EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
YASEMIN ZAHRA
Chairwoman
Yasemin Zahra has spent over a decade coaching workers in both labor and community organizations and building worker struggles around an anti-racist, working-class solidarity
framework. She comes from a long line of rural tea farmers in Turkey and migrated to the states
at the age of seven. Her mother is a house cleaner and her father is a truck driver.
A restaurant worker from a young age, she organized in her shops against wage theft and later
went on to work at a restaurant workers' center, where she first stepped into the broader labor
world. From the service industry to the education sector to the building trades, Yasemin has
organized with union and non-union workers from all different walks of life and has dedicated
her own to putting power back into the working class. Designing creative curriculum and leading trainings on power, strategy and methods to win are her bread-and-butter. She's a firm believer workplace organizing must also be in line with broader movements that fight for all poor and working-people, against racism, bigotry and discrimination.
She currently serves as the chairwoman of the organization and has led several international labor delegations, connecting unionists at home and abroad.
NEAL SWEENEY
Chief Financial Officer
Neal Sweeney grew up near Detroit, Michigan and first became politically involved in anti-racist struggles against apartheid in South Africa and in the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. After the onset of US wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, he helped organize mass anti-war protests in the Bay Area and on the East Coast, as well as demonstrations for immigrant rights and LGBTQ equality.
After starting work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at UC-Santa Cruz in 2009, he was among the initial organizers of UAW Local 5810, the first stand-alone union for university-based researchers, and has since served as a bargaining team member, Vice President and President. His union has won many unprecedented wins for researchers including 40% wage increases, guaranteed health benefits, paid parental leave, strong protections against sexual harassment and discrimination, increased job security, and expanded bargaining rights for university employees. In 2018, 5,000 more researchers at the University of California voted to join the union, bringing the membership to over 12,000.
ESMERALDA LORETO
Secretary
Esmeralda Loreto grew up in the working class neighborhood of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, CA. Her mother was an SEIU Local 99 Union Member while employed as a Child Care Provider and her father was an auto mechanic.
She began political organizing in 2002 as a high school student with the anti-war movement against the US-led War on Iraq and has since extended her solidarity work to other areas of struggle, including immigrants rights and police brutality. She is a Los Angeles based union staff organizer at SEIU Local 721, where she represents LA County Public Sector Workers. Esmeralda also serves as an Executive Board Member of UUP (United Union Professionals).
JOSHUA ARMSTEAD
Joshua Armstead grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in southwest Washington DC. As a young man watching his mother struggle financially with one exploitative job after another, and his own experience in dealing with injustices of temporary work, motivated him to join his union, UNITE HERE Local 23.
Inspired by the story of a worker who told him that “people coming together can create change”, he organized and agitated among his coworkers at Georgetown, and began the task of building the union and doing solidarity actions, including risking arrest with 26 of his colleagues. In the spring of 2015, Josh and his coworkers won a new collective bargaining agreement at Georgetown University. Since then, Josh has traveled across the country as a rank and file organizer for various campaigns, which have raised the standards of living for thousands of workers, union and non-union alike. He always remembers his mother, and hopes that one day, she too can feel the same empowerment that he carries in heart every day.
Josh Armstead serves as Vice President of the DC Chapter of UNITE HERE Local 23, as well as being a delegate for his union at Metropolitan DC AFL-CIO and Northern Virginia AFL-CIO.
JESS DAMPIER & SABINA WILDMAN
Jess Dampier and Sabina Wildman are National Organizing Directors at United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the nation’s largest student labor solidarity organization, where they coordinate campaigns with students and workers at over 150 college and university campuses across North America.
Jess graduated from Northeastern University in 2020, where she was introduced to organizing through her involvement in USAS Local 115 and Students for Justice in Palestine. Sabina graduated with a degree in sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz, where she started USAS Local 501. Jess and Sabina are both dedicated to fighting against capitalist wars on workers here and abroad, and they are committed to LARW’s mission of building a firmly anti-racist and anti-war labor movement.
FRANK LARA
Frank Lara was born in Los Angeles to Mexican parents who raised him in the small border town of Calexico, California. Border life, forever changed after 9/11, left an impact on his identity and politics. With the election of Obama and the passage of Prop. 8, the anti-gay marriage resolution in CA, he became active in the anti-war and social justice movements of the Bay Area. Becoming a teacher in 2010 and he quickly became active with the union, the United Educators of San Francisco. He was elected the Executive Vice President of UESF in 2021.
Since arriving to SF ten years ago, Frank has been involved in organizing for the May Day and immigrant rights marches. He participated in numerous coalitions demanding justice for victims of police brutality. In addition to his anti-war work demanding the US stop interventions in the Middle East and Latin America, Frank has also participated in solidarity delegations to Cuba and El Salvador.
