Inspired by My Mom; Union Strong Through The Years
I am proud of my union roots and have tried to honor them throughout my career. My mom is a retired member of SEIU 1199. She worked at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital as a social worker. That's her on a picket line in 1999.
Apparently when I was four years old, I joined her on a picket line. No pictures of that, unfortunately. Her organizer in the 1970s was Dennis Rivera, who eventually became president of SEIU. More on him below. Even after she was promoted to supervisor (belatedly) she refused to leave the union because they had stood up for her. She was the only supervisor that was a member of her union.
I was in high school when my mom gave me her ticket to attend a union rally for Jesse Jackson when he ran for President in 1988.
I took the train down to NYC and got on a bus to Jacob Javits Convention Center. Everyone on the bus was amped up. We were chanting all the way down and the mood at the Convention Center was even more electric.
Dennis's remembrance of Jesse Jackson on the 1199 SEIU website.
Washington State Legislature
A few years after graduating college, after moving to Seattle, I was working in the Washington State Legislature. One of the legislators I worked with was Rep. Velma Veloria, a long-time union leader and activist. (How do I not have any pictures with her?)
SEIU 775 From 2008 to 2011, I worked for SEIU 775, which represents home care workers and long-term care workers in Washington State and Montana. I was close to many of the members of our union. These pictures are from the last annual convention I attended in 2011. I had already given notice, so this ended up being a farewell party.
I particularly enjoyed working with colleagues at other local SEIUs, Linnae Riesen and Sudha Nandagopal.
We used to meet for coffee once a week to talk about communications. I'm surprised I couldn't find a picture of us together in union t-shirts. We must have been too busy working.
In 2008, at the SEIU International Conference, I approached Dennis Rivera and Mary Kay Henry just before they were about to speak, just for a moment.
I introduced myself and mentioned to Dennis that my mom always spoke highly of him and remembered him fondly. If you scroll up, that's Dennis to the left of Jesse Jackson.
United Way of Snohomish County
My union work didn't end there. My next stop was with United Way of Snohomish County in Everett, Washington. Working with Anne Larson, Chris Cote and Betty Welsh to support our labor engagement work meant the world to me.
In January 2013, as we were planning the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, I called into a conference call from Urgent Care to share what I knew from the previous year. I had seriously damaged my knee slipping on ice and actually told the medical staff to give me five minutes before taking me to the back to get checked out. (That’s a story for another time.)
United Way Worldwide
When I was at United Way Worldwide in Alexandria, Virginia, one of the teams I worked closely with was, you guessed it, our Labor Engagement Team. Kelly Temple, Erkeisha Terry, and Josh Cazares in particular were great to work with.
Speaking at our labor conferences in Minneapolis (2016) and Portland (2017), and getting to know our local labor liaisons were some of the highlights of my time there. Working with United Way was incredibly meaningful. Working with the labor team and local partners meant more to me than they probably realized.
You can take this guy out of the union, but you can’t take the union out of this guy.
#UnionStrong #LaborDay
N.B. This started out as a quick social media post to acknowledge Labor Day, my mom's union background and my work with SEIU 775. It turned in to an hours-long search through my photo archives, Google Photos and various Facebook pages. As many photos as I found, there are so many that I wish I had taken, or that I had kept copies of. I didn't realize how strongly I felt about this.
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