Gilda Haas
Co-Founder, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy
“For 40 years, I have worked alongside poor people who organize their neighbors and co-workers to fight for housing and jobs and a better life. I have seen them light up a room with their intelligence and vision and then go back to work where they push a broom or sell tamales and are made invisible by middle-class people who pass them by. My first motivation comes from these people who have taught me so much.”
Biography
Gilda Haas is an organizer, educator, and economic development planner who has been helping grassroots organizations build democratic economies from the ground up for the past four decades. She is a co-founder of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy in Los Angeles, the national Right to the City Alliance, the UCLA Community Scholars Program, and the L.A. Co-op Lab collective, where she currently spends most of her time when she is not running after her 5-year-old grandson, Silas, who she is raising along with her mystery-writer husband, Gary Phillips.