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Victory! United Methodist Church Divests from Private Prisons

The United Methodist Church has divested from Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group!
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Prison Industry Divestment Campaign

National Day of Action
Join the Fight Today
Enlace, in partnership with community groups and unions across the US, is calling on all public and private institutions to divest their holdings in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, America’s largest private prison corporations which have profited from billions in taxpayer money. Watch the Campaign Video.
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Peer Trainer Program Grows

The Enlace Institute’s Peer Trainer Program, is showing a 41% increase in enrolled participants in its second two-year training series.
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Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, 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.

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.

Amanda Garcés, Campaign Coordinator

Amanda worked at Enlace Member IDEPSCA as the Administrative Controller, Mobile Voices Coordinator and Day Laborer Organizer. She brings an extensive background in organizing day laborers and other immigrant groups in New Jersey and Los Angeles. As an immigrant, she knows of the daily struggles immigrants face and has dedicated herself to achieving social justice for immigrant families. Her commitment to the growth of organizations that support immigrant rights has prompted her to co-develop popular communication projects. She co-created mobile voices because she believes that we must become our own media and follow IDEPSCA’s motto of “reading reality to write our own history”.

Interns

Prison Divestment Campaign
Masami Tabata
Joanna Vazquez
Joseph Sicaeros Saurez
Diana Garcia
Yolva Gil
Jonathan De La Cruz
Garrick Ruiz
Matthew Friberg
Princess Masilungan
Nati Carrera

Seafood Worker Justice Campaign
Sandra Casas
America Gonzalez
Maurisa Chong
Candy Ortega
Jennifer Carcamo
Alice Berliner
Sophia Kim
Yamil Garcia
Luis Arellano

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