Fabricio Rodriguez came to activism after a career in sub-surface mining

During his childhood years on the American-Indian reservations and in the mining towns of the South-West,

Fabricio Rodriguez, Greens Creek Mine, Juneau, AK, 1998

Fabricio saw the hardships that working people faced and racial injustice against the native populations.  These struggles of daily life were what prompted him, after six-years underground, to leave the mining trade in pursuit of a way to fight for working people.

Though Fabricio had dropped out of high school before completion, he was angered by the injustice he encountered in the mines and sought an escape. His decision was fortified when he and his father found themselves fighting for the right to have a lunch break.  Though a lunch break is mandated by national law, the mine operator that they worked for in Juneau, Alaska refused to grant them one.  Their fight for justice and the subsequent illegal dismissal of himself and his father caused Fabricio to put away his miners’ “diggers,” get his high school equivalence, and put himself in Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona. There he pursued a degree in Economics, and in 2003, he received a BA in Economics from Arizona State University (ASU).

During his college years, Fabricio discovered activism.  Direct-Action organizing became Fabricio’s first passion and to this day, he believes that this form of liberation work, which he first learned of by studying the works of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, is the most important tradition of social change for poor and working people in the American democracy.

As a student activist at Mesa Community College, Fabricio gained national media attention for foregoing months of salary for refusing to sign the employee mandated Anti-Communist Loyalty Oath.  His steadfast effort and sacrifice eventually resulted in amending the state constitution by removing the oath requirement of state workers.  All the while, Fabricio maintained a high grade point average to get through school on a number of Navajo Nation, Latino-targeted and state-provided scholarships, including a prestigious scholarship provided by the Governor’s All-State Academic Team.  While at Mesa Community College, Fabricio, as an AmeriCorps member, also founded the Area V Cares After School and Literacy Program, where the children of undocumented immigrants in Central Mesa are tutored. This program is still in effect today. Finally, Fabricio was elected the Vice-President of the Student Government in 2000.

Fabricio’s advancement to Arizona State University did not slow his commitment to social or economic justice.  As a student leader at Arizona State University, Fabricio founded and lead the “No More Prisons” campaign.  This movement, an effort to force the campus food service provider, Sodexho-Marriot, to divest in their private prison holdings, culminated in Fabricio and four fellow activists taking over and occupying a college administration office in civil disobedience.  Their action was credited by long-time, anti-prison activist, Harvey Mechanic, with forcing the company into one of the largest corporate divesture in US history. As a result of this campaign, Sodexho-Marriott sold $10 million worth of Corrections Corporation of America stock in 2003.  Fabricio’s anti-prison work was recognized by the West Valley NAACP in 2002, when they awarded him the Fannie Mae King Freedom Fighter award.

After college Fabricio moved to Philadelphia seeking work in the labor movement, and he was selected to be the Executive Director of Jobs with Justice in February 2004.  In Philadelphia, Fabricio has been proud to have the organization stand up for immigrants’ rights and for numerous union causes.  Under his tenure, Jobs with Justice was the first labor organization to answer the racist anti-immigrant laws passed in Hazleton, PA with on-the-ground action and organizing.

Connections from this work won justice for five pork processing workers from the Hazleton area who were illegally fired for organizing activities to Jobs with Justice in 2007.  Under Fabricio’s leadership and that of his good friend and employee, Eduardo Soriano-Castillo, and the legal work of Pete Winebrake, the five workers won a class-action lawsuit for over $100,000 for this violation of their rights on the job.

Perhaps Fabricio’s most proud work, however, has been in the Philadelphia Officers and Workers Rising, or POWR campaign.  This effort to professionalize the private security guard industry in Philadelphia has been long fought since 2004.  This industry is one of the most racially unjust and segregated in the US economy.  In Philadelphia, as many as 97% of the 16,000 security officers are African-American, and a majority of these workers struggle with wages that are at or below the poverty line.

This ground breaking, nationally-renowned campaign has been able to move hundreds of security officers to action.  With the support of local unions, dozens of churches, and innumerable student and community volunteers, this campaign has been able to use innovative, non-union strategies to win union level wages and paid sick-days for workers at the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Temple University and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  In 2008 alone, their campaign resulted in more than $2.5 million in gains for some of Philadelphia’s most under-served workers.

Fabricio has gone on to further innovate and advance social justice. In 2009, he lead the successful effort to establish and win an election for the

Fabricio Rodriguez speaking at a prayer vigil a day before the PSOU election. Phildelphia, PA, October 7, 2009.

independent Philadelphia Security Officers Union (PSOU).  The formation of an independent union is extremely rare and this groundbreaking campaign has been featured in Labor Notes magazine, the Nation, FOX News, ABC News, CBS News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper, and on Grit TV, a nationally syndicated program that focuses on the progressive movement.

Once he has successfully completed the PSOU contract negotiations, Fabricio plans to move on to other professional pursuits in the Philadelphia area in 2010.