Escucha Mi Voz Iowa (EMVI) actively secured two grants from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development: a $50,000 grant in 2023-2024 and a $25,000 grant in the 2025 grant cycle, totaling $75,000 in Catholic funding. EMVI, a community organizing group, focuses on workers’ rights and places a strong emphasis on immigration rights, recently leading numerous campaigns to oppose ICE deportation initiatives.
However, EMVI has been found working in close collaboration with socialist organizations. Furthermore, the co-director of EMVI, David Goodner, is a self-professed socialist and his social media posts contain support for revolution, political violence, pro-abortion socialist figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while sharing irreverent content that borders on sacrilegious. The other co-director, Fr. Guillermo Trevino, Jr., holds close ties with a pro abortion, homosexualist organization called the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and EMVI itself is a member of the Gamaliel network, which we have reported on previously.
Collaboration with Socialist Organizations
Just before we went to press with this report, it came to our attention that EMVI was recently working in collaboration with both the local Iowa DSA and the Party for Socialism and Liberation of Iowa on immigration related efforts. According to the PSL’s Liberation website:
In the wake of these attacks, organizers with PSL Iowa have been collaborating with other local organizations, such as Escucha Mi Voz and Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice and Central Iowa DSA to defend and protect the immigrant community. [emphasis added]
Collaboration with socialist organizations is not surprising, especially considering that EMVI’s co-director, David Goodner, is in fact himself a declared socialist.
David Goodner – Socialist Revolutionary
David Goodner self identifies as a “small ‘s’ socialist” on his Truthout profile:
Goodner also views the Catholic Church as a pool of manpower for socialist groups such as the radical Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to draw resources and power from. In this November 16, 2024 post, Goodner said “Good thing there are so many churches of organized people of faith out there for DSA chapters across the country to have their big post-election meetings at.” One commenter replied “Doubled our numbers for our first meeting post-election”
More recently, on March 8, 2025, Goodner asked if DSA members were organizing their Catholic parishes:
Goodner’s social media posts also have a history of excusing and promoting political violence. For example, this October 2021 X post excuses some acts of looting as a way of protesting injustice, adding that more police “won’t solve the social problems you call crime.”
He commented similarly in December of 2019, stating, “Protesters get slammed by critics whenever they use force. But for the state, it’s normalized.”
More recently, Goodner offered tongue in cheek advice to Luigi Mangione, suspected killer of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Goodner also shows a false understanding of Catholicism, equating everything to liberation and socialism rather than the salvation of souls. This post from July of 2018 is a prime demonstration where the Kingdom of God on Earth is equated to socialism:
This June 2024 post promotes the view that emphasis on the Eucharist is secondary to social justice efforts:
This December 9 repost by Goodner irreverently makes Our Blessed Mother out to be a foul mouthed class warrior:
Collaboration with LULAC
EMV’s leadership problems are unfortunately not limited to David Goodner. Co-director Fr. Guillermo Trevino Jr. has linked himself with the organization LULAC which has a history of supporting abortion, LGBTQ, and trans rights.
On June 9, 2025, Fr. Guillermo posted on Facebook:
“Nicholas Salazar took these pictures as part of the historia project which thru LULAC Iowa and the University of Iowa documents the unique experiences of Latinos and immigrants of Iowa. I was interviewed in January and these pictures were taken in conjunction with my tenth anniversary as a priest this weekend. I am honored to be a part of this project!”
On June 8, Fr. Trevino posted “Don’t forget we have our scholarship fundraiser at St Joseph’s in Columbus Junction. We will be selling Carnitas. $10 a plate that includes, rice, pasta, tortillas and a drink. We also have desserts. See you soon! We will be here until 3pm or until all the food is gone.”
On Christmas Eve of 2024, LULAC rewarded Fr. Guillermo by gifting him a jersey which he proudly displayed on Facebook.
Fr. Guillermo has a vested personal interest in LULAC as his sister became the president of a LULAC council as of April 20, 2023:
On the LULAC website there is a section titled Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) in which they detail how to protect LGBTQ individuals from hate crimes and discrimination.
Continuing in the same vein LULAC details how Immigration Reform needs to include those who identify as LGBTQ:
LULAC also openly supports abortion on its website:
Fr. Trevino is clearly participating in LULAC activities and is comfortable promoting them as an organization. But if he is this blind to their promotion of abortion and LGBT ideologies, then he clearly has no ability to properly judge the activities of EMVI.
Coalition membership with the Gamaliel Network
The Lepanto Institute previously reported on serious problems with the Gamaliel Network, including an instance where Gamaliel directly lied to the CCHD. Click here to read this report.
The connection between the Gamaliel Network and Escucha Mi Voz is almost immediately apparent, because Escucha Mi Voz was started by former members of the Gamaliel Network, and has been referred to as an affiliate of the Gamaliel Network as recently as 2023. Here is an excerpt taken directly from the Gamaliel Network website which is signed by their Executive Director, Ana Garcia-Ashley.
The excerpt reads as follows:
Escucha Mi Voz Iowa, one of Gamaliel’s newest affiliates in the Midwest, was named a finalist—in the “News Category for Outstanding Feature Story in Spanish”—for the 44th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, which was held September 27-28, 2023 at the Palladium Times Square in New York City.
The Emmy finalist documentary produced by Univision, Rising Up in the Heartland: Latino Workers Fight for Pandemic Relief, tells the story of Escucha Mi Voz’s fight to secure direct assistance for undocumented essential workers in Johnson County and West Liberty, Iowa.
Escucha Mi Voz Iowa formed in 2021 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, with seed funding provided by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). Their organizer, David Goodner, was part of Gamaliel’s first new organizer cohort (which was also made possible by funding provided by CCHD to the Gamaliel Network).
Many of you will recall that COVID-19 hammered essential workers across the United States. After long struggles to regain their health, marginalized and undocumented Latino workers in rural Iowa took on a bold new challenge last year: demanding a share of the pandemic relief funds that have excluded them.
Through a robust organizing campaign in 2022, Escucha Mi Voz Iowa members won a $3.5 million Direct Assistance Program in Johnson County and a $150,000 utility relief program in West Liberty. This year, the group members distributed $1.3 million in federal pandemic relief aid to meatpacking plant workers and farmworkers. In the last two years, the group has delivered over $5 million in direct assistance to rural and urban immigrant workers on the frontlines of the essential labor force.
The 44th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards received more than 2300 submissions from the calendar year of 2022. Nominations were judged by a pool of over 1000 people from across the television and streaming/digital media news and documentary community.
Please join me in celebrating with Escucha Mi Voz for both the Emmy nomination and the successful issue campaign!
En solidaridad,
Ana Garcia-Ashley, Directora Ejecutiva
On April 28, 2022, the Gamaliel Network posted on their Facebook, “Gamaliel is so proud of our leaders and organizers from Quad Cities Interfaith, who are expanding to a new organization, Escucha Mi Voz! They have been featured in this documentary from Univision.”
Escucha Mi Voz and The Gamaliel Network would collaborate again in two leadership retreats one on March 2, 2024, which was posted by Escucha Mi Voz and the other on October 24, 2024, which was posted by the Gamaliel Network.
Conclusion
Escucha Mi Voz Iowa presents a clear risk for Catholic funding. First, it stands in violation of CCHD’s own grant guidelines for coalition membership and collaboration with Gamaliel. Second, both the co-directors of EMVI show extreme disregard for the social and moral teachings of the Catholic Church with their respective support of socialist revolution and collaboration with homosexualist and abortion promoting organizations. With such leadership, EMVI must be considered at high risk for abusing Catholic funding and engaging in immoral activities.
A broken nose by Gregory Chacon in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Smashed in the head by Jesse Sena in Lamar, Colorado.
Shoved to the pavement by Devin Gonzales in Tijeras, New Mexico.
Threatened with grave bodily harm by Nicholas Sierra in Silver City, New Mexico.
Forged my check by Sergio Pedregon in Silver City, New Mexico.
I have a soft place in my heart for angry Spanish Catholics who think I’m their banker.
I now understand better why Spanish Catholics resort to the clenched fist, anger and violence to achieve their objectives. They are taught that this is normal and expected behavior. We Anglos are taught that this is abnormal behavior and are sent to mental hospitals for refusing to submit to drug abuse, torture, and psychiatric exploitation. You generally won’t see Spanish Catholics in mental hospitals except as workers because they’ve been taught that the Anglos deserve to be locked up, and they deserve to be paid to have us locked up, and they will never be locked up as they will never submit to drug abuse unless it is through their gangs, and not psychiatry.