The Discount Legacy Award annually identifies, supports, and celebrates an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and contributed significantly to workers’ rights movements in the United States. Through public recognition and a $20,000 stipend, we hope to recognize and amplify the work of individuals at the intersections leading the way toward justice for low-wage workers of color. This is a one of a kind opportunity to recognize the often unheard voices of worker movements - that includes volunteers, members, workplace leaders, and more who are transforming the lives and rights of their fellow low-wage workers of color.

Created in partnership with Jobs With Justice Education Fund and the Neighborhood Funders Group’s Funders for a Just Economy, the Discount Foundation Legacy Award was launched in 2015 to commemorate and carry on the legacy of the Foundation’s decades-long history of supporting leading edge organizing in the worker justice arena beyond its spend down as a foundation in 2014.

El Premio Discount Legacy identifica, apoya y celebra anualmente a una persona que ha demostrado un liderazgo sobresaliente y ha contribuido significativamente a los movimientos por los derechos de los trabajadores en los Estados Unidos. A través del reconocimiento público y un estipendio de $20,000, esperamos reconocer y ampliar el trabajo de las personas en las intersecciones que lideran el camino hacia la justicia para los trabajadores de color con salarios bajos. Esta es una oportunidad única para reconocer las voces a menudo inauditas de los movimientos de trabajadores, que incluyen voluntarios, miembros, líderes en el lugar de trabajo y más que están transformando las vidas y los derechos de sus compañeros trabajadores de color con salarios bajos. 

Creado en asociación con Jobs With Justice Education Fund y los Funders for a Just Economy del Neighborhood Funders Group, el Premio Discount Foundation Legacy se lanzó en 2015 para celebrar y continuar el legado de décadas de historia de la Fundación de apoyar la organización de vanguardia en el campo de la justicia laboral más allá del exceso de gastos como fundación en 2014. 

2023 Awardee:

Angaza Laughinghouse

Co-Manager, Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center; Black Workers for Justice Cultural Commission

Headshot of Angaza Laughinghouse gazing at camera wearing a jacket.Angaza Sababu Laughinghouse is a veteran community, labor & human rights organizer, lawyer, cultural activist and leader.

Angaza came back to his family roots in North Carolina from Brooklyn, N.Y.C. on November 3rd 1979, to do Anti-Ku Klux Klan organizing & legal work in response to the tragic Greensboro Massacre of five activists by anti-union racists. As a co-founder of the 40 year old Black Workers For Justice in 1981, and co- founding member & three term president of the social justice U.E. Local 150- N.C. Public Service Workers Union, he brings more than five decades as a volunteer (non-staffer) labor organizer as well as a Black Freedom Struggle/Black Liberation Movement organizing activist. As a rank and file front line worker & volunteer organizer after his regular public service government job work hours, Angaza initiated organizing North Carolina public sector workers in 1983, co-founding the North Carolina Public Service Workers Organization (predecessor of UE Local 150) in 1990.

He organized community support after the 1991 Hamlet, North Carolina Imperial Food Co. fire killed 25 workers, helped Raleigh’s sanitation workers organize in their 2006 strike & struggle to secure improvements in wages and working conditions, and worked with employees of the Moncure Plywood Co. factory to build public support during their recent strike for healthcare benefits and workers justice. In the ongoing struggle against Right to Work (for less without union power), he led his union UE Local150’s successful effort with the United Nation's International Labor Organization to declare "North Carolina’s law prohibiting collective bargaining for public employees a violation of international labor standards and human rights". Angaza is a founding member and leader of the the 2012 Southern Workers Assembly and 40 years plus Black Workers For Justice.

His activism, member of the African Liberation Support Committee & Youth Organization for Black Unity, accompanied him as a teenager while he studied at Columbia University and at Rutgers University Law School in Newark, NJ when he served on the Board of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (legal arm of the Black Liberation Movement). He has been honored and received prestigious awards including the Howard University "Reginald H. Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship" upon graduating from Rutgers. His community/labor activist wife Nathanette Mayo is a leader of UE Local 150 Union & a BWFJ leader also. They both are founding members of the nationally reknowned Fruit of Labor Singing Ensemble and Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center based in N.C..Their young son Angaza "Samora" is a youth activist organizer, NCBL Lawyer , veteran youth organizer as well as statewide community leader since 2007 of the Black Workers for Justice/Hip Hop For Justice.

The Fruit of Labor is available for performances for a reasonable fee. Contact them via email at fruitoflaborwcc@netscape.com.

Top 10 2023 Candidates

We have so many amazing nominees for the Discount Foundation Legacy Award, and the nominations remind us, year after year, of the vast, interconnected and often invisible work of frontline workers and community building movements, mutual aid, and solidarity globally. We invite you to learn more about the top ten candidates and to reach out to support their work:

 

Award Runner Up:

Leticia Zavala, Co-Founder, El Futuro es Nuestro/It's Our Future

Leticia Zavala's family emigrated to the U.S. migrant farmworker stream when Leticia was 6, and she became a member of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee as a teen. After graduating from college she returned to the fields as a FLOC organizer. Leticia was elected to FLOC's executive board in 2017, is a member of Colectivo Binacional de Mujeres Migrantes, and serves on the immigrant advisory council for the city of Zacapu, Michoacán. She has received Mexicanas Mujeres de Valor recognition under Governor of the State of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto and Televisa.

 

  • Doris Landaverde, Co-Director and Steward, Massachusetts TPS Committee, National TPS Alliance and SEIU 32BJ The Massachusetts TPS Committee has been organized in order to prepare TPS recipients for the future and to fight for Permanent Residency. The National TPS Alliance is formed and led by TPS beneficiaries from across the United States, combining advocacy efforts at a national level to save Temporary Protected Status for all beneficiaries in the short term and to devise legislation that creates a path to permanent residency in the long term.With more than 175,000 members, SEIU 32BJ is the largest union of property service workers in the U.S.

  • Brenda Castro, Organizer, Movimiento Cosecha
    Movimiento Cosecha is a national, non-violent movement fighting for permanent protection, dignity, and respect for all undocumented immigrants.

  • Maria Salinas, Worker Organizer, North Bay Jobs with Justice/Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena
    North Bay Jobs with Justice is dedicated to bringing community and labor together in the fight for workers' rights. Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena seeks to reclaim and preserve indigenous cultures, provide educational information to the public on indigenous cultures, and to implement programs that enhance the civic participation and the economic and social well-being of indigenous communities.

  • Joselyn Mendoza, Founder and Lead Organizer, Mirrors Trans Beauty Cooperative
    Mirror Trans Beauty LLC is New York’s first immigrant-transgender led worker cooperative and one of the first of it’s kind in the country. Mirror provides a safe space for LGBTQAI+ and low-income communities of color to access quality cosmetology services.

  • June Barrett, Board Chair, Miami Workers Center; Active Member, Black LGBTQ Migrant Project; International Domestic Worker Activist, National Domestic Workers Alliance
    Miami Workers Center builds power with working-class tenants, workers, women, and families in Miami-Dade County. BLMP aims to reduce isolation, build leadership, and protect and defend Black LGBTQIA+ migrants from increasing attack through community-building events around the country, providing legal support, increasing access to services, creating regional organizing networks, and launching the first ever survey focused on our experiences. The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) works for the respect, recognition, and rights for more than 2.2 million nannies, housecleaners, and home care workers who do the essential work of caring for our loved ones and our homes.

  • Alvaro Bolainez, Vice President, Rideshare Drivers United
    Rideshare United is an organization of Uber & Lyft drivers uniting for a fair, dignified, and sustainable rideshare industry

  • Naeema Muhammad, Senior Advisor, The North Carolina Environmental Justice Network
    North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN) is a grassroots, people of color-led coalition of community organizations and their supporters who work with low income communities and people of color on issues of climate, environmental, racial, and social injustice.

  • Dominic Harris, Treasurer, UE Local 150; President of Chapter, Charlotte City Workers Union
    UE local 150, the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, is a member-run organization made up of thousands of state and city workers.

  • Sarah Ahn, Organizer, Flushing Workers Center
    The Flushing Workers Center was founded in 2014 by immigrant and young workers to unite workers to fight for better conditions at their workplaces, homes and in their communities.

2022 Awardee:

Wendy Melendez Garcia

Worker Leader, Local 32BJ SEIU District 615

Wendy Melendez Garcia is a longstanding worker leader at SEIU 32BJ District 615, the New  England division of janitors, security officers, and airport workers, and a janitor at Tufts Medical Center in downtown Boston. She has been a key leader in contract campaigns that have raised the wages of Boston-area janitors to become among the highest paid in the nation at over $20 per hour, with other benefits such as fully-paid family health care and access to lawyers for immigration services.

“Wendy fosters in other people this contagious spirit of hers, in which we raise hell, crack jokes,  and care for each other as whole humans, so that — despite what can be bad odds for low-wage workers of color — we continue to fight, and we continue to dream," said Victor Yang, who nominated her for this award.

FJE Discount Award

She organized cleaners at Boston’s Logan Airport as part of a decade-long union drive, leading  workers through strike after strike. She helped navigate racial tensions between Eastern  European, Latinx, and African immigrant workers; and just last year, the union ratified their first-ever contract. She has taken a leave of absence from her job to fight in contract campaigns in other states, with  other janitors, and has organized workers to strike at non-unionized cleaning companies. While she would be quick to say that such victories are collective efforts - and indeed they are - Wendy is one of the key figures agitating and leading from behind. She has also led victories that often go unseen, most critically in her leadership development of those around her, which shifted the culture of the union.

“Oftentimes she is able to be a portavoz (spokesperson) for others who may not have the courage to speak up — she is the one who will say it directly to union management and employers.”

      — Victor Yang, nominator

Top 10 2022 Candidates

We have so many amazing nominees for the Discount Foundation Legacy Award, and the nominations remind us, year after year, of the vast, interconnected and often invisible work of frontline workers and community building movements, mutual aid, and solidarity globally. We invite you to learn more about the top ten candidates and to reach out to support their work:

 

Award Runner Up:

Nap Pempena, Secretary General, Migrante USA

Nap was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. He believes that worker organizing must be fought alongside the fight for broader social change. Nap started organizing in 2009 in the Philippines as a student organizer and elected student government council member at the University of the Philippines. When he migrated to Los Angeles in 2010, he continued to organize among Filipino youth and students and  among fellow undocumented students. He eventually transitioned to organizing Filipino  immigrant workers, including labor-trafficked workers in Los Angeles. He then started to get more directly involved in organizing victims of trafficking and wage  theft in Los Angeles in 2015. When he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, he helped  support and organize dozens of Rainbow Bright workers, caregivers who were victims of  trafficking, wage theft and sexual abuse.

In 2018, he was elected as Secretary General of Migrante USA, an alliance of 13 Filipino immigrant worker organizations in the U.S. To fulfill the mission of Migrant  USA, Nap believes that migrant workers possess the knowledge and power necessary to  achieve victories and contribute to the liberation of our communities. During the pandemic, Nap has defended the rights and welfare of young hotel workers on temporary J-1 visas who were displaced by the shutdowns through the national Support J-1 Workers campaign. He has exemplified boldness, courage, persistence, and determination to fight for the  rights of exploited migrant workers despite repeated and ongoing attacks against him and his organization.

 

  • Antonio "Toño" Solis, Leader, Las Deliveristas Unidos
    Los Deliveristas Unidos (LDU) is a collective of app delivery workers who are fighting for justice.

  • Antonio Dominguez Alcala, Worker Leader, CLEAN Carwash Worker Center
    The mission of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign is to support and empower car wash workers in Los Angeles, CA as they improve and create long-lasting change in their workplaces, lives, and communities.

  • Armando Arzate, Member Leader, Workers' Dignity/Dignidad Obrera
    Workers’ Dignity is a worker-led center in Nashville, Tennessee organizing for economic justice and dignity for all. They are developing solutions to wage theft and the systemic abuse of workers by building power through relationships with fellow low-wage workers and allies.

  • Maria Salinas, Worker Leader, North Bay Jobs with Justice/Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena
    North Bay Jobs with Justice is dedicated to bringing community and labor together in the fight for workers' rights. Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena seeks to reclaim and preserve indigenous cultures, provide educational information to the public on indigenous cultures, and to implement programs that enhance the civic participation and the economic and social well-being of indigenous communities.

  • Nita Carter, Outreach Coordinator/Lead Organizer, Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights
    Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rightsprovides legal advocacy and training for low-wage Black workers through direction action/public awareness campaigns, legal advocacy and popular education.

  • Rocío Caravantes, Healing to Action
    Healing to Action builds the leadership and collective power of the communities most impacted by gender-based violence to achieve economic and social equality.

  • Troy Walcott, Co-Founder and President, People's Choice Communications
    People’s Choice Communications is an employee-owned social enterprise launched by members of IBEW Local #3 to bridge the digital divide and help our neighbors get connected to the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Virginia Badillo, Member Leader, Workers Defense Project; Board Member, Workers Defense Action Fund
    Workers Defense Project is a community organization for low-wage, immigrant workers in the Texas construction industry, standing alongside workers as they fight to be paid a living wage and protected in their work.

2021 Awardee:

Crispin Hernandez

Organizer at Workers' Center of Central New York

Headshot of Crispin in a black T shirt that says, 'Mother Earth has no boundaries, Our relatives are not immigrants'

"Yo soy Crispin Hernandez  Mixteco del Sur de Mexico. Yo vengo de un lugar donde nació el maíz. Yo trabajé en la agricultura por unos años en específico en la industria lechera. Ahorita soy organizador del Centro de Trabajadores de Nueva York Central." My name is Crispin Hernandez and I am Mixteco from southern Mexico. I come from the lands where corn was first cultivated. I have worked in agriculture for several years, specifically in the milk industry. Currently, I am an organizer at the Workers Center of Central New York.

“All workers deserve to have a voice and be heard at their place of work, and farmworkers deserve to be treated with respect and dignity,” states Crispin Hernandez, who was fired from his job as a dairy worker in Lowville, NY in 2015 after his boss saw him meeting after work with co-workers and human rights organizers to discuss workplace conditions. In May of 2016, he filed suit against the State of New York, challenging the legality of the State Employment Relations Act for categorically excluding farmworkers from collective bargaining protections despite the guarantee contained in New York’s bill of rights that all "employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing." In May of 2019, New York’s Supreme Court Appellate Division issued a ruling affirming the constitutional right of farmworker to organize, while compelling the state legislature to enact strong collective bargaining protections for farmworkers in June of last year. Thanks to Crispin’s courage and leadership, some 80,000 farmworkers can now exercise their right to freely associate in defense of their common interests and negotiate collectively to improve their working conditions.

As an organizer with the Workers’ Center of New York, Crispin is working to educate and organize farmworkers to understand their new rights and put them into practice, including leadership in efforts such as the Green Light NY campaign, which successfully won legislation to restore access to drivers licenses for undocumented New Yorkers. Both among workers and farmworker advocates, Crispin is widely respected for his leadership and incisive analysis of the issues affecting New York’s farmworkers. He models a style of leadership and organizing that centers the experience of farmworker communities, uplifts and develops the power of directly impacted people, and emphasizes the collective nature of social change work.

Learn more about Workers' Center of Central New York.

Top 10 2021 Candidates

 

Headshot of Cherri

Award Runner Up:

Rev. Cherri Murphy, Faith Rooted Organizer, Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy

Minister Cherri Murphy is a lead organizer with Gig Workers Rising and Faith Rooted Organizer with East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy.  She is also a doctoral candidate at Berkeley School of Theology. Gig Workers Rising has been a key voice for workers in the face of the billions being poured in by tech companies like Uber, Doordash and Lyft to strip labor rights for predominantly workers of color. Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy is a project of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE) advances economic, racial, and social justice by building a just economy based on good jobs and healthy communities. They aim to address the root causes of economic injustice by developing strategic alliances among community, labor, and people of faith to build power and create change with low-income workers and communities of color.

  • Abdirahman Muse, Executive Director, Awood Center
    The Awood Center is a community organization in Minneapolis focused on advocating for and educating Minnesota’s growing East African communities about their labor rights by educating, organizing, developing leadership and mobilizing to improve the economic and political life of the community and all working people.

  • Antonio Dominguez Alcala, Worker Leader, CLEAN Carwash Worker Center
    The mission of the CLEAN Carwash Campaign is to support and empower car wash workers in Los Angeles, CA as they improve and create long-lasting change in their workplaces, lives, and communities.

  • Armando Arzate, Member Leader, Workers' Dignity/Dignidad Obrera
    Workers’ Dignity is a worker-led center in Nashville, Tennessee organizing for economic justice and dignity for all. They are developing solutions to wage theft and the systemic abuse of workers by building power through relationships with fellow low-wage workers and allies.

  • Linda Oalican, Co-founder and Executive Director, Damayan Migrant Workers Association.
    Damayan empowers low-wage workers in New York to fight for their labor, health, gender, and immigrant rights. Established in 2002, their purpose is to build leadership at the grassroots level to eliminate labor trafficking, fight labor fraud and wage theft, and to demand fair labor standards to achieve economic and social justice.

  • Megan Macaraeg, Organizing Director, Beloved Community Incubator
    Beloved Community Incubator supports and organizes resources for community-based cooperatives and social enterprises in Washington, D.C. that have a vision for racial and economic equity and unlikely relationships.

  • Mohamed Attia, Director, Street Vendor Project
    The Street Vendor Project is a membership-based project with more than 1,800 active vendor members who are working together to create a vendors' movement for permanent change in New York City.

  • Myriam Ramirez, Community Organizer, Make the Road Pennsylvania
    Make the Road Pennsylvania is dedicated to organizing the working class in Latino communities, building power for Justice.

  • Nap Pempena, Secretary General, Migrante USA
    Migrante USA is an alliance of Filipino worker and migrant organizations dedicated to fighting for rights and welfare of Filipinos in the U.S. and for the genuine democracy and freedom in the Philippines.

  • Virginia Badillo, Member Leader, Workers Defense Project; Board Member, Workers Defense Action Fund
    Workers Defense Project is a community organization for low-wage, immigrant workers in the Texas construction industry, standing alongside workers as they fight to be paid a living wage and protected in their work.

2020 Awardee:

Andrea Dehlendorf

Co-Executive Director of United for Respect

Andrea DehlendorfAndrea Dehlendorf is Co-Executive Director of United for Respect, a national organization building power for people working in low wage jobs by centering their voices, experiences and solutions in the national movement fighting for the future of work, our economy and corporate regulation. With Andrea’s fierce leadership, United for Respect organizes people employed at the country’s largest employers to amplify their demands on corporate leaders in the service economy and policymakers to provide family-sustaining jobs. United for Respect leverages technology — social media and a new digital platform, WorkIt — to support people working in retail by bringing them into communities of support and action with one another. Through online peer networks and on-the-ground base-building strategies, United for Respect scaffolds the leadership and stories of working people to advocate for solutions to the pressing needs of the country’s massive low-wage workforce.

Andrea’s roots in the movement go deep, and include seminal experiences winning major victories with people working in the most unstable and precarious low wage service jobs, from janitors to hotel workers. Prior to United for Respect, Andrea worked on some the labor movements most innovating campaigns including Justice for Janitors, Airport Workers United and hotel worker organizing in Las Vegas. She lives in Oakland, CA with her twelve year old son.

Learn about United for Respect.

2019 Awardee:

Odessa Kelly

Co-Chair of Stand Up Nashville

Odessa KellyA native of Nashville, Odessa Kelly works diligently to bring positive and equitable change to the Nashville community by serving as co-chair for Stand Up Nashville, a coalition of community-based organizations and labor unions that represent the working people of Nashville who have seen our city transformed by development, but have not shared in the benefits of that growth. She also serves as Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH), Economic Equity & Jobs task force chair. Her work with NOAH has included building one of the largest and most powerful social justice movements in Nashville. She has advocated for the working class and underserved communities in Nashville, issues ranging from affordable housing to establishing the first ever Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) in the state of Tennessee. She believes that Nashville has the potential to achieve a progressive paradigm shift -- a cultural shift in how a traditional southern city becomes a leader in the progressive movement across the country.

Learn about Stand Up Nashville.

2018 Awardee:

Enrique Balcazar

Community Organizer and Leader at Migrant Justice

Enrique "Kike" Balcazar immigrated to the United States from Tabasco, Mexico when he was 17 years old. He joined his parents on a dairy farm in rural Vermont and worked for years on farms across the state. Enrique joined Migrant Justice and became a leader in the successful campaign to expand access to driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants in Vermont. He became part of the organization's Farmworker Coordinating Committee and is now an organizer and spokesperson. Enrique is one of the principal architects of Milk with Dignity, a worker-led program securing human rights and economic justice in dairy supply chains. In 2017, during a national campaign calling on Ben & Jerry's to join the program, Enrique and fellow organizer Zully Palacios were arrested by ICE agents while leaving the Migrant Justice office. A wave of protests won their release from detention, though Enrique remains in deportation proceedings. Despite the government's persecution, Enrique continued to lead the Milk with Dignity campaign to victory, signing a historic contract with Ben & Jerry's in October, 2017.

Learn about Migrant Justice.

2017 Awardee:

Luna Ranjit

Co-founder of Adhikaar and the New York Healthy Nail Salons Coalition

Luna Ranjit’s work is rooted in the community. For more than a decade, Luna guided Adhikaar's programs, research, policy advocacy, and partnerships, building visibility and power for the emerging Nepali-speaking immigrant community. As a co-founder of the New York Healthy Nail Salons Coalition, she helped lead the way for the sweeping changes to improve working conditions in the nail salon industry. She also served on the advisory board of the National Healthy Nail and Beauty Salons Alliance. Luna has been quoted and featured in print and broadcast media on the issues related to workers’ rights, immigrant rights, language justice, and civic engagement. Her groundbreaking work has been recognized by many community organizations and elected officials. In 2016, she received the Grinnell College Innovator for Social Justice Prize created to support and inspire innovative social change makers throughout the world.

Learn more about Adhikaar.

2016 Awardee:

Alfred Marshall

Organizer with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice

As an organizer in New Orleans, Alfred works to win back power for structurally unemployed and underemployed Black men and women through campaigns to achieve higher wages and better standards in his community. Through Alfred’s tremendous organizing campaigns, he has helped win local hiring on post-Katrina public construction and development projects, a “Ban the Box” rule, and a living wage and paid sick leave ordinance for individuals employed under city contracts. “By sitting down and talking with other workers at the New Orleans Worker Center, I realized that we’re in this together,” Alfred said. “New Orleans won’t stop. I won’t stop. This award is bigger than I am. It’s all about doing the work on the ground. We’re shaking this world up."

Learn more about the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice.