The Class of 2026-27

Each year the Fund selects a grantee who honors the legacy of commitment to peace and justice modeled by Jessie Lloyd O’Connor, a labor journalist, organizer and an early and beloved member of our Board, who with her husband Harvey, opened heart and home to activists seeking respite. Our Jessie Lloyd O’Connor Scholar this year is Eleni Retta. Eleni is a Philadelphia based labor organizer with AFSCME and UAW who works to educate and expand labor solidarity locally and nationally. In her Masters program, Eleni studies Employment and Labor Law and first amendment and media law. She is also a freelance multimedia journalist covering labor and bargaining for local and national magazine and tv outlets. For the past few years, she has been a member of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Emergency Workforce Organizing Committee, and the National Writers Union.

Marilyn Buck was a political prisoner and poet who worked in solidarity with Black Liberation struggles to end white supremacy. She received grants from the Fund in 2003 and 2004, and continued connection through supportive notes from her jail cell, and with a generous bequest following her death. To honor her memory and legacy, The Marilyn Buck Award is given to an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated activist working for justice. This year, our awardee is Seydina Ndoye. Seydina is a poet, scholar and mentor whose voice rises powerfully from within the walls of incarceration. A proud son of the African diaspora, he carries the weight of lineage, communal memory and location into every line he writes. In the face of carceral erasure he has forged language, writing with urgency, depth and an unflinching gaze toward justice. Seydina earned his BA in org leadership and change and ultimately intends to pursue a PhD in Human Rights with a focus in decolonization. In a recent effort to combat the high rate of preventable deaths and injuries suffered by people in prison as well as in response to the rampant correctional abuse and negligence he is working on a legislative framework to equip all prison guards with 24 hour body cameras. In addition, as a way to fight against gross judicial misconduct and protect adversely affected communities in the courtroom, Seydina is drafting a proposal for the mandatory installation of live feed cameras in all state courtrooms enhancing oversight and accountability. As a mentor he works directly with young men who are at an impasse in life. Guiding them through accountability and self reflection. He is also a justice contributor for St Georges justice program where he offers candid insight into injustice and the overarching lineage of systemic inequality and capitalism. Seydina is also cofounder and co facilitator of the Apology bank of Rhode Island, a restorative justice initiative where men and women attempt to right their wrongs while bridging the gap between trauma and understanding.

The Brock/Ransby Award was created to honor the international solidarity and racial justice work of Dr Lisa Brock and Dr. Barbara Ransby both Chicago-based historian/scholar-activists who organized against South-African Apartheid. This award recognizes a graduate student activist with an international solidarity focus and is rooted in racial justice - this year our awardee is eva dickerson (they/them/starseed). eva believes that we can achieve a freer, greener, future –and alongside their friends and their community, they are on a transformative journey to reach it. For most of their adult life, they have worked to understand autonomy and domination: both in the superstructure and in quotidian life. Their journey began with the global Black food sovereignty movement, and evolved into work against hyper-militarism and for cross-language solidarity. Today, they lead in the global movement for reproductive autonomy, helping communities decolonize their relationships with reproduction, our planet, and our bodies. As an incoming Master’s of Postcolonial Studies student, they are curious about what can be accomplished when the movements for reproductive autonomy are conversant with decolonizing movements. When they’re not organizing, they can be found creating zines or dj sets related to their theories on dance floors as sites for liberation.

Tavonne Amir is an artist-scholar whose work situates Indigenous African oral traditions like oríkì as critical to preserve, study, and fund. While filling gaps of food insecurity, Tavonne’s grassroots organizing has utilized the performance art of spoken word poetry for folks to experience one’s ancestral lands in meditation— wherein attendants have confirmed accuracy at no financial cost via sponsored testing. Tavonne continues this work as founder and active director of The Cowry Shell: a salon for the arts. Introduced to primary research in Indigenous scholarship while interning for Native-Bound-Unbound on Santa Clara and Pojoaque Pueblo lands, Tavonne interweaves academia with a studio practice that has received standing ovations in experimental venues, gallery shows, and museums like Hoboken Historical Museum. Tavonne continues organizing through The Cowry Shell by hosting oríkì workshops and collaborating with local and online communities towards preservation.

Jose Arriaza is a student activist, writer, and artist based in Miami, Florida, who is a current member of Power U Center for Social Change and the Miami Workers Center and formerly a Design Associate at Engage Miami. As a grassroots organizer, he worked on campaigns advocating for an interactive budget tool in Miami-Dade County, workers' rights, and against the co-location of five schools under Florida's Schools of Hope law through the formation of the People's Alliance for Public Education, which led him to pursue a Master's in Urban Education Policy at Brown University. As a scholar, he is interested in utilizing the Black radical imagination and utopianism to challenge the neoliberal economic policies that public education is founded upon and scholarship that argues why public education is a pillar of democracy that all people should be fighting for.

Angel Castillo Reyes is a Southern organizer and a first-generation aspiring movement/people’s attorney. He is a member of the InTRANSitive Center, an Arkansas-based trans migrant-led organization; a co-leader of Migra Watch, an immigrant rights project and expansion of the center’s ICE Abolition work; and President of his law school’s National Lawyers Guild chapter. Angel aims to use his legal education to put people over profit, advocate for the liberation of all oppressed folks, and demonstrate that the South and its communities are worth fighting for.

Keandra Cochran is an Appalachian student activist and artist from West Virginia who uses creativity, organizing, and community engagement to challenge inequity. At Hedgesville High School, she founded both the Black Student Union and Gender & Sexuality Alliance, creating spaces for students whose voices are often marginalized. She has organized multicultural events, Pride programming, an ICE walkout, and community initiatives addressing access to books and resources. Through her Lending Library project, she partnered with Berkeley County Parks and Recreation to build and maintain free libraries in underserved communities. Academically, Keandra combines rigorous coursework with her passion for art, completing dual-enrollment studies through the Savannah College of Art and Design while pursuing Production and Set Design. Her visual art confronts environmental injustice, racism, surveillance, and other complexities of civil society. She hopes to continue using art and activism to build more equitable communities.

Priscila Esparza is a campus organizer and founder of the Student Organizing Committee at UC Riverside, a group focused on raising student consciousness on labor in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. Across the region, especially in Priscila’s hometown of San Bernardino, the logistics industry sinks its teeth into its soil to extract profit, pollute the air, and break workers’ bodies. By organizing students into collective spaces like SOC, and through recent organizing with in-home care workers and warehouse workers, Priscila is building solidarity for worker power, one conversation at a time. Catch her at the next picket line!

Natalia Estela Velez is a writer, artist, and community organizer from Caguas, Puerto Rico. Having lived through Hurricane Maria and now witnessing her family’s displacement amid growing gentrification, she grounds her activism in Puerto Rico’s intersecting healthcare, environmental, and housing crises. Natalia studies Government and Public Policy at Hamilton College and hopes to earn a law degree to serve as legal counsel for nonprofit organizations. She has worked with Amigxs del M.A.R., contributing to a pioneering study on the mental-health effects of climate change and coastal displacement. She also serves on the executive board of Salud PR, researching public policy solutions to Puerto Rico’s healthcare crisis. At Hamilton, Natalia organizes with Latino Student Union and the Feminists of Color Collective, fundraising,uplifting the voices of students of color and raising awareness of issues across Latin America. She was invited to attend the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute Conference and received an award from the mayor of Caguas recognizing her as an outstanding student and leader in her community.

Genesis Gomez is a second-year student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, double majoring in Sociology and Education, Democracy and Justice. Since entering college, she has been involved in the Young Democratic Socialists of America, where she works within Political Education and grassroots organizing to advocate for social and educational equity. She also works with POC Sustainability Collective in order to advocate for environmental justice in and out of Santa Cruz. Genesis is also heavily involved with the College Success Program (CSP) through College Is Real Inc. (CIR), where she works to support incoming first-year students at UCSC. Additionally, within the program, she also participates in panels, workshops, and events to speak about her experiences as a first-generation student and share resources to help peers across the program. Within the upcoming school year, Genesis will also be interning at the American Indian Resource Center, where she will provide support to the Indigenous student population at UCSC.

Yessica Gonzalez Rodriguez (they/them) is an organizer, facilitator, researcher, and artist based on occupied Tiwa Pueblo Lands. Their work lives at the intersection of trans, queer, and migrant justice to see a world without prisons, borders, and binaries. Yessica has spent the last fifteen years building digital campaigns to uplift marginalized communities that are excessively targeted and criminalized. They are a 2019 Soros Justice Fellow and currently serve on the board of Saturn’s Wish and T4T Empowerment. Yessica has a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in Gender Studies and is pursuing a PhD in American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Ingrid is a Native American House student ambassador at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, studying history. I grew up in Las Vegas, which, aside from tourism, is also home to one of the largest populations of Native Americans outside of tribally owned land. have been privileged to work very closely with the Urban Native community of Las Vegas and was a part of a youth group, the Indigenous Student Association, which has now transformed into a nonprofit, which I am the development director for. We sent letters to lawmakers in our state to designate the sacred mountain of Avi Kwa Ame as a national monument, hosted events, and built a healthy environment for Native youth in southern Nevada. My experience with ISA, as well as my intersectional identity, is what encouraged me to become more involved with activism in Vegas, and I began to attend/lead protests and raise funds for deeply important causes such as Palestinian Liberation and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. I also frequently volunteered and got the opportunity to blend my passion for education and mutual aid while in Mexico! My short-term goal is to be a history teacher. Educating our youth and ensuring that our youth is knowledgeable on the history is so important, and because of its importance, history and education are constantly under attack, especially in our current day. My long-term goal is to be a history professor, establishing a platform as an activist in the process because I believe that holding a title as an educator is one of the most revolutionary roles one can have.

Maria Fernanda Gutierrez is a first-generation Honduran immigrant, queer Latina, researcher, organizer, and lifelong learner studying Sociology and Women & Gender Studies at Florida International University. Her work explores immigration, gender, identity, and the ways capitalist, patriarchal, heteronormative, and colonial systems shape marginalized communities. She has engaged in LGBTQ+ advocacy and currently works with the International Rescue Committee, supporting immigrant families navigating shifting policies and political uncertainty. She is also a co-founder of Sin Miedo Project, a community-based initiative rooted in art, care, and collective healing that creates spaces for marginalized communities to reclaim their stories and imagine liberation together. Maria believes dismantling oppression must be accompanied by radical love, care, and collective healing. Her work is grounded in the belief that justice is a practice of collective transformation, creating spaces where communities can heal, belong, and exist freely and unapologetically.

Elijah Lee is an 18-year-old student, ordained minister, and community activist who has spent seven years organizing youth-led marches, advocating in the Virginia General Assembly, and speaking nationally on issues such as child abuse, racism, and trauma-informed care. He founded the nonprofit Hear Our Voices to empower young people, raised over $15,000 for pediatric safe rooms, and successfully introduced legislation benefiting young people—earning recognition such as the 2022 Emerging Philanthropic Leader and Youth Entrepreneur of the Year. Elijah has been featured on national platforms, and in 2024 received the DOJ's National Crime Victims Awar

Berm San Diego (he/we/our/us), questioned why his life looked different from his peers in grade school. Being a child of Filipinx migrants, his father’s incarceration, and being raised by a single mother with 6 children in public housing set the conditions for his politicization. Through his experiences with Filipino Advocates for Justice (FAJ), Interfaith Movement 4 Human Integrity (IM4HI), Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC), and Venceremos Brigade (VB) he has furthered electoral, anti-carceral, socialist and anti-imperialist projects. His intention with his master's thesis is to engage Filipinx-Americans with the Filipinx-American deportation struggle as a political education vehicle.

noon sharfeldin (she/they) is a musical theater performer, and a trans-queer Afrikan Muslim community healthcare worker. Originally born in Cairo, she immigrated to Lenapehoking (so called ‘South Brooklyn’) in 2007. Her primary focuses in medical school are in Black and Brown trans-queer primary care, immigrant and refugee preventative medicine, and ensuring free all-encompassing healthcare for the most marginalized of the most marginalized in our world.

Ava Swigart is a student organizer committed to protecting human dignity and creating opportunities for young people to engage in civic action. Through Spokane Students for Human Decency (SSHD), she organized six pro-human walkouts and vigils across Spokane Public Schools in response to ICE abuses of human rights. She worked with local and regional organizations, including Spokane County Against Racism, the Peace and Justice Action League Spokane, the NAACP, and WA Youth Alliance, to organize civic events and advocacy efforts. Ava worked with Spokane City Council members on issues of freedom of assembly and speech and organized a district-wide voter registration drive to increase student voice in the legislature. She also connected students with immigration organizations and helped expand SSHD into the Tri-Cities. Ava was selected as the “Voice of the Future” at NO KINGS #3 and planned “Students Demand: ICE OUT of Spokane.”

Rafik Nader Wahbi is a Public Health Abolitionist, Community Health Scientist, and Egyptian-Angeleno Chef who is finishing up his PhD at the UCLA School of Public Health. Rafik organizes with the Los Angeles Kalusugan Collective and is a founding member of the Los Angeles Mutual Aid Research Collective. His work focuses on the social and political determinants of public safety, mental health, and drug use, and how those most harmed and impacted by mass incarceration, homelessness, and other forms of state violence and displacement can and always have organized transformative and liberating forms of care that don’t involve violence.

Alma Weisberg is a sophomore undergraduate dance student and member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Ohio University. She is interested in connecting kinesthetic knowledge with larger movements for collective liberation. The body is a lens through which marginalized communities experience the impacts of oppression, colonialism, and structural violence. Weisberg hopes to explore how the moving body can then become an avenue for the colonized to reclaim autonomy over both their bodies and their land. With SJP, she works to demand that the University institution is held accountable for its direct contributions to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

Laynee Wessel is a master’s student in literature based in Colorado. She has over three years of experience with advocacy in feminism, queer and trans rights, and Palestinian liberation. She’s a long time member of Students for Justice in Palestine, and was involved with several Oklahoma-based, local organizations focused on feeding our communities and comprehensive sexual health/education. In the future, she hopes to become a radical educator and writer, utilizing human stories and communication to connect people and work towards total liberation.