Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, DMin is an experienced faith-rooted community organizer and executive director and co-founder of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership (CSPL), a Catholic and Christian-rooted multi-racial and multi-generational coalition of parishes, religious orders, universities and grassroots leaders working to transform systems of racial, economic, and social injustice. For more than 14 years he has accompanied communities on the frontlines of struggles against poverty, violence, and systemic inequities, training and mobilizing thousands of people of faith and grassroots leaders across the U.S. to organize for justice.
In recent years, Michael has played a central role in organizing large-scale, nonviolent actions and campaigns to address immigration inequities and press for the dignity and rights of people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). CSPL has drawn national and international attention to conditions at the Broadview ICE detention facility outside Chicago — including organizing People’s Masses and Eucharistic processions attended by thousands, delivering formal letters and holding press conferences calling on ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to grant pastoral access for clergy and women religious to bring spiritual care and Holy Communion to detained migrants, and supporting related legal advocacy efforts. Despite repeated denials by federal authorities to allow clergy into the facility, the campaign has highlighted the spiritual and human rights dimensions of immigration detention and galvanized broad support from faith communities.
He also serves as an adjunct associate professor at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago and is the co-author of Jesus and Justice: Organizing for God’s Reign on Earth Then and Now, a resource for faith-based organizers seeking to ground social change in the tradition of Jesus’ Reign of God movement.