Welcome! You happen to have landed at this site while I’m in the middle of a month-long Kickstarter campaign to fund my current book project, a biography of organizer Fred Ross. To learn more and help support, please check out http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/564674513/americas-forgotten-organizer-fred-ross.

More about me: I have spent the past ten years working as a freelance journalist, community organizer, and union researcher, writing feature articles about immigration, labor, and organizing for a variety of publications that include the New York Times, New York, Mother Jones, and The Nation. Links to my writings can be found under the “articles” tab.

My most recent book is Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do (Nation Books, 2010), which chronicles a year I spent working undercover within industries dominated by undocumented immigrants. (That’s me on the right, harvesting lettuce in Arizona.) Publisher’s Weekly called the book “a stirring look at the bottom rung of America’s economic ladder,” while United Farm Worker co-founder Dolores Huerta called it “a triumph–and a call to arms.” You can learn more about the book here, and watch a short video dispatch from the lettuce fields here.

I’m also the author of two other books. There’s No José Here: Following the Hidden Lives of Mexican Immigrants is narrative non-fiction, exploring the struggles of a family from southern Mexico that settled down in Brooklyn. Calling All Radicals: How Grassroots Organizers Can Help Save Our Democracy is a combined memoir and guidebook to organizing. More information about these titles can be found under the “books” tab.

I have been interviewed about immigrant issues for various national television and radio programs, including CNN, MSNBC, PBS, Current TV, and several NPR programs. I am also the recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award, the Studs Terkel Media Award, the Sidney Hillman Award, and two Independent Press Association awards. I speak frequently at colleges and non-profit organizations, and have recently lectured at Yale, New York University, Hunter College, the University of Arizona, and Georgetown.