The Center for Social and Economic Justice serves as an incubator of grassroots organizing and movement building. The Center is based in the Redstone Labor Temple, at 16th Street and Capp, at the epicenter where some of the most impacted low-wage workers are located. It provides workshops to develop the leadership of low-wage and immigrant workers fighting for justice, equality and sustainability and to provide training to take collective action for self-determination.

Using popular education techniques, the Center provides spaces for working people to gain consciousness and hope in making a better world possible. Popular education is an interactive and participatory process to draw from sharing people’s lived experience a collective analysis and strategies for progressive change. The process is a cycle of reflection and action to inform organizing for social change.

The Center helps people develop an understanding of substantive democracy and how to project an inspiring vision of what it looks like. People develop the skills to organize in their own communities and the class analysis to build broad movements for social, economic and regenerative change.

The Center places music, art and culture at the center of an organizing strategy to help people and their communities heal themselves, build bridges and inspire each other to struggle to fulfill their dreams for the future. The workshops are often intergenerational for all ages to learn from the lessons of the past and different perspectives of the present to unite in our visions for the future.

The Center is building a regenerative and restorative approach to move away from extractive and exploitative industries to heal the planet, respect labor and nourish the spirit.

The Center is creating a multilingual space for language justice so people can communicate, learn and strategize together. Research and developing policy are not left in the hands of those identified as experts but involve the participation of those who have lived experience and who are affected by the results and outcomes. Those who are affected by the problems in their daily lives are best situated to decide on the solutions to improve their lives.

A goal of the Center is to work with tenants to acquire the Redstone Labor Temple to ensure that the historic building continues to serve the people as it has for more than a hundred years.

The Center is a project of the Alliance for Social and Economic Justice, which is a collaboration of the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition, Trabajo Cultural Caminante, La Radio Flash, Informacion es Poder, Crossroads Women’s Center, Global Women’s Strike, the Bay Area Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador and Global Exchange Mexico Program.

You can make a contribution online paypal.com/us/fundraiser/charity/3937889 or make out a check to the Alliance for Social and Economic Justice and mail it to 2940 16th St., Room 301, San Francisco, CA 94103. All donations are tax-deductible.