Treston Davis-Faulkner
Template:TOCnestleft Treston Davis-Faulkner..., National Field Director of Jobs with Justice, lost his battle with cancer on October 26, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia.
He made a "difference in significant campaigns for working people when he supported workers forming a union at Smithfield Poultry in North Carolina, organized nationwide community support for striking Verizon workers, and ensured that Indian guestworkers marching from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., had food, water and shelter along the way".
Before becoming the national field director in 2009, Davis-Faulkner served as the Southern Region Organizer for Jobs with Justice for nearly seven years, helping to develop JWJ coalitions in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Prior to that, he helped to start the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), becoming the first national SLAP coordinator in 1999. His previous experience includes working as a local student, community, and labor organizer in Philadelphia (with the American Federation of Teachers) and at Temple University, as well as his activism and organizing around student issues on the national level with the Unite States Student Association.
Davis-Faulkner was born on June 22, 1975, to Mary Faulkner in Lansing, Michigan, where he graduated from Waverly High School. He went on to attend Temple University in Philadelphia where he helped organize the Graduate Student Union and later joined the national staff at Jobs with Justice, where he founded its national training program and the Student Labor Action Project.
He is survived by his wife and partner, Sheri Davis-Faulkner (née Davis), his son, Na'im Hanoi Faulkner, his mother, Mary Faulkner and "many friends, family and comrades".[1]
Young Communist League
At the June 1998 Young Communist League USA national conference at Temple University, Treston Faulkner, speaker of the Temple Student General Assembly, drew a thunderous ovation with his rap;
- Fighting for a peaceful future is like loving your mother, your brother, loving your sis. It's like that, y'all. It's like that. The YCL is on the front lines ... It's only through struggle you can truly be free. It's like that y'all. It's like that.[2]
Career, activism
While he was a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, Faulkner was a leader[3]of student government and built a coalition of student organizations to fight for student, community and worker involvement in campus decision-making.
He is a past chair of the United States Students Association- National People of Color Student Coalition and a member of USSA’s Board of Directors.
After completion of his undergraduate studies he continued on to graduate school in education at Temple, where he also worked as an organizer for the Temple University Graduate Student Association(affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers).
In October 2000, Faulkner was a featured speaker at the Working Families Convocation held in conjunction with the AFL-CIO Convention in LA.
Communist youth festival
Treston Faulkner was a delegate at the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana Cuba and was intending to attend the 16th Festival in 2005, in Caracas, Venezuela.[4]
- I had a wonderful time. I got to see and hang out with friends who I don't see often enough, and do so in a dynamic and beautiful space. Going to the festival gave me the chance to meet people from around the world and interact with them to find out what is happening in their countries. I also got to see a different country with a different economic system. Seeing how Cuba worked was thrilling.
- Based on my past experience with the festival I am excited about attending the festival this year because I support the development of long-term and multi-issue labor-community-faith-student coalitions in the Southern Region of the US through Jobs with Justice, and attending the 16th Festival will be very inspiring and energizing. I will be able to place our work directly in a global context in terms of better understanding the substance of the work our sisters and brothers from other countries are engaged in as well as how they talk about it. Furthermore, I may also be able to make direct contacts with young workers and other activists who could prove to be quality additions to our work around outsourcing, the Central American Free Trade Act, etc.
- The 16th WFYS provides a unique opportunity to visit a country that has and is experiencing a mostly peaceful revolution where the government and its main industry has been transformed to serve the needs of its people and not the profit of Venezuelan and international corporate and capitalist institutions. US youth need to see how a real democracy works, where the people elect their local, provincial and national leaders directly, without the capitalists' safeguard in the U.S. electoral system known as the as the Electoral College. We need to see the Chavez government and its policies with our own eyes and ears and not what the corporate media feeds us. Let's go and see for ourselves if Chavez is a champion of working-class people, or a military dictator as the corporate media loves to suggest.
World People's Conference on Climate Change
The Grassroots Global Justice Alliance delegation to Durban, South Africa, December 2011 for World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth consisted of Sara Mersha, Michael Leon Guerrero, Jen Soriano, Treston Davis-Faulkner, David Gonzales, Kandi Mossett and Rosalinda Guillen.[5]
Jobs with Justice
Treston Faulkner joined the National Jobs with Justice staff in 1999 as the first Student Labor Action Project Organizer and transitioned to support local coalitions as a Field Organizer for the Southern Region. In 2008, he became JwJ’s Field Director.
In 2009 Treston Faulkner served as a Staff Member for Jobs with Justice[6]. Field Director
References
- ↑ PW Treston Davis-Faulkner, rest in power by: Special to PeoplesWorld.org November 3 2015
- ↑ http://www.pww.org/archives98/98-06-13-2.html
- ↑ http://www.jwjblog.org/contributors/
- ↑ The Festival Movement: We Were There!Dynamic Magazine Back Issues 2005 - August
- ↑ [CENSORED NEWSWednesday, December 7, 2011 Bolivia's Pablo Solon: The Great Escape III at COP 17]
- ↑ http://www.jwj.org/about/board.html