Strategy Labs

Strategy Lab

Ask a Labor Organizer!

Thinking about starting a union, but not sure? In the process of organizing a union with your fellow workers? Got any workplace issues that you'd like to talk about? Come chat with a labor organizer and strategize about next steps!

  • Emith Escobar is an organizer with Brandworkers, a nonprofit worker center supporting food manufacturing workers in New York and New Jersey to build strong, democratic, worker-led unions. Emith focuses on training workers to become strong organizers capable of leading their own campaigns. He also sits on the board of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, a national coalition of worker-based organizations organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain.

Strategy Lab

Building Just Food Systems Through Collaboration

This 75-minute fireside-style skill share invites participants into an intimate, co-learning circle with the Webatuck Valley Farm Collaborative. Representatives from four partner farms will share their personal pathways, organizational “secret sauce,” and the collective stew they are building together—from developing a regional food hub to hosting nearly 1,000 people each year across land-based programs and gatherings. Designed as a conversation rather than a panel, the session makes space for shared wisdom, practical tools, and honest reflections on collaboration, governance, and collective power-building.

  • The Webatuck Valley Farm Collaborative is a multi-farm partnership rooted in the tri-state Webatuck Valley region, building shared infrastructure, governance, and programming in service of food sovereignty and land justice. Together, WVFC partners steward land, host nearly 1,000 people annually through festivals, trainings, and advocacy spaces, and are actively developing a regional food hub grounded in cooperative values. Our work centers collaboration over competition, relationship over extraction, and collective care as a foundation for resilient futures. WVFC members bring lived experience in farming, organizing, healing justice, and movement-aligned infrastructure building.

Strategy Lab

Stewarding Land Through Cooperative Ownership: Examples from Black American History

In this strategy lab, we will explore land relationships through cooperatives, collectives and land trusts, with a focus on Black cooperative land ownership throughout US history. We will also discuss various ownership structures and why collective and democratic ownership is necessary for land stewardship and sustainability. This will be an interactive workshop.

  • Author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (2014 & 2024), and 2016 inductee into the U.S. Cooperative Hall of Fame, Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Ph.D., is Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development, in the Department of Africana Studies, John Jay College, City University of NY. Dr. Gordon-Nembhard is an internationally recognized and widely published political economist specializing in cooperative economics, community economic development, racial wealth inequality, solidarity economics, and popular economic literacy.

Strategy Lab

Solidarity Economies in Action

Join us as we explore how solidarity economies—centering the needs of the most vulnerable members of local communities in solidarity funding practices—can be customized and actualized in your own communities! Using the current progress and learnings of the Village Farmer Fund—a pilot program supporting independent, locally-led village farmer funds with a values-aligned focus on interdependence, land sovereignty, mutual aid, and solidarity—we hope to empower each of you to be a mutual partner in the pursuit of liberation through power building.

  • Reylan Cook (she/her) is the Strategic Operations Partner for the Safety Net for the Future of Village Farmers. As a policy practitioner and community advocate, Reylan has focused her career on addressing environmental inequities, food insecurity, and expanding access to essential resources for marginalized communities. Driven by a deep commitment to environmental justice and agricultural sovereignty, Reylan works to advance interdisciplinary policy solutions for Black, Southern, and rural communities.

    Dãnia Davy, Esq. is the attorney-author-activist founder of Land & Liberation, llc, a consultancy promoting liberatory relationships between humans, natural and financial resources, and land. To help farmers, land stewards and their communities of support navigate the challenges of the current political climate, she created the wtf?! (we’re the future), through which she distributes educational resources. in 2025, she launched the village farmer fund and rematriated to jamaica to learn ancestral, afro indigenous practices to steward the land that called her home., Lina Felix is a recent graduate of Howard University with a major in Political Science with a concentration in International Studies and a minor in Russian. While in undergrad, Lina underwent OurSpace World's Calabash Academy training focused on USDA policy, grant writing and review, and other associated skills. Upon finishing two cohorts within the Academy, she continued on as an Associate Consultant with the Calabash– soon landing on Land & Liberation's Safety Net Team where she provides technical assistance, contributes to the WTF!? Micronewsletter, and creates educational materials with her team. Outside of work, Lina is an avid reader, craftsperson, beginner farmer, organizer, and amateur chef.

Strategy Lab

Learning with Farmworkers

Last year, we launched a peer-to-peer project to interview farmworkers in the Northeast to better understand working conditions, concerns, and desires. We think that any movement towards land justice must include workers' struggles. In this strategy lab, we’ll share our methods and political grounding. Our political education is rooted in an understanding of how capitalism shapes our food system and the importance of class analysis. Our approach involves engaging directly with farmworkers about their conditions in the field, and to strategize on how to best intervene in movements for food, justice, and liberation. We will also discuss what we've been finding talking with other farmworkers, and invite the audience into a conversation about what this means for the broader land and food movement.

  • Proyecto Siete Tierras Colectivo is a collective of farmworkers, land stewards, and organizers based in Western Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. With many years of experience in land and food justice work, we are deeply committed to the pursuit of collective liberation.

Strategy Lab

Rapid Response & Community Defense for Immigrant Justice with Pioneer Valley Workers Center

"In this strategy lab, participants will learn how to design and implement community-based systems that protect immigrant communities from immigration enforcement, including ICE raids, home visits, detention, and deportation. Grounded in real-world organizing across Western Massachusetts, this lab will explore how rapid response networks can ensure communities are informed, supported, and prepared.

Participants will gain practical skills in building and operating a rapid response infrastructure modeled by the Pioneer Valley Workers Center’s (PVWC) rapid response network, LUCE, including how to set up and manage a hotline, verify enforcement activity, and deploy trained community response teams that provide immediate support and mutual aid to affected families. Participants will explore strategies for leadership development, training new organizers, cultivating community leaders, and expanding grassroots membership through field organizing.

At a moment when civil rights, due process, and democratic freedoms are at risk, this strategy lab centers collective defense to reduce detentions and deportations and keeping families together, integrating a broader vision of immigrant justice, where all people can live with safety, dignity, and the ability to thrive.

  • Claudia Rosales began her work with Pioneer Valley Workers Center (PVWC) as a Farmworker Organizer and now serves as its Executive Director. Born in El Salvador into a farming family, she spent many years working in agriculture, an experience that continues to shape her leadership. Claudia is also a founding member of the Riquezas del Campo Farm Cooperative. She has a profound understanding of the challenges immigrants face in the United States and has been instrumental in PVWC’s transition into an organization centered on immigrant leadership.

    Patricia Lopez is a Community Organizer at Pioneer Valley Workers Center (PVWC) and a former farmworker with over 11 years of experience in agricultural labor. Originally from El Salvador, she is also a mother to one son. A member-leader with PVWC for nearly a decade, Patricia has grown into a powerful advocate for farmworker rights. Her leadership is rooted in her lived experience with injustice, including the lack of labor protections and the serious health risks faced by agricultural workers. Motivated by these experiences, Patricia organizes to defend workers’ rights, amplify immigrant voices, and fight for safer, more equitable working conditions.