ORGANIZING
“We must recognize that workers all over the world share our
struggles. Whether we are fighting for land, health
care, housing or education, we must work together and
support one another.”
-
Ana Semião, Domestic worker for 17 years and President of
the Nat’l Federation of Domestic Workers of Brazil, member
of LELO’s International Worker-to-Worker Project
LELO’s constituents are
workers of color (African American, Asian Pacific American,
Latino, and Native American) and women workers (including
working class white women) in the Seattle area. We define
workers as people who must support themselves by earning a
wage, are employed by someone else, or are unemployed.
The Tyree Scott International
Worker to Worker Project’s constituency includes workers
from developing countries and their organizations. In the
Family Wage Jobs Organizing Project and Low-Income Drivers’
Relicensing Project our constituents include trade unionists
of color, women trade unionists, low-income workers of color
and recent immigrants being denied access to family wage
jobs and low-income people disproportionately impacted by
the criminal (in)justice system.
Working
class people of color make up LELO’s entire Board of
Directors. Organizing committees made up of workers of
color, women workers, and a few white and/or middle class
allies lead each LELO project. Our constituents
benefit from LELO’s work because they win concrete economic
and social changes that improve their lives and they
participate in the creation of a broad-based economic and
social justice movement that addresses their interests and
promotes their leadership.
LELO
leads the following projects designed to transform our
values and political analysis into practice and tangibly
improve the conditions faced by workers and their
communities:
Women
Leadership Team: As an
inter-generational, multi-racial women led team, our mission
is to build relationships, use community organizing, and political
education to empower women to be leaders locally and abroad.
LELO's
Debt & Poverty work is aimed at preventing the use of credit
scores to denying Workers access to housing, jobs, medical care
and transportation.
The
Tyree Scott International Worker to
Worker Project creates opportunities for ordinary workers
from different countries to communicate with each other - in
their own languages - and share information about the global
economy and its effects on their lives. The project’s 2005 theme
is “Educate Against Privatization.” From Bush’s Social Security
Scheme to the selling off of public land through the Hope VI
housing redevelopments, the privatization of public resources
is taking a toll on working people. The one-year education campaign
will seek to inspire local actions against privatization and
link local workers with members of the more than 20 grassroots
workers’ organizations around the world who participate in our
Worker-to-Worker network.
More to
come...
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