Labor Summer 2023 Graduation
Celebrating the Graduating Class of 2023 Labor Summer Interns
Friday, August 11, 2023
8:00AM-4:00PM Oakland Marriott City Center
1001 Broadway, closest to 12th Street BART
We are excited to see you at the first-ever UC-wide Labor Summer Graduation on August 11! Labor Summer will graduate a record 134 interns who have spent the summer sharpening their organizing and research skills. In the morning, interns are invited to workshops and a job fair. The graduation festivities are set from 2:00-4:00PM and include well wishes from labor leaders, elected officials, UC Labor Center staff, and others.
8:00-8:30AM – Registration and Hotel Check Out/Arrivals
8:30-9:30 Breakfast
9:30-10:00AM – Welcome
10:00-10:15 – Break Out into Workshops
10:15-11:15AM – Workshop Series 1
Workshop A: Self Care: Staying in the Movement for the Long Haul
Workshop B: Panel/Job Fair
Workshop C: Art and the Labor Movement Workshop
11:15 – 11:30AM Rotate and Switch To Second Workshop
11:30AM-12:30PM – Workshop Series 2
Workshop A: Self Care: Staying in the Movement for the Long Haul
Workshop B: Panel/Job Fair
Workshop C: Art and the Labor Movement Workshop
12:30-1:40PM – Lunch (Grand Ballroom) & Interviews (Room 210)
1:40 –2:00PM – Transition from Lunch to Graduation Ceremony Area
(Grand Ballroom)
2:00-4:00PM – Graduation (livestreamed)
4:00–5:00PM – Dessert and Close Out
This event is at capacity, we cannot accept any more guests at this point. If you had confirmed but are no longer able to attend the event, please contact Beatriz@berkeley.edu or Devon at Devonbaker@berkeley.edu
Workshop Speakers and Details
Welcoming
Danielle Mahones, Director, Leadership Development Program, UC Berkeley Labor Center
Danielle Mahones is a skilled facilitator and trainer, and has 30 years of experience in social justice movement work. For nine years she served as the executive director of the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO), a racial justice organization dedicated to building a social justice movement led by people of color. As executive director, she still kept her hand in direct program work by facilitating Spanish-language organizing trainings, providing strategic and organizational consultations to key allies, developing curricula for the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s California Lead Organizer Institute, and co-founding new organizations such as the Black Organizing Project and BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity).
Prior to this Danielle spent a decade working in the labor movement. She organized hotel workers with HERE Local 2850 and janitors with SEIU Local 1877, and directed new organizing and contract campaigns for Stanford hospital and university workers with SEIU Local 715 (now 521). She has worked as an independent consultant to community, labor, and philanthropic organizations, including The California Endowment’s East Oakland Building Healthy Communities initiative, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Latino Outreach Program of the League of Conservation Voters, the Ella Baker Center, and the Bay Area Black Workers Center. She joined the staff of the Labor Center in 2014 to provide technical assistance to the National Black Worker Center and Bay Area Black Worker Center.
In her current role as director of the Leadership Development program at the Labor Center, Danielle leads the team that provides the trainings, workshops, leadership schools, and technical assistance to unions, worker organizations, and community organizations. She is a lead trainer and facilitator in many of the Labor Center’s core programs, and also leads the Labor Summer internship program. She co-convenes a workers’ rights learning cohort of Bay Area workers centers with the Chinese Progressive Association.
WORKSHOP A: Self Care
Room 211 Ground Floor
Presenter: Huyen Kiki Vo
Huyen “Kiki” Vo, LCSW is a licensed therapist at her private practice and a mental health clinician at Stanford Medicine’s Children Health. As a DACAmented immigrant from Vietnam, she has personally experienced navigating systematic barriers and is now a fierce advocate for her community. Huyen provides mental health services to children, individuals, and families from diverse backgrounds in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, anxiety, stress management, depression, and intergenerational trauma. Huyen’s mission is to uplift her community by providing mental wellness tools and resources that empower individuals to not just survive and heal, but also thrive in life.
WORKSHOP B: Panel/Job Fair
Skyline Room on 21st Floor
Overview
A variety of staff organizers and researchers from different worker centers, community organizations and unions, including host sites, have been invited to share upcoming job opportunities at their organizations in an effort to build relationships and recruit from our labor summer intern pool. These panelists will also be available for smaller 1:1 conversations with interested individuals and share feedback and advice about entering the labor movement
workforce.
Panelists:
Noelle Trinidad Taylor, Human Resource and Administrative Manager, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
As a child who immigrated to the US after witnessing the 1986 People Power Movement in the Philippines, it instilled a great understanding of what it means to organize and to speak truth to power. Noelle’s unofficial title is “The Resource for the Humans of EBASE.” Her experience in organizational administration helps cultivate a welcoming and hospitable work environment. Her passion for community building puts the priority on creating and strengthening collaborations between internal and external partners. EBASE has allowed her to practice this with intention.In her free time, Noelle enjoys cooking, photography, gardening, and camping with her family.
Patricia Contreras-Flores, Immigrant Rights and Empowerment Program Manager, Street Level Health Project
Patricia or Pati (con acento Mexicano NO gringo) and go by she/they. Part Purepecha/raised here in the Bay (Occupied Ohlone territory) and leaned into being a strong guerrera noble here in Huichin/Oakland after 24 years of residing here in the town. I am a medicine carrier and healer in training. My tierra caliente Michoacan roots keep me very grounded to my humble origins. And my origins of super chingones. My people are obreros and land protectors, that is from where I try to move from. I love to run long distances in the mountains, sing, create and cultivate medicine in all its presentations.
Iris Barrera Hurtado, Organizer, Trabajadores Unidos Workers United
Iris, pronouns they/elle/ella/el, was raised on the central coast within the agricultural community of Salinas and Watsonville where their dad worked picking strawberries in the fields of Watsonville and Salinas, and their mom, picking raspberries and blackberries in the fields of Watsonville. Growing up in a low-income household, they became passionate about getting involved in social issues and had the opportunity of getting involved with TUWU to grow to become an organizer and fight alongside the working class in San Francisco for dignity and respect in their workplace! Iris has been an organizer at TUWU since 2019, starting with their first campaign alongside Burger King workers and supporting other workers from different industries in SF to fight wage theft in their workplace. In their downtime, Iris enjoys going on hikes in the forests of Santa Cruz and identifying mushrooms.
Anthony Carroll, Strategic Researcher, Nor Cal Carpenters Union
Anthony is a strategic researcher with Nor Cal Carpenters Union. Since joining the Carpenters in 2022, his work has focused on their efforts in the housing policy space, as well as their ongoing campaigns to sign new contractors and hold bad actors in the construction industry accountable. Prior to joining the Carpenters, Anthony was a researcher at an affordable housing non-profit based in San Francisco, where he worked on program evaluations and policy design for state and local governments.
Anthony is a Labor Summer alumnus, spending summer 2019 working with Dr. Steven Pitts to evaluate the challenges facing Black workers in the Bay Area, and the role unions can play in improving employment outcomes for formerly incarcerated people.
Anthony earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in economics with a minor in mathematics from Northeastern University.
Jason Oringer, Senior Research Coordinator with the Property Services Division, SEIU International
Jason Oringer is a Senior Research Coordinator with the Property Services Division of SEIU. He focuses on investigating companies, industry trends, workplace practices and legal and regulatory issues primarily in the security services and janitorial industries to aid in worker organizing as well as raising workplace standards and training in cooperation with affiliates, member leaders, allies and advocates. This work has contributed to campaigns that have helped tens of thousands of security officers win a union and improved wages and working conditions over the past decade. In the past he has worked with other unions and locals including SEIU USWW, Workers United, UniteHere, CFA, the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO. Jason is a proud UCR alumni as well as the University of New Mexico.
Edgar Wong-Chen, Associate Director, UC Davis Labor and Community Center of the Greater Capitol Region at UC Davis Law
Edgar Wong-Chen is the current Associate Director of the UC Davis Labor and Community Center of the Greater Capitol Region at UC Davis Law. Through an agreement between UC Davis and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses (CNA/NNU) he will serve this role in partnership between the two organizations.He has served as a researcher with CNA/NNU for the past 13 years and is also teaching as a visiting community scholar with the UC Davis Asian American Studies Department focusing on topics such as health equity, the healthcare industry, and community and labor organizing. His research and teaching have focused on the financialization of the healthcare industry and its effects on communities as well as on international labor organizing in Asia and critiquing corporate social responsibility.
Amelia Bunch, Security Division for SEIU United Service Workers West
Amelia Bunch coordinates the Security Division for SEIU United Service Workers West, which represents over 15,000 security officers across the State of California. She is dedicated to teaching working people what they can achieve when they organize and act collectively. In 2022, she led the campaign that took on some of the world’s largest employers, like Allied Universal, and helped negotiate the best collective bargaining agreement in the country for California security officers.
Prior to joining United Service Workers West, Amelia worked with SEIU 1021, where she led public sector worker support for the No Coal in Oakland campaign, which opposed a developer’s intent to move coal through Oakland neighborhoods to the Port of Oakland, putting the health of residents in danger. The groundbreaking campaign brought together a unique coalition of labor, environmental groups, and community partners. The campaign succeeded in pushing the City of Oakland to pass a law banning the shipment of coal through the City.
Amelia comes from a union family where her father was an active member of the postal workers union, National Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU), and her mother was a member of the National Nurses Union. Her early exposure to their union fights and victories helped her understand the power of organizing and led to her career in labor. Amelia enjoys nautical fiction and doing needlework in her spare time.
WORKSHOP C: Art and Labor Movement Workshop
Room 208 Ground Floor
Presenter: Fernando Martí
Fernando Martí is a printmaker, community architect, writer and poet based in San Francisco. His etchings, linocuts, screen prints, and constructions explore the clash of the Third World within the heart of Empire, and highlight the tension between inhabiting place / reclaiming culture, and building something transformative. He brings his formal training in architecture and urbanism to his public projects, including his altar ofrendas. Fernando studied architecture and urbanism at UC Berkeley, and has taught design studios at Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. Today, he works on housing issues as co-director of San Francisco’s Council of Community Housing Organizations. Originally from Ecuador, he has been deeply involved in San Francisco’s community struggles since the mid-90s, creating art for and with many local organizations, including the SF Print Collective, the Center for Political Education, PODER, and the SF Community Land Trust. His art and poetry can be found in an occasional ‘zine entitled Amor y Lucha and on his Facebook Notes. One of his biggest frustrations is keeping his houseplants happy. He can be contacted at el_compay_nando at yahoo dot com.
Graduation Ceremony Speakers
Ken Jacobs, UC Berkeley Center Chair
Ken Jacobs is the chair of the University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, where he has been a labor specialist since 2002. His areas of focus include low-wage work, labor standards policies, sectoral wage setting, and health care coverage. Recent research includes analyses of California Proposition 22 and drivers’ earnings, worker misclassification, and the effect unions on wages and benefits; prospective studies of proposed city and state minimum wage laws; the relationship between wages, turnover, security, and safety at U.S. airports; the economic benefits of care work; and the public cost of low-wage work.
Jacobs is the co-editor with Michael Reich and Miranda Dietz of When Mandates Work: Raising Labor Standards at the Local Level from University of California Press. Jacobs led a multi-campus program providing research and technical assistance to unions, consumer stakeholders, and policymakers on the effects of the Affordable Care Act and measures to cover the remaining uninsured. His work has been covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio.
Keith D. Brown, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, Alameda Labor Council
Keith Brown is currently the executive secretary-treasurer for the Alameda Labor Council. Brown, a former president of the Oakland Education Association. Keith is an Oakland native, and has worked for 22 years as a teacher in the public school system. He was a teacher at Bret Harte Middle School, the same school he attended as a child.
Brown grew up in education – his mother was an instructional assistant at Hawthorne Elementary School in the Fruitvale District. As an undergrad, he worked in a youth mentoring program. “I saw the brilliance of the young people, and the need for African-American male teachers in our schools, and I decided to become a teacher,” he said.
CA Assemblymember Liz Ortega, District 20
Liz Ortega proudly represents District 20, one of the most ethnically diverse districts in the state. It includes Hayward, San Leandro, most of Union City, portions of Dublin and Pleasanton, and several unincorporated communities.”
Liz Ortega is a longtime labor leader and activist from an immigrant family who has dedicated her career to fighting for the working-class people of Alameda County. Her undocumented mother brought three-year-old Liz and her family to California to build a better life. Her family’s struggles shaped the values that guide her work.
As Statewide Political Director for AFSCME Local 3299, the University of California’s largest employee union, Liz secured the passage of state legislation to maintain and protect essential service jobs at every UC campus. The first Latina to be elected Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Alameda Labor Council, Liz has been an East Bay leader in the fight for equitable wages, health care, and safe, secure jobs.
Liz, her husband Jason (a former School Board Member), and daughter Yamara live in San Leandro, where Yamara attends local public schools.
Host Site and Community Allies Speakers
Paola Chacon, Organizer/ Field Representative, UNITE HERE Local 2
Paola Chacon is a first generation Latina from the Bay Area and a former 2021 UC Berkeley Labor Summer intern. She is now currently working full time with her former host site, Unite Here Local 2. Paola’s experience as an organizing intern laid the groundwork for her skills in building worker power and rank and file leadership. She is excited to see future generations of Labor Summer interns continue the fight with her at Unite Here.
Saabir Lockett, Deputy Director – Civic Engagement & Faith-Rooted Organizing, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
Saabir Lockett is the Deputy Director of Civic Engagement & Faith-Rooted Organizing. He is a Mayor appointed Commissioner for the city of Oakland, a board member of Urban Equity, a certified mentor/ trainer for the re-entry population with Pathways 2 Peace, and a community advocate and activist leading groundbreaking strategies to improve the conditions of underserved communities of color.
As the Deputy Director of Civic Engagement and Faith-Rooted Organizing, he is principally responsible for overseeing two key areas of organizing & power building: EBASE’s faith-rooted organizing program, Faith Alliance for A Moral Economy (FAME), and EBASE & East Bay Action’s (EBA) political and civic engagement strategies, all in service of the campaign and long-term power-building goals.
Saabir is a devoted Father and was formerly incarcerated. His innate passion for community empowerment is connected to an empathetic recognition – from an early age – that some people have access to essential resources and a sense of well-being while others problematically do not. This duality is the foundation for Saabir’s work: celebrating and energizing communities through moral framing while changing policy and creating resources for radical social justice, sustainable and equitable systems, and community transformation, healing, liberation, and fulfillment of people’s humanity.
Intern Speakers
Kenia Rojo Ozuna, UC Merced, Sociology, Graduating Senior, Organizing Track
UC Merced Labor Summer Program
Host Site: UAW 2865
I am from El Sobrante, CA although I was born in Tijuana, Mexico and I come from a mixed-status family. I graduated from UC Merced this past spring with a major in Sociology. My hobbies include weightlifting, makeup, and filming videos. As a first-generation, undocumented student, I’m interested in helping families who are like mine because I know first-hand how hard it is to overcome obstacles. I hope to one day become a leader in my community who works with immigrant families and helps them navigate the systems that create inequality. Through my studies, I’ve learned a lot about the social struggles that minorities face. I’m looking for the next step where I can continue to grow and use the skills I’ve acquired to contribute to the communities of the Central Valley. With the knowledge I’ve gained on economic and social justice issues that impact immigrants and their families, I aim to become an advocate for my community and address these issues. Eventually, I am motivated to use my resources from the program and take what I’ve learned to the Bay Area so I can help immigrant families there as well.
Reni Ernesto Araque, UCLA, Double Major in Labor Studies and European Literature with German, Organizing and Legal Track
UCLA Labor Summer Program
Host Site: The Los Angeles College Faculty Guild, AFT 1521
Reni is a new addition to the labor movement and hopes to continue impacting the community. As a transfer student and a non-traditional student, Reni has worked many jobs and understands that employers rarely have their employees’ best interests. Reni was significantly influenced by labor as an essential cross-sectional thread that can genuinely impact and connect many different communities. This concept was taught by Reverend James Lawson Jr. and Dr. Kent Wong in the Nonviolence and Social Movement class at UCLA. After graduating from UCLA, Reni was immersed in Labor Summer 2023 and will continue working for a non-profit that helps impacted youth in Los Angeles improve their reading abilities. Reni is now an MBA candidate at UC Davis focusing on Organizational Leadership and hopes to continue working in spaces to empower the community, especially those from disenfranchised backgrounds. Reni grew up in a mixed immigration status household and wishes to become a beacon of information for undocumented communities.
Isabel Penman, UC Berkeley, Political Economy, minor in Human Rights, Graduating Senior, Applied Research and Policy Track
UC Berkeley Labor Summer Program
Host Site: California State University Employees Union (CSUEU)
Isabel Marie Penman is a recent graduate from UC Berkeley with a BS in Political Economy and a minor in Human Rights. For the past three years, she has worked to fight for economic equity and basic needs access in her community with UC labor union AFSCME 3299, the UC’s largest union representing service-workers, janitorial staff, and healthcare workers. In this role, she’s worked one-on-one with workers, represented AFSCME 3299 to community and campus partners, and led student and worker engagement campaigns on the Berkeley campus. She believes she is lucky to have experienced and contributed to the deep-rooted community and student organizing that exists in Berkeley and the greater East Bay. These experiences have demonstrated how winning the economic and social protections our communities greatly need requires radical civic engagement, collective action, and organized political will.
She is truly grateful for her time with UC Labor Summer and her placement site, California State University Employees Union (CSUEU). These experiences have solidified her passion for the labor movement, and she hopes to one day combine her background in international human rights and labor work by building a career in the international workers space.