WHO WE ARE
La Unión is an organization of people of the global south working to advance the social, economic, and cultural rights of the communities where we now live and the communities we left behind. Our membership is composed of new immigrants living in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Because of the transnational nature of many of our families, we also have strong ties to communities in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Our work focuses on fixing our broken immigration system through comprehensive immigration reform, improving public education for immigrant families through parent and student organizing, and fighting for various environmental justice issues such as safe housing and access to healthy foods.
MEMBERS
Our members are those who are directly affected by the issues we work on. It is their leadership and commitment to seek justice till its end that keeps us moving forward.
STAFF
Leticia Alanis, Executive Director
Leticia Alanis hails from Monterrey, México, where she worked for eighteen years as a youth educator and directing several educational programs. Leticia came to New York fifteen years ago and has been active in the Immigrant Rights Movement since 2000. She has been organizing in Sunset Park, Brooklyn first with the Fifth Avenue Committee and then with La Unión since 2005.
Leticia is the co-founder, and presently the Executive Director of La Unión. Leticia is also the Vice-president of the recently formed New York State Immigrant Action Fund, a new civic and social justice organization that aims to promote the rights and well-being of immigrants and refugees in New York and around the nation. She also serves on the board of the New York Immigration Coalition, and is a new member of the Advisory Council to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, an office of the Secretary of Foreign Relations of México.
Leticia is near to completing a Master’s program in Public Administration at John Jay College.
Contact Leticia at lalanis(at)la-union(dot)org
Isabel Herrera, Outreach Coordinator
Isabel was born in México City and prior to immigrating to the New York in 1990, she worked at the Coalición Nacional de Transportistas.
Arriving to a city where she knew no one, Isabel became active in her church and began working with youth and the Movimiento de Jornadas. There she met her husband and together they have three children. Isabel joined La Unión in 2009 as a member, active in the immigration reform work, and began coordinating membership outreach in early 2011.
Contact Isabel at iherrera(at)la-union(dot).org
Jessica Nizar, Community Organizer
Jessica began organizing in immigrant communities as a student organizer while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles. In 2008 she became a Center for Progressive Leadership ‘New Leader’ working to strengthen federal reproductive justice policy. In New York, she joined the affordable housing movement while at Fifth Avenue Committee, a community development corporation, as an Americorps VISTA, and later Center for Neighborhood Leadership Community Organizing Apprentice. She began working with La Union in 2009 starting our food justice work and continues today coordinating Granja Los Colibries as well as the fundraising and communications work.
When Jessica isn’t organizing, you’ll find her making and breaking bread with good friends.
Contact Jessica at jnizar(at)la-union(dot).org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Carla Trujillo, President
Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, Treasurer
Jessica Nizar, Secretary