Administrative Committee

Roles and responsibilities for the AC and its members:

• The AC provides SFA with long-term organizational continuity and sustainability, particularly in relation to personnel and financial issues.
• The AC works closely with staff to plan for SFA's financial longevity, including but not limited to helping to maintain and broaden grantwriting and grantseeking efforts as well as the Sustainer Program.
• With input from the steering committee and the CIW, the AC is responsible for personnel oversight and policy including hiring and firing, orienting, evaluating, providing support to, determining salaries and benefits for SFA staff.
• The AC will design, together with the SC, programs for leadership development to ensure people of color, women, and working class and queer members of the SFA network are prepared to take on AC and staff-level positions.
• The AC is composed of at least four former SFA staff, interns, and/or steering committee members.
• AC terms last for two years, and a member may serve a maximum of three consecutive terms.
• The AC is composed of at least 50% people of color and 50% women.
• The AC has one Steering Committee representative who serves as a liaison between the two bodies.
• The AC meets a minimum of four times a year, including monthly conference calls and — when possible — face-to-face meetings. Attendance at these meetings/on these calls and at the yearly SFA Encuentro in Immokalee is mandatory.
• New AC members will be chosen by the current AC with input from staff and SC.

Roles and responsibilities drafted by the 2009 Steering Committee and further developed by the 2011 AC.

2011 AC:

Erica Dodt is entering her third year on the steering committee and is starting her first year on the administrative committee. She is excited to be in Orlando mobilizing for the "Do the Right THing" march. Erica attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale creating her own major in Social Justice and minoring in Womens Studies. She made school interesting and relevant by co-founding a feminist organization, creating independent discussion/reading courses with friends, interning at a free-legal service for low-income persons focusing on housing issues and working on a documentary in Brazil about a land occupation in Belo Horizonte. Erica came to this movement because of its capacity to be a reflexive/action oriented force that is  building a holistic path towards food sovereignty. She has learned so much from this movement and the wonderful people that are a part of it. She is interested in coyuntura; learning media skills; cyborgs; building strong, fun, accountable and supportive relationships; cooking, sewing and other DYI crafts; chocolate, and exercising for the revolution!

Patrick Kelsall is leaving the Steering Committee after 3 years and is excited for the opportunity to stay in the SFA game through the AC. Grassroots fundraising and grant-writing are two of the skill sets he hopes to develop while on the AC and use to strengthen SFA for the long term and other intersecting struggles. Nesting in Denver,CO, Patrick is a childcare worker and spends his free time organizing with Denver Fair Food as well as several local prison abolition and immigrant rights efforts. When not being run ragged by kindergarteners or immersed in organizing projects, he enjoys spending time with friends and family, discovering new music, and reading.

Natasha Noriega-Goodwin, long an SFA organizer, is a former provisional staff member who traveled on the inaugural 48-stop, statewide tour of Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum in the lead-up to the Farmworker Freedom March. She served on the first SFA Steering Committee, shaped and selected at the organization's first youth-ally retreat in Immokalee, FL, Fall 2005. Natasha now resides in Orange County, CA and plays Cueca and Son Jarocho in her free time. Her BA is in Sustainable Agriculture, UC Santa Cruz.

Charlene Obernauer is an organizer, musician, and writer currently living in Brooklyn, New York. For the past six years, she has been a core organizer within SFA, having served on the first Steering Committee and attended the first Encuentro. She is a founding member of the Community/Farmworker Alliance (CFA), which is working on a campaign directed at persuading Trader Joe's to negotiate with the CIW. Charlene works as the Director of Long Island Jobs with Justice, a non-profit organization that works with labor, community groups, people of faith, and students in the struggle for workers’ rights. Charlene is also the lyricist and drummer of the feminist punk band, Born in a Cent and books political benefit shows throughout the New York City area. 

Kandace Vallejo is an Masters student studying Education as UT Austin and doing research on the use of popular education in social movements. For the last six years, she has worked with the SFA, serving for three years on the Steering Committee and now in her second year of serving on the Administrative Committee. Sharing the view of the CIW that Consciousness + Commitment = Change, she recognizes the importance of developing consciousness through the use of popular education techniques that base lessons in student's life experiences, and focuses on using people's stories as a tool for self-empowerment, and ultimately, change. In her current position at Worker's Defense Project, an immigrant worker's rights organization based out of Austin, TX, she is the coordinator of the Youth Empowerment Program, and she works with the children of the organization's worker-members doing tutoring, college preparation, and teaching about social justice issues. Kandace also works as a fundraiser and popular educator for other organizations in the economic justice movement, and has a deep commitment to working for justice through solidarity with others, which focuses and drives the work she does.