Alexis Mazón is currently working with Steven Pitts on a project to build solidarity between Latina/o immigrant and African American workers with the goal of increasing their power to lead and fight together for better work conditions and economic justice. She has been active in the labor, immigrant rights and environmental justice movements in a range of capacities over the past 19 years. During the early 1990's, she helped start a union organizing drive at Stanford University as a student worker in campus food services. In 2001, she helped organize the successful student takeover and occupation of the Harvard University president's office to demand better wages and benefits for SEIU janitors. From 2003-2007, she served on the bargaining team and was an active member of Communications Workers of America Local 7000. During this time she worked for the City of Tucson Public Defender's Office and served on the Immigrant Defense Task Force of the Arizona Public Defender's Association. For the last 10 years, she has been heavily involved in grassroots organizing and policy advocacy in support of fair and just federal immigration reform and against the build-up of policing, raids, racial profiling, prisons, repressive laws and human rights violations in communities of color along the U.S.-Mexico border and in the interior U.S. She was born in San Salvador, El Salvador to Mexican American/Chicano parents from Nogales, Arizona, a small town divided in half by the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Alexis has a B.A. from Stanford University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Areas of Expertise

• Labor and employment rights
• Union and community organizing
• Immigration
• Criminalization of low-wage workers

Current Projects

A two-year project funded by the Ford Foundation to develop a set of popular education curricula aimed at building stronger working relationships between African American and Latina/o immigrant workers on issues of employment and immigration. The project will build the capacity of unions and community-based workers centers to develop and implement strategies for achieving common goals across race, nationality and migration status. This will be achieved by creating popular education modules in Spanish and English and conducting train-the-trainer workshops in coordination with unions and workers centers across the country. The project also includes technical assistance for two local Bay Area unions who have committed to building their power by developing closer ties between their Latino/a immigrant and African American members.