Michael Leon Guerrero

Michael Leon Guerrero is Executive Director of the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS). He has over 30 years of experience as a community organizer and coordinator of national grassroots alliances. He was lead organizer and Executive Director of the SouthWest Organizing Project in Albuquerque, NM for 17 years, organizing local, state and regional campaigns resulting in progressive environmental and economic justice policies and cleanup of polluted sites. He served 8 years as National Coordinator of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), connecting community-based organizations in the U.S. with international social movements to coordinate efforts on globalization, militarism and climate. He was Executive Director of UNITY, an initiative of six national economic justice networks. Michael was later National Coordinator of the Climate Justice Alliance, an effort led by environmental justice organizations working for a just transition from extractive industries to sustainable, living economies.

Michael now serves on the Board of Greenpeace USA. He previously served on the Boards of Jobs with Justice and the New World Foundation. He was a member the National Coordinating Committee of the US Social Forum and a U.S. representative to the World Social Forum International Council.

Project Description

The Labor Network for Sustainability was founded as a vehicle to bridge the labor and environmental movements and work for an economic transition to a just, sustainable and climate safe future, or as we like to say, Making a Living on a Living Planet. Last year LNS launched an initiative titled the “Labor Convergence on Climate”. It is an initiative that brings together leaders and activists at all levels of the labor movement to develop worker-led strategies on climate change. Over the next year we plan to support local and state campaigns to decarbonize major sectors of the economy. We seek to build coalitions that work for a climate-safe economic agenda rooted in values of equity and social justice. This will be my primary focus.

My work will focus on 1) building a network of leaders and rank and file activists in the labor movement to confront climate change, 2) educating and informing environmental and environmental justice organizations on integrating workers’ rights policies in their agendas and 3) working with environmental justice organizations to build partnerships with traditional labor unions, worker centers, new forms of worker organizing, and labor support organizations.