Artist. Activist. Educator. Resource Connector. Charles Curtis is a multifaceted leader deeply rooted in social justice and community building efforts, particularly within the Hudson Valley region. In his role as Director of Community Engagement for the City of New Rochelle, Charles is committed to identifying and addressing the diverse needs of residents, fostering partnerships, and spearheading initiatives that promote equity and inclusion.
Throughout his career, Charles has actively participated in various social justice initiatives and organizations, including Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Community Voices Heard, My Brother’s Keeper, and the White Plains Youth Bureau. His commitment to empowering underserved communities is further exemplified by his involvement in Suit-UP!, a mentoring program designed to empower young men in underserved communities. Demonstrating his dedication to uplifting marginalized communities and promoting positive youth, Charles served on the advisory committee that successfully secured the implementation of the My Brother's Keeper program into the City of Mount Vernon.
Charles is also an award-winning playwright and performing artist. His stage plays, including the critically acclaimed STRINGS, have been showcased in theaters and festivals nationwide. Through his artistry, Charles explores themes of identity, resilience, and social justice, sparking conversations and inspiring change within communities.
Activist, Advocate & Community Organizer. Dawèdo came to the US from Haiti where her father, uncles, and family friends were political activists fighting against the corrupt government. The influence of the Haitian Revolution on American black liberation movements has always been the starting point for Dawèdo’s own political activism.
She became a volunteer organizer and activist in New York’s Columbia, Greene and Albany Counties.
She is currently a staff organizer with Columbia County Sanctuary Movement. CCSM organizes immigrants and allies to collectively support, empower, and defend communities in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley. CCSM was founded in 2016, by four community members who stood up and intervened in the ICE raids that were happening throughout the city of Hudson.
Dawèdo has spent most of last year in Albany collaborating with local organizations to support newly arriving Asylum Seekers. As a volunteer coordinator & Community Organizer, she continues to build relationships, ask tough questions, and fight for new arrivals.
Her work in Columbia County involves cultivating potential members, specifically from the Caribbean Islands such as Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago. This is done through one-on-one conversations and community-building events. Dawèdo also spends a great portion of her time at the Capitol in Albany. She attends press conferences and meets with legislators to push state priorities for our immigrant communities and incarcerated individuals. She is currently organizing a Caribbean Festival in Albany, NY July 27, 2024, and looks forward to starting her skin care and healing ventures.
Organizer, Activist, Advocate for Workers’ Rights. Over the course of fifteen years, Janet worked as a social worker with the Jesuit community in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and in health services at the national level with the foundation Filanbanco. In 1993-1994, she worked in El Salvador as a popular educator for the Social Initiative for Democracy, to engage indigenous agricultural workers and rural in the political process. She was also an international observer in the Salvadoran presidential elections in 1994. Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, she obtained her bachelor’s degree in social work from the Vicente Rocafuerte University and studied theology at the Latin American Biblical University in San Jose, Costa Rica. At Westchester Community College, she has taken classes in human services and immigration law.
Since 2011, Janet has been working for Catholic Charities as a community organizer with the Day Laborers Program in Yonkers. She has organized workshops and trainings on topics such as OSHA in construction, gardening, asbestos, health and safety, and workers’ rights. She is the coordinator at Catholic Charities’ new workers center.
Janet recruited a board for Obreros Unidos (Workers United), whose mission is to protect the rights of day laborers. The organization is part of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which offers training, legal advice, lobbying, and worker advocacy to members.
Farmer, Activist, Bridge Builder. Growing up in a food desert, Michael was only able to understand food as a tool for survival. Over time, Michael started to see food for what it truly is, a tool to heal and resist. Through his work as a farmer, activist, and community bridge builder at Sweet Freedom Farm, he seeks to give marginalized people, including prisoners, agency in defining their own health through education, opportunity, and access. Michael became active in the food justice movement while he was serving his 14-year prison sentence. He doubled down on his efforts immediately after his release in February of 2022. Since his release, Michael has worked towards creating a food justice network that can expand his overall impact. Michael has helped to pioneer the bring back care packages movement, speaking about it in interviews and publishing an article about it. He has worked with the Sing Sing Family Collective; RAPP (Releasing Ageing People in Prison campaign); All Of Us; Vocal-NY; Kites Nest; Center for Community Alternatives, and the Shared Plate Fun. As a bridge-builder, Michael created a panel discussion series to highlight the struggles of formerly incarcerated people and has been hosting farm stands at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. He attends rallies and protests; advocates to senators and assembly members; while continuing to write and speak about the issues he cares about.
Educator, Artist, Community Bridge Builder. Born in Mexico City and raised in the Hudson Valley, Susie grew up watching her parents navigate a new language to provide a better life for their family. Inspired by their resilience, she pursued her passion for the arts. She earned her MFA in Fine Art at Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana and eventually moved back to New York in 2009 to raise her daughter. Susie hopes to combat the stigma behind being undocumented while bridging the gap between the Latinx community and the places they live. She has worked with Arts-Mid Hudson in the past in curating various exhibits focused on migration and queer Latinx identity.
Susie is the current director of Adelante Student Voices in the Hudson Valley. She works with undocumented youth to change learning environments and make them more equitable. Through her advocacy work in the school district, she strives to provide undocumented students access to higher education by pushing for necessary reforms.
Organizer & Abolitionist. Alisha is a transgender womxn and formerly incarcerated resident who is living, working, playing, loving, and fighting for change in the Mid-Hudson Valley. After spending ten years behind bars, she has first hand knowledge of the cycles of trauma that are perpetuated by incarceration. She channels her trauma and passion into a transformative practice that advances the abolitionist cause in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Alisha is a leader in advocacy, research, and civic engagement in her role as director for the Queers for Justice Committee at the Newburgh LGBTQ+ Center. In her work to promote disinvestment from prisons, Alisha has taken on the position of president at the Alternative to Violence Project. AVP brings conflict resolution workshops to prisons and the community, drawing from the interpersonal transformative power each individual has within themselves. When Alisha is not busy combatting the carceral system, she cooks, plays video games, binge-watches TV shows, and spends time strengthening her relationships with her loved ones.
Cultural Organizer, Artist, Educator. Donnay, earth adoring and liberation believing, was raised by a collective of single working-class mothers who provided the care that guides her dreams of freedom. Donnay’s work centers on healing justice, popular education, just transition frameworks, cooperatives, and cultural organizing to create a more just world. She is a multidisciplinary artist, fluidly moving from dance, theater, and storytelling to somatics, yoga, and herbalism - interweaving these elements into the cultural through line of her work. Her practice explores the connection of mind, body, spirit, land, and ancestral healing. With a brother and father in and out of prison, her deep analysis of the prison industrial complex is fueled by her complex personal experience. She trusts in the power of art and organizing to help us all envision a future where all our love-centered imaginations can flourish. She is currently the Social Justice Leadership Academy Director at Kite’s Nest, a liberatory education center in Hudson, New York. Donnay has a BA from Oberlin College in Africana Studies and Comparative Studies where she was mentored by Adenike Sharpley, as well as an MFA from Pratt Institute. Her most recent interests include: cooperative economics, land based cooperative living, mutual aid, herbalism and healing.
Educator, Paralegal, Reformer, Abolitionist. Greg is a clemency grantee who spent over 40 years in prison following a wrongful conviction. He was released in September 2021. Greg has taught the law, communications, domestic violence prevention, and fatherhood. He is an ambassador for the Innocence Project. He is a community leader for Releasing Aging People in Prison (RAPP) advocating for parole reform. He also works with CUNY Law School on clemency, resentencing and parole issues. He co-founded the Clemency Collective to advocate for the granting of clemency on a rolling basis. He is a consultant for In Arm’s Reach, a foundation that tutors and mentors the children of incarcerated parents. Additionally, Greg works with Hudson Link for higher education in prison, volunteering his time to build transitional housing for men and women returning home. Change.org has recognized Greg as one of the top change makers in 2021 and again in 2022. In January, Greg was honored with a proclamation from the New York State Senate for his work to improve opportunities for people who are wrongly convicted and those who deserve a second chance. Greg is an advocate for social, racial, and criminal justice reform, and so much more.
Educator, Founder, Facilitator. Laura immigrated to the US from Mexico with her family at the age of eight. She is a DACA recipient living in Newburgh, New York, working towards social and racial justice in the Hudson Valley. As an alumnus of the Migrant Education Program, she educates current bilingual immigrant students of the Hudson Valley about their opportunities and how to navigate systems as undocumented students. She has been a long-time participant and a board member of the Rural and Migrant Ministry Inc. She coordinated a Teaching Tough Topics training for teachers to discuss civil discourse in the classroom. She has been the treasurer for the Newburgh Housing Authority for eight years and serves as a commissioner for the Human Rights Commission in the city of Newburgh. She has spoken at many rallies in Albany and Washington D.C. around issues such as: immigration, DACA, farmworkers, reproductive rights, driver's licenses for undocumented people, funding for libraries, Black Lives Matter, the Liberty Defense Project and the Women’s March. She participated in the ten-year push to make the NY Dream Act a reality. Laura was the founder of Dreamers With No Borders, a group of young adults whose mission is to educate and empower the Latino, undocumented and migrant community in the Hudson Valley. She also opened Latinas of the Hudson Valley, a space where women can meet every month.
Educator, Facilitator, Community Bridge Builder. Maria was born in the Philippines with Cuenca, Batangas roots and grew up in Rockland County, New York. She is a lifelong learner, budding land steward, and co-creator within the communities that have raised her. Maria’s work focuses on collective leadership and power building, particularly in education, social justice, healing, mutual aid, and community organizing. She believes in creating support networks that intersect collective liberation through nurturing and deepening relationships with one another, nature, and our ancestry while un/learning and questioning the systems and dis/functions both internal and external to ourselves. Maria has been an educator and facilitator for over 20 years with age groups ranging from early childhood to college, and beyond. Her positions have included: environmental education Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador; afterschool arts and activism leadership program director with El Puente in Brooklyn; participant in the Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment group in New York City; decolonization orientation leader in the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock, North Dakota; resource and support guide in post disaster communities in various parts of the Philippines. Maria focuses on engaging and building local leadership, centering energies around community-identified needs and collectively identifying best pathways towards solutions. She is currently back in Rockland County as co-director at Proyecto Faro/Project Lighthouse, an immigrant-led organization that strives to build solidarity across boundaries of legal status, country of origin, religious affiliation, race, class, and gender.
Afrofuturist, Educator, Organizer. Zebi, a self-described Afrofuturist, has been an educator and organizer for over 20 years and is currently a co-director at Kite’s Nest - a liberatory learning center located in Hudson, New York. Following the unjust deportation of her father and his treatment in the upstate prison system, Zebi divested from her studies at SUNY New Paltz to return with him to their homeland of Jamaica. She engaged her community in a local vision of prosperity that rejected the propaganda of the American Dream. She founded a youth-run community organization dedicated to ameliorating the conditions that accelerate rural migration. The Lil Raggamuffin Summer Camp mobilized hundreds of young people and grew to be recognized as one of the top youth programs in Jamaica. Returning to New York, Zebi’s organizing work continued to follow a divest/invest framework: working at GOLES to support small businesses and public housing residents' fight against gentrification; mobilizing New York retail workers to gain collective bargaining agreements through the RWDSU; organizing the annual Sista-2-Sista Youth Summit in Brooklyn. For the past seven years, Zebi has anchored herself in Columbia County, bringing her leadership to Kite’s Nest’s Social Justice Leadership Academy and ReGen Teen Greenhouse (an environmental justice project), while also co-stewarding the construction of a liberatory learning campus scheduled to open in 2025. This campus will be a space for intergenerational community organizers to convene, cross-pollinate, learn, and experiment.
Food & Environmental Justice Educator. Antonia is a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, educator, community organizer, and artist born and raised in New York City. Growing up in a first generation immigrant household, her family’s passion for herbs and medicinal plants found her bridging the gap between rural and urban spaces, while discovering the intersection of land stewardship, education, and social justice. Antonia’s ten years of academic study included: Environmental and Urban Studies (Bard College); Clinical Herbalism (Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine); field work with herbalists and elders throughout Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Thailand. Pérez facilitates workshops and produces events as the co-founder of the NY based collective, Brujas, and Herban Cura – with a focus toward reconnecting diverse communities (indigenous, black, queer and trans) to the earth by tracing the socio-political, ecological history of plants and people. In addition to facilitating workshops in spaces such as Reed, Stanford, New School, and MoMA PS1, Antonia is a respected gardener who has helped in the initiation and development of food prosperity for disempowered communities, namely Salam Community Garden, Sweet Freedom farm, Bard farm, and Soul Fire farm.
Grassroots Organizer, Fair-wage and Healthcare Activist. Gemma is a Hudson Valley organizer for the New York Caring Majority who has been fighting for increased wages for home care workers. Receiving her B.A. in Legal Communications from Howard University, she went on to receive a Masters of Science Management from Kaplan University, specializing in healthcare. She began volunteering with the New York Caring Majority in late 2019, participating in HV and state-wide monthly meetings, funder events and assisting the organization with Covid related outreach. In October 2020 she took a temporary position as a field organizer, helping organize phone banks to make calls for the four legislators endorsed by NYCM. By December 2020, Gemma became a full-time organizer, campaigning for Fair Pay for Home Care and organizing the Home Care Worker Round Table. She co-MC’d a rally at the Governor’s Mansion for Fair Pay for Home Care and a rally for the New York Health Act in Albany.
More recently she was a panelist at the Virtual Legislative Briefing on Child Care, Home Care, & Economic Development; co-MC at the Caregiver Award Ceremony; co-MC at the press release at the Capitol in Albany for all of the co-sponsors of a bill to increase the pay of home care workers, including Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie.
Labor Organizer, Advocate for Workers’ Rights. Gonzalo, originally from Puebla, Mexico, is from a working family. His mother is a domestic worker, and his father works in construction. When he arrived in the United States, Gonzalo became aware of the labor abuse suffered by immigrant workers. In his first job, he fought for the dignity of his co-workers by suing his employer and recovering more than a million dollars for them.
After working at the Chicago Latino Union as a day laborer organizer in 2010, Gonzalo moved to Port Chester, New York where for seven years he was the director of Don Bosco Workers Inc. He started “No Pay No Way!” and with the support of the Westchester Labor Alliance, in collaboration with universities, unions and community organizations, he helped pass a wage theft prevention bill in Westchester County.
Recovering wages and educating fellow workers about labor rights is Gonzalo’s top priority. In 2015 Don Bosco Workers was chosen to build an oak chair and altar for Pope Francis’s appearance at Madison Square Garden. Gonzalo, in collaboration with CWA Local 1103, used the media attention to speak about wage theft and abusive labor practices in New York.
Gonzalo has worked with numerous organizations: Latin American Workers Project, the Chicago Latino Union, the Labor Justice Project, in addition to his ongoing collaboration with Don Bosco Workers Inc.
Restorative Justice Educator, Organizer, Social Advocate. A fierce advocate for currently and formerly incarcerated community members, Jose co-founded After Incarceration, an organization that helps people process the trauma of incarceration, heal their internalized dehumanization, and forge the resiliency necessary to (re)build relationships. He works with community organizers and systems-impacted people to reimagine the world our grandchildren will live in, fighting together for a legacy of liberation.
Jose also works for the Bard Prison Initiative, harnessing the social capital of his own Bard education to increase access to higher education for other non-traditional students. He recruits students for tuition-free college opportunities in Brooklyn and Harlem and provides additional academic support outside the classroom.
In addition to his professional roles, Jose also serves as the President of the Mid-Hudson Valley Area Council for the Alternatives to Violence Project. His leadership there, as elsewhere, is rooted in relationships. These relationships have enabled him to forge a new path forward—a way for credible messengers to be holistically equipped to both interrupt violence and give life. Finally, as a member of the Transformative In-Prison Workgroup NY Leadership Team, Jose works to support and expand meaningful prison programs, departmental transparency, and wraparound reentry models.
Childbirth Educator, Health & Wellness Advocate. Nubia is a Community Birth Worker, and Founder/President of Birth from The Earth Inc., a non-profit organization steeped in education and empowerment, providing a variety of health and wellness services. In 2021 she opened Earth Groundz, a brick-and-mortar location in the heart of Downtown Yonkers, dedicated to centering Black Healing.
Nubia holds a Masters Degree in Midwifery and a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology. She is currently completing Mercy In Actions Post-Graduate program in International Midwifery and Maternal & Infant Health, and is enrolled in Jennie Joseph's Commonsense Childbirth School of Midwifery, pursuing the CPM (Certified Professional Midwife) credential. She is a childbirth educator, providing birth and postpartum support and lactation consulting. Nubia Martin sits on the Board of the Chocolate Milk Cafe National, The Black Coalition for Safe Motherhood, and the Hudson Valley Birth Network.
Nubia is dedicated to improving birth outcomes for women of color and toppling maternal mortality and morbidity rate disparities. The legacy and lineage of the Grand Midwives runs deep through Nubia Martin. She sees Midwifery, not as a profession, but as a way of life and a rite of passage.
Founder, Organizer. Diana Sánchez is originally from Puebla, Mexico. She came to the United States at age four and attended school in Port Chester and Yonkers. She started advocating for the community as a young teen, becoming the first student to speak in a Yonkers town hall against Yonkers’ public school budget cuts. In 1999, her parents organized buses to Washington D.C. and New York City where she participated in rallies, marches and also addressed large crowds in support of immigration reform.
Diana is a former director of “Espiritu de Mexico,” a local Mexican folk-dancing group in Yonkers, where she has taught dance to children, teenagers and adults for over 18 years. In 2016, she participated in a bi-national program by the US-Mexico Foundation. This organization gave her an opportunity to learn about Mexico’s economy and politics.
Diana is one of the founders and a community organizer at Yonkers Sanctuary Movement. She is a board member of the Hudson Valley Community Coalition and has completed a fellowship with United We Dream. These organizations focus on deportation defense and advocate for legislation that is critical to the welfare of the undocumented community.
Farmer, Organizer and Educator. Jalal was raised in Greenburgh, New York, by his mother and grandmother, and studied at Woodlands High School and SUNY Purchase. He organized his fellow university students to bring uneaten food to local shelters and food pantries; organized trips to distribute clothes and food to the homeless in NYC; and led the Black Student Union to address numerous racist incidents on campus.
As an organizer with WESPAC Foundation and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), Jalal helped initiate food justice committees within both organizations. As part of Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Jalal co-created Potential 2 Power Project in East New York, Brooklyn, which taught young people gardening, cooking and nutrition skills, as well as ‘know your rights’ during police encounters.
In 2011, Jalal began farming with Wassaic Community Farm – growing produce for farmers markets while running a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and gleaning project. Jalal co-founded the Freedom Food Alliance, VROOM Cooperative and Victory Bus Project. The Freedom Food Alliance is a collective of small rural and urban farmers, activists, artists, community folks and political prisoners who use food as an organizing tool. The Alliance founded the VROOM Cooperative and Victory Bus Project to connect urban and rural communities and to support families of prisoners by providing transportation (along with a box of farm-fresh food) for folks visiting prisoners in the Hudson Valley. Jalal is currently continuing the work of the Alliance, while also launching Sweet Freedom Farm in Germantown, NY, where he conducts farm education, a maple syrup operation, and helps to build the Farms Not Prisons movement.
Social Justice Reform Advocate. A dedicated community servant, Jonathan is a Social Justice Reform Advocate in the City of Yonkers. He’s a 32-year-old life-long Yonkers resident who promotes the philosophy that ‘change agents change narratives.’ After serving a thirteen year prison term, he returned home with a mission to give back to the same community he once negatively impacted. He is motivated by his transformative experiences within the criminal justice system. He went to prison at 17, with a tenth-grade education. During his incarceration, he acquired a GED and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from the Bard Prison Initiative program. His educational journey and personal metamorphosis continue to motivate him to make productive contributions to society.
Today, Alvarez works to abolish systemic racism by passionately advocating for criminal justice reform. As a member of My Brother’s Keeper, he serves as a mentor and staff committee member, touring public schools to educate young men of color on the urban experience in contemporary America. Inspired to reach at-risk adolescents in the community, he co-founded and directs a youth mentorship organization called 914UNITED Inc. He currently facilitates his mentorship services in the Westchester County Department of Corrections (WDCOC). Valued as a “credible messenger” and Academic Outreach Coordinator in the Youth Offender Program, he provides counseling and educational support to 15 participants from the ages of 18 to 25. Finally, Jonathan is also a case manager for the Yonkers SNUG project, working to reduce gun violence by mediating conflicts and rendering social services to individuals who are at a high-risk of engaging in criminal activities.
Community Herbalist, Organizer, Earth Steward, and Storyteller. Mandana is an Iranian-American community herbalist, storyteller, gardener, and co-founder/educator at Wild Gather, Hudson Valley School of Herbal Studies. Mandana was raised in Newburgh, NY and continues to call the Mahicantuck (Hudson) Valley home. Her exploration of plant medicine and community care began in her childhood kitchen where she first heard stories of ancestors, as told to her by her mother, accompanied by the rhythm of the mortar and pestle.
Weaving her Iranian identity, culture, and plant tradition into all facets of her work as a community herbalist, Mandana is dedicated to re-centering the voices, stories, rituals, and histories of the BIPOC community, through organizing healing spaces and learning immersions. She finds her north star by supporting her community’s journey back to the land, empowering others in their re-connecting, re-membering, and re-claiming of intricate ancestral technologies. Through her shared wisdom and initiatives in the Mahicantuck Valley, she is helping her community gain access to equitable care, herbal medicine, and herbal education.
