are trained and supervised by Metro IAF and IAF national staff. The organization's strategic direction comes from a national network headquartered in Chicago. But locally, VIA presents itself as a homegrown community group representing local congregations and neighborhoods, making it easy to underestimate how coordinated and nationally directed the effort really is.
The Specific Proposals
Here is what VIA is currently asking our elected officials to commit to, and the questions every taxpayer should be asking.
VIA is pushing for two new taxpayer-subsidized preschool centers in Harrisonburg, plus a $3.5 million state budget amendment to fund 250 new pre-K seats. The first center, "Valley Early Education Reimagined," has already opened at Park View Mennonite Church with public funding.
While affordable childcare is a real challenge for some families, creating permanent government-subsidized programs means locking future budgets into sustaining those programs indefinitely. VIA's own framing describes using "underused state and federal funds," but those are still taxpayer dollars being permanently redirected into new government infrastructure.
Rockingham County and Harrisonburg have existing private childcare providers, faith-based programs, and employer-sponsored options. Subsidized government competition can drive these providers out of business, ultimately reducing choices for families rather than expanding them.
VIA is lobbying for government-funded door-to-door, on-demand transit across all of Rockingham County, modeled on JAUNT's service in Albemarle County near Charlottesville. VIA has already secured a $200,000 "local match" commitment from corporate and elected leaders and is pushing for full county-wide rollout.
Demand-response transit in rural, low-density areas has a well-documented history of being extremely expensive per rider and permanently dependent on government subsidy. Albemarle County operates adjacent to a major university city with very different demographics and density than rural Rockingham County. The comparison VIA is drawing does not hold up to scrutiny.
Private rideshare services, employer shuttle programs, and carpooling networks could address real transportation needs for vulnerable residents without creating a permanently subsidized government transit bureaucracy that grows larger and more expensive every year.
"We go around organizing people, getting them to agree on an agenda, registering them to vote, interviewing candidates on whether they support our agenda. We're not a political party, but that's what political parties do."Senior IAF Leader, describing the organization's operations | Source: IAF organizational profile, DiscoverTheNetworks.org
Your Voice Matters
You don't need a national organizing network to have a voice. Contact your elected officials directly, ask the hard questions, and share this information with your neighbors.
Ask your supervisor to demand complete multi-year cost analyses before committing to VIA's transit program. Ask for a publicly noticed comment period that gives all county residents, not just organized advocates, a chance to weigh in.
Board of Supervisors →City council members have been targeted by VIA for childcare commitments. Attend a meeting and ask what fiscal impact analysis was done before any commitment was made, and whether the city's relationship with a national IAF affiliate was disclosed.
City Council →VIA is lobbying the Virginia General Assembly for a $3.5 million childcare appropriation. Contact your delegate and state senator. Ask them about VIA's relationship to Metro IAF, its full national agenda, and whether full fiscal impact statements will be required before any appropriation moves forward.
Find Your Legislators →If your congregation is a VIA member institution, ask your leadership what national agenda comes with that membership, what dues are being paid and to whom, and whether the congregation's members were fully informed about VIA's affiliation with the IAF and Metro IAF before joining.
Many of your neighbors don't know about VIA's IAF affiliation, the full national agenda, or the tactics the organization uses. Share this page and talk about it with people you know: at church, at the farmer's market, at school events, and on social media.
VIA holds large public meetings and invites elected officials. Attend one, knowing the format: officials will be asked to make on-the-spot commitments under social pressure. Respectfully ask for fiscal impact studies, full cost disclosures, and time for proper deliberation before any commitments are made.
VIA's Website →Know Who's Involved
These congregations and organizations have formally joined Valley Interfaith Action as dues-paying member or supporting institutions, and by doing so have affiliated themselves with the Industrial Areas Foundation and Metro IAF national network and its broader agenda. If your congregation is on this list, ask your leadership what that membership means.
A Note to Congregation Members Membership in VIA means your congregation pays dues to a national IAF-affiliated organizing network. Individual members of these congregations may not have been consulted or informed before their institution joined. We encourage you to ask your pastor or leadership how this decision was made and what agenda your congregation is now associated with.