Green for All

Interview by B. Jesse Clarke

Participants

•    Juliet Ellis, Executive Director, Urban Habitat
•    Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Executive Director, Green for All, Former Director,  Working Partnerships USA
•    Dorothy Kidd, Co-Chair of Media Alliance and Professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco.
•    Adam Kruggel, Director, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization
•    Shalini Nataraj, Vice President of Programs, Global Fund for Women
•    Renee Saucedo, Community Empowerment Coordinator, La Raza Centro Legal

Clarke: One of the themes that we’re trying to investigate is whether you make a rights framework (tenants’ rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights) part of your organizing work. The United States has a long tradition of civil rights with a certain level of successful organizing, particularly to gain equal rights for African Americans and overcome the legacy of slavery. But people organizing around the right to a job or the right to housing have a much more challenging environment. It’s not a given that people believe that you actually have a right to housing or a right to a job or a right to freedom to control your own social and economic participation.