For over 100 years, Southside Presbyterian Church has lived out its faith by working for justice and dignity for all of God's children. Originally founded as a church for Tohono O’odham people, Southside has a long record of community engagement, from working to uphold the human rights of Native Americans to the struggle to end segregation during the Civil Rights Movement. Southside has always understood that God calls us to welcome all, and to work for a day when divisions and hatred will end.
The Sanctuary Movement.
Southside is known by many as the birthplace of the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s. Sanctuary volunteers based at Southside provided aid and temporary shelter to more than 13,000 Central Americans fleeing war, death squads, and torture. That legacy continues today, as we work within the present-day Sanctuary Movement to resist policies that target, criminalize, and deport undocumented immigrants.
Over the past 3 1⁄2 decades, Southside’s response to immigrants and refugees has produced nationally recognized leaders, including former Pastor John Fife and current Pastor Alison Harrington.
Providing Social Justice Ministries
Southside has a long commitment to critically important ministries.
  • Cross Streets Community provides 300 homeless people with hot meals, showers, and clothing each week. More importantly, it provides a place for people to feel loved, accepted, and valued. Homeless members are encouraged to assume leadership roles and fulfill responsibilities in the operations of the program.
  • Southside Worker Center provides a safe place for workers to wait for employment and negotiate a just daily wage with potential employers. The Center is used by about 50 men daily, who, in spite of the hostile climate created by employer sanction laws and anti-immigrant legislation, maintain that they have a right to work. The Worker Center provides leadership development and community organizing, and has become an anchor in the larger network of undocumented-led organizing in Tucson.
  • Tucson Samaritans are people of faith and conscience based at Southside who work to prevent death and suffering at the US-Mexico border by providing food, water, and emergency medical assistance to people crossing the Sonoran Desert.

Providing a Safe Space, Hospitality, and Support
Community members affected by anti-immigrant policies regard Southside as a trusted ally that can be depended upon to provide meeting space and other assistance to support their work. Southside regularly provides hospitality to important social justice groups that include BorderLinks, Keep Tucson Together Legal Clinic, Red de Redes coalition of immigrant-led groups, the End Streamline Coalition, and others.
Southside’s Physical Space
Southside’s meeting rooms, kitchen facilities, and bathrooms are severely worn and in desperate need of replacement. Meeting spaces used by dozens of neighborhood and community organizations need to be expanded. Southside is raising $1.95 million to improve and expand the Social Justice Campus in these ways:
➢ A larger, multi-use fellowship hall, a commercial kitchen, and office for the Cross Streets homeless meal program;
➢ An improved space dedicated to the Southside Worker Center;
➢ A dedicated hospitality room and bathroom for providing Sanctuary when needed;
➢ A more visible entrance, additional parking, classrooms, common areas, and interior courtyard space will benefit the congregation and all sponsored programs.

These improvements will allow us to strengthen our social justice work and our ability to be a hub for others to do the same. In this particular historical moment when so much is on the line, we desperately need to fortify community institutions -- and that is what we are attempting to do. By creating a better facility, we are able to create the space for our congregation and other community organizations to do the necessary work of creating a better community and world.


We have already raised over $1.4 million from our congregation.
Please consider making a donation to the Capital Campaign today. You can donate on-line here or you can mail it to:
Southside Presbyterian Church
317 W. 23rd Street
Tucson, AZ 85713


For generations Tucson has stood with Southside and we have stood with you — stand with us now as we make more space for
peace and justice at Southside
and in Tucson.
Southside Presbyterian Church
317 West 23rd Street
Tucson, AZ 85713
520-623-6857
Sunday Service - 9:30 a.m
Please join us! All are welcome!
When a church is being its most faithful to scripture, it is always standing on the side of the oppressed and the persecuted.”
~Rev. Alison Harrington

Church Calendar