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leadership
“I want to be able to drive by those job sites and SEE
that people of color from every nationality and culture,
that our whole community, is involved. That everyone has
equality and an equal opportunity to work. And I want to be
able to say, ‘I did my part. I was involved. I was a part of
making that happen.’” - Wanda Toth, African
American service worker and member of the Family Wage Jobs
Steering Committee
LELO
works to promote the voices and experiences of those whom
many in positions of power in our society would prefer to
ignore, if not entirely dismiss: the African American single
working mom who struggles to find a new job after a
devastating layoff, determined not to lose the home that
offers stability and pride to her teenage daughter; the
undocumented Latino construction worker who is afraid to
question his illegal working conditions for fear of losing
his “good” job because it at least provides for his family;
the young Ethiopian immigrant worker who has distanced
himself from a life of petty drug dealing to fight his way
into a union construction trades apprenticeship, only to
learn that it may be months before he is placed on a job
site.
LELO puts to practice our
slogan, “Ordinary workers speaking for ourselves,” with
concrete organizing and political education activities that
give ordinary, low-income workers of color and women workers
the opportunity, the skills, and the “back-up” to speak for
themselves and force both the public agencies and private
institutions that impact them and their families to not only
listen up, but change their practices as a result. Workers
in our activist base report that to move beyond a view that
their “problems” are their own fault, to be able to see the
issues that they face in a broader social and political
context, to build relationships with other workers and their
families who share the same struggles, and to have the
chance to do something about it, transforms then
personally, and changes how they relate to their community.
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