Escalating Resistance: Lisa Fithian

UIC Gallery 400: 400 South Peoria Street

XRChicago welcomes guest trainer, author and longtime organizer LISA FITHIAN.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about building power from one of the masters.

Lisa Fithian is an American political activist and protest organizer. She began her work in the mid-1970s as a member of student government in her high school and at Skidmore College. As a member and coordinator of the Washington Peace Center for seven years during the 1980s, Fithian organized hundreds of events and demonstrations on a range of issues, both locally and nationally, and helped lead an extensive anti-racism process that transformed the Peace Center into a multicultural organization.

In the early 1990s Lisa joined the labor movement, bringing her experience to the Justice for Janitors campaigns in Washington, D.C., Denver, and Los Angeles, and to nursing home workers in San Francisco and Detroit. She also provided training and support work to the United Auto Workers and with the Detroit Newspaper Strikers. Lisa has continued her work for social, economic, and environmental justice, providing training and organizing support to many of the global justice mobilization around the world since the shut down of the WTO Ministerial in Seattle in 1999. After Hurricane Katrina, Lisa worked with the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans, organizing relief efforts. Currently, Lisa serves as a National Steering Committee member of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of over 1,000 local and national groups working to end the war in Iraq and build a broad movement for social change.

She has written throughout the years including the introduction to the post-9-11 edition of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal this Book, n the book anthology What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, And the State of the Nation by South End Press, and most recently in her book SHUT IT DOWN, Stories from a fierce, loving resistance.