Dear IRLE Community,
Please join us for the second of three campus visits by candidates for the position of UCLA Labor Center Director. Each applicant will give a talk and lead a conversation on their vision for the future of the Labor Center. We encourage staff, community members, and affiliated faculty to join us and provide feedback on each candidate.
This provides our community the opportunity to interact with prospective applicants and truly get a sense of what each applicant envisions should they be selected as the next Labor Center Director. The public talks will be thirty minutes long, followed by thirty-minute Q&A sessions. We hope you consider joining us next week as these public talks begin. RSVP details for our second public talk are listed below:
Friday, Sept. 29, 2023
10:00 am – Registration
10:30 am – Public Talk Begins
11:00 am – Q&A
11:30 am – Community and Board Members Engagement
Location:
UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA Campus
337 Charles E Young Dr E, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Room 4320
Live Zoom Option:
Meeting ID: 971 6690 5917
Passcode: 043197
Francisco Garcia on Nonviolence and Social Movements & the Future of the UCLA Labor Center
Francisco García is a PhD Candidate in Theological Studies, Ethics and Action at Vanderbilt University and serves on the leadership team of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School as a Doctoral Fellow. He also serves as an Assistant Chaplain for Justice Ministries at St. Augustine’s Chapel in Nashville. He has a BA and MA in Latin American Studies and an MA in Urban Planning from UCLA where he focused on community development and labor issues; his MA thesis explored collaborative strategies for unions and worker centers in Los Angeles. Francisco is a seasoned organizer, educator, and leader in community, labor, faith, and academic settings. In the labor movement Francisco worked in various organizing, negotiating, and leadership capacities with workers in both the public and private sectors with SEIU, UAW, AFSCME and Warehouse Workers United. His organizing commitments led him to attend seminary at the Claremont School of Theology (obtaining a Master of Divinity) and he was later ordained an Episcopal priest; in this capacity he has provided pastoral, administrative, and justice-focused leadership at various parishes in Southern California, most recently as the Rector of Holy Faith Episcopal Church in Inglewood. He served many years on the board of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and as a clergy leader with Faith in Action group L.A. Voice. He currently serves on the national advisory committee of Bargaining for the Common Good and the board of the Interreligious Network for Worker Solidarity. Francisco’s dissertation explores the role of faith among Latinx/immigrant workers organizing for justice in their workplaces and communities.
For his public talk, Francisco will share about his experience, insights, and vision for leading the UCLA Labor Center into the foreseeable future. Drawing upon the decades-long legacy and strength of the Labor Center in labor education, research, policy, organizing and movement building, Francisco will discuss the current labor landscape, and offer his assessment of the challenges and opportunities that the Labor Center and its many partners have to further advance and sustain an intersectional labor justice agenda in Los Angeles, California, and beyond. As part of this conversation, Francisco will share ideas for deepening the Labor Center’s important work around nonviolence and social movements, and the role of community, interfaith, and labor coalitions in this effort. Francisco will emphasize a collaborative, relational, and strategic approach to supporting the staff and programs of the Labor Center as it works within the context of a large public university system and ever-changing social, political, and economic contexts.
