Windcall Residents 2011
Elizabeth Blaney is Co-Director and Co-Founder of Union de Vecinos. Union de Vecinos is a grassroots community based non-profit located in East Los Angeles and the City of Maywood. It started in 1996 with one committee and 36 families working for the preservation of the Pico Aliso public housing projects. Fifteen years later we have a Network of Neighborhood Committees with 1,950 volunteers working for economic and environmental justice; affordable housing; and healthy and safe community neighborhoods. We do this through building a network of neighborhood and issue committees where community residents define issues, develop solutions, and organize to bring change in our communities. Ms. Blaney is a former CPA turned community organizer. She is also a member of the artist collaborative Ultrared. The collaborative combines art and organizing to promote the struggle for social justice and has developed several international projects highlighting the human right to housing.
Chanda Chhin is an unhyphenated Khmer Chinese American womyn. She was born and raised in Stockton, CA to refugee parents. She is currently the Youth Program Coordinator for Fathers & Families of San Joaquin where she works with youth, their strengths and ways we could maximize their capacity as social change agents to come up with solutions to community issues and learn the importance of collective action.She is also a member of the ESPINO Coalition, Escuelas Si! Pintas No! (Schools Yes! Prisons No!). She currently resides in Stockton, where she is working towards justice and freedom by consciousness raising and building community power. She received her B.A. in Sociology and minor in Ethnic Studies from the University of the Pacific.
Xiomara E. Corpeño serves as the Director of Organizing at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), where she oversees the three organizing projects which organize household workers, day laborers and immigrant youth, respectively. Ms. Corpeño was born and raised in Los Angeles in an immigrant family that instilled in her a strong sense of community values. While attending the University of California, Riverside, Ms. Corpeño was introduced to organizing after completing a Union Summer Internship with H.E.R.E Local 11. She became a student activist on campus and worked to save affirmative action under threat from Proposition 209. After graduating from college, Ms. Corpeño worked for SCOPE/AGENDA, organizing low-income residents in West L.A through the Jobs and Healthcare Campaign. She later moved to El Salvador, which allowed her to better understand her family history as well as the reasons and conditions under which workers are forced to migrate. While at CHIRLA, Ms. Corpeño has helped develop the organization's in-house voter education and mobilization campaign. Ms. Corpeño was a 2007 Women's Policy Institute Fellow with the Women’s Foundation of California and a 2008 Taproots Fellow with the Center for Community Change. In 2008, she was the featured guest in a 9-city speaking tour of Germany addressing household workers entitled, Migrant Struggles - Labor Struggles: Global Social Rights in the USA. Most recently, she was selected by the Liberty Hill Foundation as a “2011 Grassroots Leader to Watch,” for her work as a leader in the immigrant rights movement.
Renny Cushing is an aging revolutionary and fading romantic from New Hampshire. He is founder and Executive Director of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, a US-based international organization of survivors of homicide victims opposed to the death penalty. The painful experiences of the murder of his father Robert in 1988, and his brother-in-law Stephen McRedmond in 2011, shape his human rights work as an advocate for crime victims and opponent of the capital punishment. He serves on the Board of Directors of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and the Steering Committee of the World Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Renny’s lifelong work for social justice involved him in struggles for environmental justice and against nuclear power, opposition to war, support for economic justice and protection and expansion of human and civil rights. He is a member of UAW Local 1981. The greatest gifts of his life are his daughters Marie, Elizabeth and Grace.
Ron Davis has an extensive history of work with social change grassroots groups and community based advocate organizations in the South and Appalachia, including guiding the racial equity work of the Commission on Religion in Appalachia, serving as a member and organizational consultant with Southern Partners Fund, as a founder and community organizer with Citizens for Police Review in Knoxville and more recently as the Organizing Team Leaders with the Center for Health, Environment and Justice in Falls Church, Virginia. He serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Environmental Support Center, where he also chairs the Change Team. ron was a part of Highlander’s Education Team from 1989-1996. Currently, his work with Highlander will focus on the Racial Healing and Equity work. He and Anna moved back to the east Tennessee area in August 2010.
Socorro Gaeta is an immigrant from Mexico with very little formal education, now living in California’s Central Valley. She has been involved in her community for many years now, starting through her church, St. Anthony Mary Claret. Socorro now works as an outreach coordinator with Fresno Metro Ministries, a multi-faith, multicultural organization that promotes social, economic, and environmental justice for the community. She is involved so much in the community that many families in the community know and trust her as one of their own. Some of those families are involved with her in LUCA (Latinos United for Clean Air), an organization that works to restore air quality by informing the public, facilitating collaboration, and advocating for effective and inclusive policies.
Sharon Hanshaw is a native of Biloxi MS., who went on to establish her beauty salon which she owned and operated for over 21 years. Mrs. Hanshaw is an active member of the Biloxi Chapter NAACP where she serves as assistant secretary, membership chair and Chair of the Mother of the Year. Since August 29, 2005 she has focused her energy toward enabling the community in the rebuilding process and overcoming the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Her efforts led her to a group of women looking for ways to voice their concerns about the direction and future of the community. Through her efforts and with the support of faithful CWC was born, becoming a recognized non-profit organization on May 8, 2011. The efforts of CWC have quickly become the model of grass roots involvement throughout the community across the coast.
Chung-Wha Hong has worked for the immigrant community for over 20 years. Currently she is Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella advocacy organization made up of approximately 200 groups throughout the state that promotes justice and opportunity for immigrants and refugees. Prior to joining the NYIC in 2001, she worked for a range of non-profits including the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, Committee of Interns and Residents and Washington, DC-based Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO. She immigrated to the United States from Korea in 1977, grew up in St. Louis and Boston, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently lives in Flushing, New York, with her three children.
Fabricio Rodriguez is the son of an Ecuadorian immigrant father, David Rodriguez and a Dine mother, Pearl Merida Rodriguez. Fabricio has been a labor organizer since 1998 when he helped his father and his fellow miners fight for a paid lunch break in Juneau, Alaska. Since that time he has helped student organizers win a fight against privatized prisons at Arizona State University. Fabricio's protests against the McCarthy Era Loyalty Oath forced a change to the Arizona state constitution. Today, Fabricio specializes in innovative organizing strategies and has founded the independent Philadelphia Security Officers Union and the Restaurant Opportunties Center of Philadelphia.
Yolanda Chacon Serna was raised in Delano, California and considers herself a graduate of the United Farm Workers Union. Her mother, being her first teacher, taught her the value of standing up for justice with a "Si Se Puede" attitude. As a labor, political and community organizer for sixteen years, she has continued the legacy which was instilled in her. Through her work with HERE, United Farmworkers Union, AFL-CIO-Western Region, various community coalitions, and now the Dolores Huerta Foundation, she feels her work gives her the opportunity to make a difference. Yolanda has four grown children and four grandchildren.
Lottie Sneed has spent her entire working career in direct human services or community organizing. She currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. She came to Baltimore after graduation from Divinity School because of the plight of young African American men. Lottie served as senior community organizer for Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) from 2006-2010. She is currently serving as a youth advocate for juveniles returning to the community. She is an ordained minister. All of these life experiences have allowed her to see the pain and the joy of communities through the stories of the people who Lottie hasencountered. These stories have revealed great leaders – from all ages.
Karen Szczepanski has been a community and labor organizer for over 30 years in the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan area. She currently works as a Staff Representative for the Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE), a statewide health care workers union in New Jersey, and is an active member of the Hudson County Central Labor Council. She returned to the labor movement after serving as the Associate Director for the New Jersey Regional Coalition, a statewide interfaith organization focused on issues related to regional equity, immigrant rights and fair housing. Karen was appointed to the Affordable Housing Commission of her town (Montclair, New Jersey), to help explore and identify housing options that enhance economic and racial diversity. She previously worked as the Senior Organizer of the New Jersey Environmental Federation on a campaign to encourage recycling and reuse as an alternative to building garbage incinerators. Karen began her organizing career in New York City, organizing low wage service workers such as telephone operators, hotels maids, nursing home workers and clerical employees into unions. She graduated from San Jose State University with a Masters of Social Worker (MSW), with concentration in community organizing and social planning. She has taught undergraduate courses in labor history, collective bargaining and labor economics at Rutgers University, Ramapo State College and at the National Labor College.
