DeAngelo Bester

About

DeAngelo Bester is the Executive Director of the Workers Center For Racial Justice. He has worked as both a community and labor organizer for nearly 15 years. He has organized and helped developed a diverse set of leaders, from nurses in rural Wisconsin to public housing residents in New York. DeAngelo has led local, state, and national organizing campaigns that advanced racial justice around issues such as educational equity, preservation and expansion of affordable housing, re-entry, and increasing access to living wage jobs for Black workers.

In 2012 DeAngelo started the Workers Center For Racial Justice (WCRJ), which focuses on organizing unemployed, low-wage and formerly incarcerated Black workers. In 2014 after just two and half years in existence, under DeAngelo's leadership, WCRJ achieved a major victory by getting statewide Ban the Box legislation passed and signed into law that covers both public and private sectors employers. And in 2016 DeAngelo led the field effort for WCRJ and its sister 501 c4 organization, the Center for Racial and Gender Equity that helped get former police Superintendent McCarthy fired and State's Attorney Alvarez voted out of office.

 

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DeAngelo Bester

Agenda

Apr
27
Long Bridging Toward Democracy and Belonging
Our current era is defined by an "us vs. them" mindset due to politics deeply embedded in institutional polycrisis, political and social fragmentation, and suspicion of each other. These dynamics, nationally and globally, are leading us toward dehumanization of each other, which in turn is fueling violence, wars, and the erosion of democratic values. Building the “bigger we" will require new tools and infrastructures that will change our modes of being and working, from redefining our strategies and agendas to how we’re measuring our success. Suppose the path toward building the infrastructure...