Introducing Nefesh Minlozin: Our Name, Our Network, and Our Organizing Toolkit
Introducing Nefesh Minlozin: Our Name, Our Network, and Our Organizing Toolkit
For a while now, we've gone by Nefesh — a community-building, mutual-aid, and organizing network with chapters in Rock Island, Pueblo, and Milwaukee, and members who've shown up for each other in ways big and small. This year, we're giving that work a fuller name, a clearer structure, and a public toolkit for anyone who wants to build alongside us.
What "Nefesh Min Lozin" Means
Nefesh Minlozin is the name of the network as a whole every guild, every chapter, every program described below. It's a deliberate combination of two things: Nefesh, Hebrew for spirit or soul, and Lozin honoring Lozen, the Chiricahua Apache warrior, prophet, and sister of the war leader Victorio. Read together, Nefesh Minlozin means the spirit of Lozen, or the wholeness of Lozen. It's not a name we chose lightly. It holds two peoples' experience of genocide inside a single word, on purpose because that history isn't background to our mission. It's the reason our mission exists.
Lozen was renowned among her people as a protector, spiritually and physically, through the hardest and most violent years of their history. Her legacy is the heart of this network. It's also why our 501(c)(3) the nonprofit that anchors our legal structure now carries her name directly: Binagee, from the Apache bi- (a possessive prefix, "her") and nagee (shield, traditionally a hide shield painted with sacred protective designs, carried in front of the body to ward off harm). Binagee means, plainly, her shield. We named our organization this way as a statement of purpose, not just an honorific: it exists to be a shield for the people it serves, the way Lozen was a shield for hers.
This is personal, too. Nefesh Minlozin's founder carries the surname Rosaceae, chosen to honor her grandmother, Rose Trujillo, and comes from mixed lineages in her own bloodline. That layered ancestry is part of why this network is built the way it is: as a real, fully legal parallel society a family of distinct organizations that each provide real legal cover and real legal function, while Nefesh Minlozin itself stays what it's always been: a shared name, a shared mission, and a community you can actually show up to.
What We've Built
Over the past several weeks, we've put together a complete organizing toolkit real guides, templates, and trackers, not placeholders covering everything it takes to run this network at the scale we're growing into. It's organized around four legal entities and the programs that sit underneath them:
Binagee, our 501(c)(3) the nonprofit home for our guilds, chapters, and community programs, including formation, governance, and funding guides.
Hachazit HaPoalit ("The Workers' Front"), our 501(c)(4) the advocacy and organizing arm for the political work our charitable side can't legally do: platform positions, organizer training, and campaign work.
The Rose of Serenity, our multi-faith religious organization a separate, syncretic worship community for members whose spiritual life is part of how they show up to this work.
Xandra Divinations, our founder's own LLC an events and festival production business that helps fund the network's broader work.
Underneath Binagee, six guilds now each have their own full toolkit a "how to build it, how to run it" guide, a training and structure manual, funding resources, and a working tracker:
CRAFT Guild small business and LLC formation, funding, taxes, hiring, and a peer-support structure for members starting or growing a business.
Spark Guild (Science, Practice & Applied Research) STEM education, coding and maker workshops, and college pathways.
Lore Guild (Liberation, Origin & Radical Ethics) history, philosophy, reenactment and public-history events, and a brand-new Education Committee: book clubs and movie nights built around anti-colonial thought, Indigenous and communitarian societies, and mutual aid and cooperative economics political education that goes beyond the usual capitalism-vs-socialism argument entirely.
Revolutionary Art Guild (RAG) art supplies, workshops, and showcase events.
Housing & Tenant Rights, Job Search and Labor practical, real-world toolkits (know-your-rights guides, union organizing resources, tenant protections) for members navigating housing, work, and workplace organizing right now.
Red Rovers, our mutual aid program stocking supplies and coordinating aid runs between Rock Island, Pueblo, and Milwaukee.
Alongside the guilds, there's a full set of community starter kits for launching a new chapter, standing up a neighborhood council, planning a community event, or knowing your rights with police, complaints, and small claims court plus a Master Roadmap laying out how every entity and program fits together.
How to Get Into It
Everything above every guide, template, and tracker lives in one shared folder:
Nefesh Minlozin Organizing Toolkit →
If you're new here: start with any guild's Start_Here_Guide.docx each one is written for someone walking in with zero background. If you're looking to get involved directly, reach out through a chapter near you, or find us in Rock Island, Pueblo, and Milwaukee.
This is a living toolkit. It grows every time we do.
