2025

Labor Power & Strategy Mini-Fellowship

Program Overview

The Labor Power & Strategy mini-fellowship is designed for labor leaders and organizers, including worker centers, looking to build power and capacity now in service of long-term strategy. Using the call for a May 1, 2028 national strike, and the examples of aligning contracts for power in Minneapolis and Connecticut, we will examine what it takes to build alignment between unions and social movement organizations around shared demands, fighting common targets, and building collective power. The course will use the textbook Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World to study six sources of power that employers and ruling elites use to maintain the status quo, and that workers and unions can use to fight for justice. We will study seven lineages of social change strategies to see what other traditions might contribute to labor movement strategy. We will introduce a wide variety of tools to develop strategy from many disciplines, traditions and sectors inside and outside social change. 

Meet the Fellows

  • Jessenia Rivera is a proud indigenous rank-and-file member of the International Union of Operating Engineers. She brings hands-on expertise and a strong commitment to community and advocacy. Jessenia champions inclusive practices and supports initiatives that empower underrepresented tradespeople.

  • Tracy has spent the past 25 years organizing with UNITE HERE to build power for hotel and hospitality workers in Washington, DC, Northern Virginia and Baltimore.

  • I am Nikki Taylor. I began organizing in 2022 as part of Starbucks Workers United and am now a member of UCW. I’m a mom of two and a wife who enjoys playing video games and cooking.

  • Sean Embly is a lifelong Washingtonian and a former rank-and-file warehouse worker who began organizing with his union over first-day paid sick leave. For the past 10 years, he has worked on staff with UFCW 3000, organizing grocery, retail, healthcare, and food packing and processing workers.

  • Katlyn Dillard is an organizer committed to education justice, prison abolition, and building worker power. She began organizing through union and electoral campaigns, driven by a belief in collective action and transformative change.

  • Bethany Holmes has organized hospitality workers for more than two decades across CA, AZ, TX, and PA. An early experience confronting sexual harassment through collective action at her hotel job inspired her to pursue labor organizing. She is passionate about creating sustainable approaches to social justice work.

  • Janelle DeJan, Master Electrician and trades instructor, is Co-Chair of the National Tradeswomen Taskforce. She leads advocacy to expand equity in the trades, unifies tradeswomen’s voices, and supports workforce initiatives to connect underrepresented workers to high-wage careers.

  • Mateo Gasparotto is an abolitionist Peruvian American organizer. He began organizing during high school for the liberation of the Palestinian people. He has organized for the rights of the LGBTQIA+, immigrant, and returning citizen communities.

  • Connor Courtney is an organizer with UCW. He began organizing in Cincinnati, Ohio, through the Bernie Sanders campaign and later worked on citywide electoral efforts.

  • Destiny is an Amazon worker and an organizer in C.A.U.S.E. (Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment), a worker-led movement started in Garner, NC, fighting for a living wage, better working conditions, and fair labor practices for workers at Amazon.

  • Anya Sippen is an organizer with the North Carolina public school staff union, NCAE. She taught Spanish in public schools in Mississippi and North Carolina.

  • Emiliano Rodriguez is an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 274, the hotel and food service workers’ union in Philadelphia. He has spent the past 18 years helping build Local 274 into a strong, fighting union. Born in El Paso, TX, he organized in the immigrant rights movement before joining the union.

  • Ariel Moore is a change-maker, strategist, and second-generation Angeleno, born just weeks before the 1992 riots. As the daughter of a formerly incarcerated parent, her work is informed by the ramifications of carceral capitalism and the power of the Black radical tradition.

  • Nichole Foster (Ute Mountain Ute/Diné) is Two-Spirit and leads the E.P.I.C. program at COJWJ. They serve on the National TF on Trades Women's Issues Steering Committee, are President of RM Pride at Work Denver, a Denver AI Commissioner, and one of many Co-Creators of Native Women in the Trades.

  • Bob Brown is a legislative analyst and union shop leader based in Washington, DC. He is in his second consecutive job proudly represented by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild. In his free time, Bob is an avid cross stitcher, trivia team captain, and fan of the Olympic sport of curling.

  • Kendra Valdez is a union organizer and leader who has led contract campaigns, strikes, and issue fights for frontline workers, and has also spent time as an organizer in the Immigrant Rights Movement. She grew up in Springfield, OR, and enjoys cooking with her family and having fun with her two daughters.

  • Azure Akamay is an educator, gardener, community builder, and labor organizer. Before serving as president of her teachers’ union, she ran an all-ages art & music space in Anacortes, WA, worked as a legal observer during abolitionist protests in Portland, OR, and supported asylum seekers in Tijuana.

  • Kristin Beller began her career as a kindergarten teacher and started union organizing after a school board majority flip in 2009. She served as a local union president before joining the staff team and now leads the Local Strength department at the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE).

  • Wyatt Rolla is the Senior Transgender Rights Attorney at the ACLU of Virginia, where they engage in integrated campaigns involving litigation, policy, community legal education, electoral, and power building tools. Wyatt is the Co-Chair of ACLU-VA United, a Washington-Baltimore News Guild unit.

  • Anne Langendorfer serves as President of United Campus Workers Southeast (Communications Workers of America Local 3821), a 20-year-old higher education union. She has been involved in campus organizing since 2015.

  • Maria Milliron is an immigrant labor organizer and mother of two. She fights to ensure that all workers—especially the most marginalized—have access to fair wages, safe conditions, and a dignified life.

  • Runda Alamour is a Palestinian-American teacher turned full-time organizer. Over the last decade, she helped to grow the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) as a member before transitioning into a staff role. She organizes with her team all over the state and runs a canvassing program.

  • Ryan Nissim-Sabat has been an organizer with UNITE HERE for the past 25 years, most of that time in Philadelphia. He recently led successful strikes against global food service giant Aramark at all three Philly sports stadiums. He enjoys gardening and running.

  • I am working on organizing Amazon in North Carolina. I was part of history at RDU1, where we held an election to unionize the building. We held rallies, passed out flyers, and I made myself visible for my coworkers.

  • Thenjiwe Phillips is a futurist passionately advocating for workers’ rights and the destigmatization of mental illness. They started organizing at the age of 16 in response to rising anti-immigrant rhetoric. They love voguing and have a deep commitment to achieving an equitable and just society.

Program Details

  • Academic coursework: All participants will  take the course “Power and Strategy,” taught by faculty at the School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU) at CUNY. The course is focused on strategy fundamentals and is based on the book Practical Radicals by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce. “Power and Strategy” will run the length of the semester, from August 26, 2025 through December 22, 2025.

  • Immersive Strategy retreat: Participants are expected to attend one week-long residential strategy retreat for in-person learning. The retreat will be held (location TBA) on October 20, 2025 through October 24, 2025.

  • Strategy coaching and mentorship: Each participant or team will be provided with an experienced Labor and campaign strategy coach with whom they will meet for five to seven hour long coaching sessions after the completing of the course.

  • Zheniah Houston is a Los Angeles-based community organizer and entrepreneur. She leads at the LA Black Worker Center and is writing a Digital Organizing Training & Workbook. Currently pursuing a master’s in Public Policy, her dream is to help Black communities lead in politics and reparations.

Meet the Instructors

Stephanie Luce

Stephanie Luce is Professor of Labor Studies at the School of Labor and Urban Studies, and Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She received her BA in economics at the University of California, Davis and both her PhD in sociology and her MA in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Best known for her research on living wage campaigns and movements, she is the author of Fighting for a Living Wage, and co-author of The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy, and The Measure of Fairness. She is also author of Labor Movements: Global Perspectives. Her latest book, co-authored with Deepak Bhargava, is Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World.

Puya Gerami

Puya Gerami is Distinguished Lecturer at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Born and raised in Connecticut, he started out in the labor movement as an organizer at SEIU 1199 New England and later served as education director for the local. Most recently, he served as founding director of a new statewide progressive coalition called Connecticut For All. He is receiving his PhD in the history department at Yale, with a dissertation entitled “How the State(s) Became the Battlefield: State Employee Unionism, Privatization, and the Struggle to Shape the Public Sector.”