Grecia [the] Organizer

Name: Grecia [the] Organizer Location: San Francisco, CA I am Grecia,the Community Organizer, (un)documented immigrant, womyn of power, sister, daughter, transnational human being, electoral strategist/organizer

A little about me

I migrated to the United States at the age of 13. I have witness my family fight for their children's access to higher education, access to security, access to financial stability, access to clean water and air and just plain dignity and human recognition in this country. It was because of the injustices that I overcame with my family as a young immigrant womyn of color that I developed a keen interest for building political power for marginalized communities

I am committed to building power for the low income communities one electoral and community strategy, blog, discussion and action at a time.

I would describe myself as a

offline activitst

Why I deserve a Netroots Nation Scholarship

I am a newbie at online organizing but I am committed and willing to learn. I am also one of the few bloggers that is working to provide more bilingual content (on my case Spanish/English). There is an information gap and consequently and engagement gap, created when our organizations, bloggers and others don’t incorporate multilingual features, for lack of capacity or other reasons. There are only a handful of examples of fully bilingual or multilingual sources of information and even less of progressive issues. We, as part of the social media organizing movement have to be aware of the obstacles and barriers that we are creating, specially when they involve the same populations that we are trying to inform. As our campaigns develop and social media continues to grow, we are going to have to be ready to engage a diverse community and population. That future is not far as social media continues to grow and technology becomes ever more popularized even among communities that had previously lacked access. I want to be part of this conference so that I can I can learn from what others are doing to address this information gap and spark those conversations and discussions that can be translated into concrete actions and strengths for our campaigns!

I manage these blogs

Grecia [the] Organizer GO!
Grecia [la] Organizadora GO!

The blogs I use most are

America's Voice
Colorlines

What first inspired me to get involved

In order to understand my own political identity as a young undocumented student I became very active around the DREAM Act campaign and Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Not much later I started to organize around electoral campaigns first on the presidential primaries, working towards the candidacy of Barack Obama and later on running electoral campaigns on the Central Coast in Califorinia targeting, educating and engaging Latino voters, young voters and low income voters in local initiatives and candidates.

How I've gotten others involved

As an "offline organizer" I developed and identified new leaders to create effective campaigns around issues like immigration, housing, public transportation, education, affordable housing.

The blog post I am most proud of

http://greciaorganizer.tumblr.com/post/3557180832/aint-no-power-like-the-power-of-the-students

More about my volunteer work

I was recently appointed to the Equity Advisory Committee (EAC) of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. I am also in the Editorial Board of Ella's Voice for the Ella Baker Center of Human Rights.
To learn more about my role with the SF EAC you can go here: http://greciaorganizer.tumblr.com/post/4419120219/attention-all-freedom-loving-people-sf-hrc

I also volunteer with organizations like the California Immigrant Policy Center, Mobilize the Immigrant Vote and others.

My suggested bumper sticker slogan

DANGER: Precinct Walking in progress #getitus #politicalpower

My idea for a cool new online action

I don't think it is wild... but here goes

I believe that it is essential for organizations committed to racial, environmental and economic justice to seize the moment and build permanent electoral infrastructure to create concrete victories for their issues, as well as a sustainable voting power for our communities.