Saket Soni
Saket Soni while organizing among the immigrant workers, helped found the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice in 2007 to bring the displaced residents and the reconstruction workers together to fight for their common survival in an economy that pitted them against each other.
is a labor organizer and human rights strategist. He is founder and director of Resilience Force, a national initiative to transform America’s response to natural disasters by strengthening and securing America’s resilience workforce. As director, Saket crafts the organization’s advocacy and media strategy, and provides strategic counsel to social justice advocates and government officials across the country. Resilience Force follows a 12-year record of successful advocacy in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.
Background
After Hurricane Katrina, in 2006, Soni co-founded the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. Under his leadership, the organization won organizing and policy victories for both U.S.-born and immigrant workers engaged in the reconstruction of New Orleans. Saket led the organization to win precedent-setting National Labor Relations Board decisions protecting migrant whistleblowers on the front lines of the hospitality and seafood industries from retaliatory firings and blacklisting. In New Orleans, he also crafted campaigns to win pathways into the publicly funded construction industry for African American workers. Saket led a combined organizing and legal strategy to combat human trafficking, which resulted in a federal court awarding over $14 million in damages to migrant resilience workers rebuilding the Gulf Coast. In 2011, Saket founded the National Guestworker Alliance, an organization focused on defending the human rights and dignity of guestworkers in America.
Saket is recognized as a national expert on post-disaster economies, immigrant rights and the future of work. He was profiled as an “architect of the next labor movement” in USA Today, and he has testified before Congress and at the United Nations. Saket’s advocacy efforts have been featured on NPR, in Time, and on the front page of The New York Times. His writings have appeared in the L.A. Times, The Hill, The Nation, Latino Journal, Talking Points Memo and on CNN.com.
Saket co-authored And Injustice For All: Workers’ Lives In the Reconstruction, the most comprehensive report on race in the reconstruction of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, as well as Never Again: Lessons of the Gustav Evacuation, an account of the inequities in the response to Hurricane Gustav in 2009, which led to new state policies and new norms for evacuating the most vulnerable residents in preparation for disaster.
Saket began his career as a community organizer in Chicago at the Coalition of African, Asian, European, and Latino Immigrants of Illinois. He is originally from New Delhi, India.
Climate resilience workforce
On Monday, February 7, 2022 U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and Deputy Secretary Julie Su will visit New Orleans to speak on the Biden-Harris Administration’s focus on labor and supporting the climate resilience workforce.
As part of federal investments under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the visit looks to emphasize local workforce solutions through a roundtable discussion.
Key officials in attendance at Monday’s meeting include:
- Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards
- Representative Troy Carter
- Mayor LaToya Cantrell
- Saket Soni with Resillence Force[1]
National Leading From the Inside Out Alum
Saket Soni, New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, was a 2008 Rockwood Leadership Institute National Leading From the Inside Out Alum.[2]
Meeting on Community Organizing
A "Meeting on Community Organizing, Civic Participation & Racial Justice" - organized by the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity December 2011, Washington, DC.
Attendees
- Jackie Byers, Black Organizing Project, Center for Third World Organizing
- Rick Cohen, PRE Consultant
- Kennia Coronado, Voces de la Frontera Student Leader
- Sarita Gupta, Jobs with Justice
- Ponsella Hardaway, MOSES
- Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Community Coalition
- Judy Hatcher, PRE Consultant
- Richard Healey, Grassroots Policy Project
- Derrick Johnson, One Voice and Mississippi NAACP
- Jon Liss, New Virginia Majority
- Pam McMichael, Highlander Research and Education Center
- Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Voces de la Frontera
- Denise Perry, BOLD: Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, Center for Third World Organizing
- Maggie Potapchuk, PRE Consultant
- John A. Powell, Kirwan Institute (*at time of meeting, now Haas Diversity Research Center at the Univ. of California, Berkeley)
- Rashad Robinson, Colorofchange.org
- Saket Soni, New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice and National Guestworker Alliance
- Ada Williams Prince, OneAmerica
- Lori Villarosa, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
- Bob Wing, PushBack Network (via phone)[3]
"The 99% Spring"
Individuals and organizations supporting The 99% Spring, as of April 20, 2012, included Saket Soni - National Guestworker Alliance .[4]
Jobs with Justice celebration
Julie Martinez Ortega, November 29, 2012 ·
- Celebrating 25 years of building working class power with Jobs with Justice — with Saket Soni, Crystal Plati, Becky Wasserman, Nikki Daruwala, M. Lucero Ortiz, Carlos Jimenez, Mackenzie Baris and Ana Avendano at Capital Hilton.
Team
New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice Team, as of November 2017;[5]
- Saket Soni - Executive Director.
Host Committee
The Chinese Progressive Association (San Francisco) Celebrates 45 years of Resilience and Resistance.
On Saturday, October 7, 2017, the Chinese Progressive Association (San Francisco) will celebrate our 45th anniversary with the theme, “Harnessing the Strength of a Thousand Rivers.
Host committee members were:
Fahd Ahmed, Alysabeth Alexander, Mike Casey, Myra Chow,Cathy Dang, Antonio Diaz, Supervisor Sandy Lee Fewer, Norman Fong, Conny Ford, Alicia Garza,George Goehl, Rudy Gonzales, Corinna Gould, Sherry Hirota, Dana Kawaoka-Chen, Helen Kim, Supervisor Jane Kim, Aarti Kohli, Laura Livoti, Gordon Mar, Xavier Morales, Vanessa Moses, Tim Paulson, Supervisor Aaron Peskin, Ai-jen Poo, and Mu Ping Poo, Supervisor Hillary Ronen, Saket Soni, Sarath Suong, Mabel Teng, Shiree Teng, Supervisor Norman Yee, Haeyoung Yoon, Miya Yoshitani, Anand Singh.[6]
CPA 40th anniversary
On August 4th 2012 to celebrate Chinese Progressive Association (San Francisco)'s 40th Anniversary. CPA was proud to honor the National Guestworkers Alliance and New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice, the Free MUNI for Youth Coalition, and Jobs with Justice San Francisco.
Attendees included: Dee An, Alvina Wong, Linda Lee, Kevin Tang, Katie Li, Ken Wang, Calvin Miaw, Sophat Phea, Andy Kuang, Pam Tau Lee, Drake Nguyen, Annelisa Luong, Jia Hong Situ, Bob Wing, Mike Murase, Alex Tom, Kayan Cheung-Miaw, Heidi Hong, Scott Kurashige, Saket Soni, Kimi Lee, Stephanie Chan, Sophia Cheng, Vivian Yi Huang, Lung San Louie, Minh Nguyen, Don Misumi, Tammy Bang Luu, Alice Thx, Victor Yang, Anna Lei, Helena Wong, Mark Liu, Steve Lew, Timmy Lu, Ruodi Duan, Natalie Gee-McGilley, Xu Lin, Victoria Yee, Mabel Tsang, Lucia Lin, Stacy Kono.
With Saket Soni and Kayan Cheung-Miaw.
