Board of Directors

Members:

Susan Alva

Susan is the founder and Director of the Migration Policy and Resource Center at Occidental College’s Urban and Environmental Policy Institute in Los Angeles. Previously, Susan was the Director of the Immigration and Citizenship Project of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA). She has also worked as the Directing Attorney of Public Counsel’s Legalization Appeals Project, and as the Supervising Attorney for the L.A. Center for Law and Justice in East L.A. While attending law school, she worked full time in the Immigration Unit of San Diego’s Legal Aid Society. In the mid-1970’s, Susan worked with the United Farm Workers Union at the height of their largest organizing and union election drive. From 1974 to 1976, she worked for the California Rural Legal Assistance in the San Joaquin Valley. Born in New York City, Susan is the daughter of Mexican and Dominican immigrant parents.

Eduardo “Eddie” Canales

Born of migrant farm worker parents, Eddie spent his early years in a rural, migrant border town outside of Texas, while his father worked in steel mills in Gary, Indiana and East Chicago. They were poor: he did not have the luxury of inside bathroom facilities until 6th grade. Early jobs included farm work, shoe shining, barber/beauty shop sweeping and the neighborhood youth corps, followed by factory work, cafeteria cleanup, and bottling plant/warehouse work. After junior college, Eddie attended the University of Houston, where he became involved with MAYO and La Raza Unida Party, beginning a long history of political activism and organizing. He has served the social and economic justice movements in many capacities and with several organizations, including the Congreso de Atzlan (the National Committee of La Raza Unida), the Texas Farmworkers, the Longshoremen, SEIU’s School District Campaign of custodians and cafeteria workers, and Centro Aztlan in Houston, where he was a Director for ten years. Eduardo has been an organizer in Colorado, New Mexico, Eastern Washington, Montana, Idaho, Texas and Wyoming; he has agitated, organized, negotiated and provided direct services around issues ranging from economic and labor justice to anti-police brutality.

Bill Chandler

Bill Chandler is the founding Executive Director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA). An eyewitness to the brutal immigration raids of the 1950’s, he has been continuously involved in supporting the rights of immigrant workers. Bill has been an organizer for more than 50 years, beginning as a laboratory worker in 1960 when he helped build SEIU Local 434 at Los Angeles County Hospital, to working with the United Farm Workers during the 1965 Delano-based grape workers strike, to the historic, trans-national, and powerful Starr County farm workers strike in 1966. Sent as an organizer by Cesar Chavez, he witnessed first hand both the U.S. and Mexican governments’ brutal but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to repress labor justice. Since then, his organizing focus has been on the lowest paid workers in the South, including farm workers, hospitality, health care, and immigrant workers. Bill has pro-actively served the struggle for affirmative action in the Labor Movement: every union he has organized in the South has been led by women of color, and MIRA’s board of directors is a majority African-American and Latino board.

Lillian Galedo

Lillian Galedo is Executive Director of Filipinos Advocates for Justice, formerly Filipinos for Affirmative Action in Oakland, CA, where she has worked since 1980 towards its mission of organizing, leadership development, service provision, and advocacy for social and economic justice. Lillian is also the national co-chair of the National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE), working to win recognition and equal status for Filipino WWII veterans. Lillian is a founding board member of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), is currently on the board of Oakland Asian Cultural Center, and is chair of the East Bay Asian Consortium. She is a recipient of the Wallace Gerbode Fellowship (1990), the Bannerman Fellowship (1997) and Eureka Communities Fellowship (1998).

Isabel Garcia

Monica Hernandez

Monica Hernandez is the regional organizer for the Southeast Immigrant Rights Network (SEIRN). A native of Mexico with roots in both countries, Monica moved to Tennessee in 2001 to join the Highlander Center's education team. She led Highlander's immigration work, co-developing and co-facilitating the Institute for Immigrant Leadership Development (INDELI) from 2004 to 2006. INDELI's goals were to develop Laino grassroots leadership and organizations in the Southeast. She was also the lead staff person on the Threads Leadership and Organizing School from 2008 to 2010. She was the Founding Chair of the Board of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, serving from 2003 to 2007. Before moving to the South, Monica worked at the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights in San Francisco from 1988 to 2001.

Hamid Khan

Hamid Khan is the former Executive Director of the South Asian Network (SAN), helping to create the first community-based organization dedicated to informing and empowering thousands of South Asians in Southern California to act as agents of change in eliminating biases, discrimination and injustices.

Hamid has been actively organizing against inhumane immigraton enforcement policies and has been a leading advocate for th peace movement, speaking up against the current wave of occupation and violence at home and abroad.

Gerald Lenoir

Gerald is the coordinator of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), an organization founded in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area in April 2006 to support fair and just immigration reform. He is also a co-founder of the Priority Africa Network (PAN), a Bay Area organization that advocates for progressive policies toward Africa and organizes dialogues between African Americans and black immigrants. Gerald has provided leadership for progressive causes for 30 years within the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-racist movement, the peace and solidarity movements, and electoral campaigns.

Monami Maulik

Born in Calcutta, India, Monami has been an immigrant and youth organizer and in 1999, co-founded DRUM--Desis Rising Up & Moving. DRUM organizes low income South Asian immigrants facing deportation for racial and immigrant justice. Prior to that Monami served on the Steering Committee of New York Taxi Workers Alliance and worked with CAAAV (Organizing Asian Communities). Monami also serves on the Steering Committee of Immigrant Communities in Action and the Advisory Board of the North Star Fund. In 2001, Monami received the Union Square Award and the Open Society Institute Community Fellowship of the Soros Foundation. She is currently the Director of DRUM & Organizer with its Immigrant Justice Program.

Rogelio Nunez

Rogelio is the Director of Harlingen, Tx-based Casa de Proyecto Libertad, which provides immigration legal services, engages in community organizing and advocates for immigrant rights. He graduated from San Benito High School, and became involved in the Chicano movement in college, during the 1970's. At graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin, he did 5 years of research in the world of immigrant labor. 

He sits on the Board of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild. He was a founding member of the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito, Texas. The center is a multidisciplinary arts center with a Chicano focus, and is now in its 20th year.

Christian Ramirez

Christian Ramirez has worked for several years with the American Friends Service Committee and is the former director of Project Voice, a nationwide AFSC immigrant rights initiative. He is a columnist for Diario San Diego and Agencia Fronteriza de Noticias, and has resided in Barrio Logan, in the San Diego area, since 1999. Since 1994, Christian Ramirez has worked to promote and defend human rights for border communities and has served in leadership positions in several grassroots organizations in the region. As a prominent human rights promoter, he has been invited to speak on issue related to the border and human rights in local, national and international conferences, including a first NGO consultation on global border enforcement conditions held in Geneva in June.

Christian was born in the border city of Tijuana. At a young age, along with his family, he made the trek to the other side and lived in San Ysidro where he attended middle school. He went on to study anthropology and history at San Diego State University.

Janis Rosheuval

Executive Director, Families for Freedom, New York City.

Juan Manuel Sandoval

Director, Seminario Permanente de Estudios Chicanos y de Fronteras, México

Catherine Tactaquin

Executive Director, NNIRR (See biographical information on NNIRR staff page)