Organizing

Everything I learned defending human rights abroad, I now apply at home. Since 2016, my organizing has run on three tracks: movement building, direct support for immigrants in the court system, and protecting elections at the most local level there is.

Gen X for Justice

I co-founded Gen X for Justice with Lisa Cavanaugh and Nancy Levine — a grassroots collective organizing our generation to defend democracy and fight authoritarianism. We’re the generation raised on “question authority,” and we’re putting those values into practice when it matters most.

As proud members of the Indivisible movement, we connect Gen X energy to strategic organizing at the national, state, and local levels — attending weekly meetings, joining mass mobilizations, running Know Your Rights trainings, and doing the daily work of holding elected officials accountable. Resistance is a practice, and we show up for it (usually in green Converse).

Button: Follow Gen X for Justice → Facebook

New Sanctuary Coalition

I volunteer with the New Sanctuary Coalition, accompanying immigrants to their hearings in New York’s immigration courts and supporting families through the asylum process. Accompaniment is simple and powerful: a person facing the machinery of deportation walks into that courtroom with someone beside them, witnessed. NSC calls the people it supports “Friends,” not clients — and that word carries the whole spirit of the work.

This work draws on every skill from my human rights career — documentation, country conditions research, sitting with people through the worst days of their lives — and it grounds my writing on immigration and deportation in what actually happens inside these courtrooms, week after week.

[Button: Read my immigration reporting → Substack]

Protecting Our Democracy

I volunteer for campaigns, get out the vote, and serve as a poll worker with the NYC Board of Elections. After years of observing elections in fragile democracies abroad, I believe the most direct way to defend an election is to get involved. Register, vote, and encourage others to do the same.

Get Involved

Every one of these has room for you. Gen X for Justice welcomes new members at weekly meetings. New Sanctuary Coalition trains volunteers for accompaniment. And your local board of elections is almost certainly hiring poll workers right now.