Ken's Second Act

Como Se Llama: Meet a community organizer for the upcoming Prescott election

A citizens group has emerged that could influence the upcoming City Council and mayoral race in Everybody’s Hometown: Rural Organizing Initiative.

ROI co-founder Llama Habern conducted an informal get-together Wednesday evening on the first floor of the Federal Building downtown.

The purpose of the nonpartisan, nonprofit entity is to register people to vote, recruit candidates and knock on doors, according to Llama. ROI’s mission statement reads, “Our organization promotes full participation in democracy by educating communities on how and why their participation has an impact and supporting and promoting candidates for city and county offices who are aligned with our values.”

I first met Llama Saturday night at the Better Together Dinner sponsored by The Launch Pad Teen Center at the United Christian Youth Camp. She sat at the same table, and talked about the need to make the council meetings – conducted during the afternoons – more accessible to working people and increase the diversity of the seven-member council.

She raised valid points. It is typical for people of retirement age to dominate representation on city councils because they have the time to serve. I saw an extreme example of the lack of diversity when I worked for a small daily in East Texas. The City Council of a small town near the Louisiana border voted to declare the community a “sanctuary for the unborn” in 2019. All seven members of the council were old men.

Llama told me people “don’t know there is an election” in Prescott. “Local races affect our lives. People don’t run (for office). So many races go uncontested.”

Her business card says ROI is supporting “progressive candidates for local office.” She provided petitions for attendees to sign to qualify two people to run in the Aug. 5 election: Councilman Brandon Montoya – who announced his candidacy for mayor – and Lara Hamdi-Ismert, a former mathematics professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University who is seeking one of the three council seats.

She handed out a notice of the meeting during the dinner. I attended the meeting out of curiosity. Within the first hour of the two-hour meeting, 10 people had added their names, phone numbers and email addresses to the sign-in sheet; I recognized several faces from meetings of Prescott Indivisible, a left-leaning, nonpartisan group.

Rebecca Horniman, a Prescott native who owns a small business and serves on The Launch Pad’s board, said she attended to find out “and support candidates that run for local offices.” She said a friend told her about the ROI meeting.

Everyone needs, and deserves, to be heard, Llama wrote in her vision statement.

Llama, 31, is a professional community organizer who earned a degree at Arizona State University in interdisciplinary studies in political science and justice studies. Her bio on the website of the Arizona Democratic Party says she is a “queer, trans, trans disabled community organizer” in Yavapai County. Before arriving in the Verde Valley in 2021, she spent seven years working for a national nonprofit entity that prepared members to run for office and take other leadership positions in policy, advocacy and organizing.

In 2022 she led Democratic voter contact efforts in Sedona and the Verde Valley. Two years later, ROI recruited and supported 13 candidates for offices in the Verde Valley. ROI’s efforts averaged a 6 percent increase in voter turnout in targeted races with a success rate of 46 percent in helping to elect candidates. She began serving as educational coordinator of the state party in January 2023.

America has a storied history with community organizers, and perhaps the best-known example was the late Saul Alinsky in Chicago. A man in Chicago who got his political start as a community organizer later was elected president: Barack Obama.

It remains to be seen whether ROI in Prescott will earn a return on its investment at the ballot box. For more information, log onto ROI or attend a meeting from 1 to 3 p.m. Feb. 23 in the postmaster’s office at the Federal Building, 101 W. Goodwin St.