A mobile field-based school for transformative organizing.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR

David is a Queer Mexican-American originally from Southern California with a passion for community organizing and staff development. He has over 10 years of non-profit experience, with such organizations as Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network (GSA Network), Forward Change, and The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. He graduated from Humboldt State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Areas of Focus: Non-profit Finance & Operations

SENIOR PARTNER

Jackie has over 25 years of experience working as an organizer and trainer. Her journey began alongside her grandmother, uncle and auntie, organizing Black and Native communities fighting for police accountability in Minnesota. As its founder, Jackie led the Black Organizing Project in a historic campaign to remove Oakland Unified School District’s police force and implement a new district safety plan under the George Floyd Resolution. Jackie's background also includes tenant organizing and leadership at the Center for Third World Organizing.

SENIOR PARTNER

Manuel Criollo, Salvadoreño and raised in Los Angeles, is the former Director of Organizing at the Labor/Community Strategy Center, leading projects like the Bus Riders Union, Community Rights Campaign, and National School for Strategic Organizing. He is completing his dissertation in American Studies at the University of New Mexico: "Organizing Acts: Maria Guardado's Poetics of Resistance and the Salvadoran Communist Tradition," which engages Central American Studies, social movement poetics & aesthetics and the communist organizing tradition.

PARTNER

Ashley, a working-class Black woman with Central American and US Southern roots, is committed to fighting for the liberation of Black people. Ashley worked at Brooklyn Defenders Services, representing parents to end state sanctioned family separation. She organized for 10 years in South Central LA with the Labor/Community Strategy Center to decriminalize student discipline. Ashley is a graduate of CUNY Law, where she interned with the ACLU Detroit, and received a BA from Scripps College. Area of Focus: Dignity In Schools Campaign California.

CO-MANAGING PARTNER

Dani is Korean and trans femme, from the diaspora by way of a childhood in Canada. They have been a social justice organizer for over 25 years--organizing in schools and neighborhoods, on college campuses and the buses of L.A. with such organizations as Movimiento Poder and the Labor/Community Strategy Center. They have a background as a professional scholar and school district administrator and hold graduate degrees from Cornell University and the University of Toronto.

CO-MANAGING PARTNER

Tia, a queer Chicana from Northern California, has over 25 years’ experience working for social justice in working-class communities of color. Her work has spanned issues that include the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the war on drugs, homelessness, disconnected youth and immigration. Tia has led work in grassroots movement building, philanthropy, academia, public policy, the US Dept of Education and the Bridgespan Group. Tia holds a Master in Public Policy from UC Berkeley and a JD from Stanford Law.

PROGRAM ASSOCIATE

With roots in the East Coast and the solidarity movement for Irish liberation, Andy relocated to California over 20 years ago to be trained as an organizer at the Labor/Community Strategy Center. He went on to teach high school history in LAUSD for 15 years. During that time, Andy joined the School Design Team that launched Augustus Hawkins campus, served as his union’s steward, and organized with his students on many racial justice issues. Andy holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence and teaching credential from the University of San Francisco.