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Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, Co-Director

Peter has been a labor activist since 1965, starting as a young farm worker in Southern California. He has organized for HERE, SEIU, and CWA, headed two prominent labor councils, started two low-wage worker organizations, and co-founded several labor-community coalitions, membership organizations and political action committees.

In the early 1980s, he started studying both successful social justice movements and value-added processes of corporations. In 1995 and 1996, Peter toured the United States and Mexico, interviewing leaders of 80 low-wage unions and worker centers. He wrote a discussion paper on the challenges to organizing low wage workers based on the interviews and his own experience. A discussion of the paper’s findings among representatives of organizing-oriented worker centers and unions in the U.S. and Mexico led to the founding of Enlace.

Joann Lo, Co-Director

Joann Lo gained much of her initial experience in social activism as a student at Yale University.  After graduation, Joann worked as an organizer for SEIU Locals 399 and 1877.  Before coming to Enlace, Joann worked as the Garment Worker Center lead organizer where garment workers in Los Angeles led a boycott campaign against young women’s retailer Forever 21 which resulted in a settlement of their lawsuit against the company and in Forever 21’s commitment to work with GWC and workers to try to improve conditions in the garment industry.

Mary Mendez, Deputy Director

Mary started out as a worker in a food processing plant in eastern Washington. She engaged over a thousand of her co-workers in a successful union organizing campaign in the early years of NAFTA. In fighting salary differences between European Americans and Latinos, Mary was the first person to win an international grievance against the United States under NAFTA. Among other accomplishments, this effort compelled Mexico to charge the United States with violating the rights of the workers in Washington. She then came to work for Enlace and has been working for over ten years as a trainer and a campaign coordinator. Today Mary specializes in helping groups build leadership from the ground up.

Katharine Riker, Development Coordinator

Katy has been a labor activist for over thirty years, starting in Alameda County (Bay Area) California Welfare Department where she was a member leader of the strike in 1977.  She was an organizer for SEIU Local 715 and has also worked with SEIU Local 535, the CWA Organizing Department and the Printing Specialties Union.  Katy has also worked with Confluence Northwest, a mediation service provider which also gave mediation training.

Daniel Carrillo, Field Organizer

Daniel began organizing in his community against Prop 187 and attacks on immigrant communities.  Since then he has worked on community grassroots around immigration, education, health insurance, gender & sexuality, worker rights, and environmental racism in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. He is a mexica danzante, member of Cetiliztli Nauhcampa, and draws his passion from his family and community.  His work and accomplishments are dedicated to his cousins, Rogelio Jr. and Pierre Barrera, rest in peace, knowing that we fight for a world where the injustices you suffered will not happen again.

 

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