For years, organized labor and the LGBT community have achieved important victories by working together. In the 1970’s, Harvey Milk teamed up with the Teamsters Union to boycott Coors Beer. Two years ago, LGBT activists and the United Farm Workers joined forces to support each other’s causes – a boycott of Gallo wine, and the passage of marriage equality. Central to these struggles has been Pride at Work – a group within the AFL-CIO that represents LGBT workers.

Now the San Francisco chapter of Pride at Work has hired two young organizers – Molly Goldberg (23) and Josue Arguelles (22) – in an effort to engage queer youth on economic justice issues. A fundraiser on March 15th netted $25,000 for the project, and the youth organizers are busy conducting outreach on college campuses, community events, and bar crawls. Together, Molly and Josue hope to rejuvenate the queer-labor alliance for the next generation.

The idea for a Youth Organizing Project originated at last June’s Pride at Work national convention in San Diego. “As I stood in the room,” said Claire Bohman of SEIU, “I could count on one hand the number of people under 30.” Unlike other minorities, queer youth don’t grow up in families where they learn about their culture and history. Without an effort to reach queer youth today – and engage them in labor struggles – the historic alliance between queers and labor could suffer.

Pride at Work has been an all-volunteer organization, making it difficult for any outreach project to sustain itself. To kick off the project last year, SEIU Local 790 provided seed money to do outreach for young people in the queer community around three measures on the November ballot – No on Prop 85 (parental notification for abortions), Yes on Prop F (paid sick leave for workers), and Yes on Prop H (relocation assistance for evicted tenants.) Molly was one of the people hired for this short-term project.

“At first, we went through the Pride at Work list to recruit our current members to do precinct walking,” said Molly, “but that wasn’t very successful. So we decided to engage young people who didn’t have clear access points. We needed to find young people where they are.” Molly and the other organizers started going to the Castro Street Fair – and hitting gay bars on Polk Street.

“People thought we were crazy to recruit volunteers at bars,” said Molly. “But we learned that young people are dying to get engaged in the community. They are concerned about what’s going on, but they have no idea what to do.” Beyond outreach, they recruited among their friends. One of the people recruited that way was Josue.

Unlike Molly, Josue had no prior experience in political organizing. Originally from Southern California, he came to the Bay Area when he was 18 to attend school at the Institute of Art – but also because his family kicked him out of the house.

“My parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he said, “and they freaked out when I came out of the closet. They told me that they didn’t want my presence in the household.” After 3 months, Josue worked enough to make some money – and came to San Francisco.

While in San Francisco, Josue met Claire Bohman – who at the time was a case manager at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and a member of SEIU. “Claire was so involved,” he said, “and would always take me to various benefits – for the Needle Exchange, the First Transgender March, the Second Transgender March and the May Day Protests. She really opened me up to labor, economic and social justice issues.”

So last October when Claire asked him to show up on a Saturday to do “precinct-walking” for Pride at Work, Josue showed up without knowing what the word meant. “But the whole energy of the experience got me hooked,” he said.

After all, going door-to-door really wasn’t that hard. Josue had been raised Jehovah’s Witness, where they train you to do this stuff at an early age. “Now I help spread the message in my own way,” he says.

All three campaigns that the Youth Project worked on prevailed, and so the next step was to create a permanent infrastructure. After a March 15th fundraiser, Molly and Josue were hired to work full-time.

Unlike Josue, Molly came from a very political family in Vermont. “My dad worked for the government and helped create the WIC program as a way to avoid the draft,” she said. “My mom is the Executive Director of a nonprofit that helps children.” As a child, they would have dinner-table conversations about universal health care – and Molly was writing letters to elected officials when she was eleven years old.

While attending college at Stanford, Molly became involved in labor activism – by joining S.L.A.C. (Stanford Labor Action Coalition), one of the most active and radical student groups on campus. Through S.L.A.C., she helped organize temporary workers on campus – and secured a summer internship with a labor union in San Francisco. “I worked at Local 2 when fourteen hotel workers got locked out,” she said.

Molly credits her labor organizing experience at Stanford for getting her involved in class-based politics. “All of my friends from S.L.A.C. got a job in the labor movement,” she said. “The problem is that we’re not tapping in and creating the infrastructure to get a new generation of young organizers.”

Creating an infrastructure to get queer youth involved in the labor movement is what Pride at Work’s Youth Organizing Project is all about. “One of the campaigns that we’re working on,” said Josue, “is the Universal Health Care ordinance. We need to make sure that the City works in that direction so that young people get health care coverage.” Since the Youth Project was kicked off two weeks ago, Molly and Josue have begun recruiting students at college campuses – and at the various Queer Resource Centers.

“A lot of young queer people come to the city,” said Molly, “but they don’t know what to do. By mobilizing around issues that are relevant to them – like health care, housing and transgender issues, we can help them build the skills to be organizers themselves. And we’re doing it in a place that feels safe for them.”

Right now, the Youth Organizing Project has raised enough money to start paying a small salary for Molly and Josue – but they’re still looking for permanent office space (they’re currently working out of Robert Haaland’s office at SEIU.) Donations are welcome, and can be mailed to: Pride at Work, 1800 Market Street, Mailbox #31, San Francisco, CA 94102

Send feedback to paul@beyondchron.org