The Class of 2024-2025

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 Nathan Cheung (he/him), an interdisciplinary artist, abolitionist, and dreamer. He grew up in Hong Kong and is based in Los Angeles, where he is obtaining his MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. His work centers around the freedom of movement, queer joy, joy beyond borders and institutions, and working class power. Through his art, he builds a world where systems in place are life-affirming instead of dehumanizing, where all of us have the capacity to imagine, where we are told that our dreams are valid, and where we feel a connectedness with, and responsibility for, each other. Nathan holds a MA in Latin American Studies and a BA in Communications from UCLA. He also works with Housing Now!, a coalition fighting for affordable housing in California, and has worked for nearly a decade in the immigrant rights and labor rights space as an organizer.

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 Dustin Gordan. Dustin co-founded a Restorative Justice Club where he and other incarcerated members planned, organized, raised funds, and hosted via video a Social Justice Conference in the world, which has become an annual event. The third and most recent one was entitled: Radical Mission: Inspiring Collaborative Action Through Restorative Culture. He spearheaded a first of its kind peer-mentorship program, working with psychologist and social workers to mentor incarcerated men with severe mental health issues. He volunteers training therapy dogs and teaching English classes to aspiring writers and college bound incarcerated activists while working in Michigan's only prison hospital on the hospice wing taking care of incarcerated men dying alone. He is completing an M.A. in Humanities from California State University that focuses on Prison Abolition and Liberation.

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. Luz Burgos-López (ella/she) is our inaugural awardee. She is a Queer white Puerto Rican who is passionate about racial justice and equity in education. Luz aims to disrupt the production of anti-indigeneity and anti-blackness rhetoric as it pertains to theorizing and analyzing the Latine experience in U.S. higher education scholarship and beyond. As a scholar-activist, Luz understands the importance of community in dismantling colonialism and imperialism. Therefore, her engagement with Puerto Rican community-based collectives, Colectivo Bambula and Diaspora Pa’lante Collective, holds her accountable and committed to decolonizing my praxis and scholarship. Luz is unapologetic about the fact that her scholarship is “shared with the Academy,” but “it is done for the community” (Jones, 2022, p. 4). Luz is a doctoral student at the Neag School of Education concentrating on higher education, racial justice, and decolonization. She is also pursuing a certificate Intersectional Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics at the University of Connecticut-Storr.

Alex Ball (he/him) is a second-year Epidemiology student in the MPH program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Outside of school, Alex serves as the Service Coordinator for the Central Arkansas Harm Reduction Project (CAHRP), delivering lifesaving and disease-preventing supplies to people who inject drugs, people experiencing houselessness, and other Arkansans affected by the War on Drugs and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Alongside basic harm reduction, Alex is working to address health disparities among traditionally-underserved Arkansans by mobilizing testing services, food distribution, and weather-related illness prevention. Alex’s mission is to improve quality of life for all Arkansans by radically combatting the perpetuated negligence that leads to preventable deaths among our friends, family members, and neighbors. After his MPH, Alex will pursue a PhD in Public Health to inform United States policymakers on imperative reform that will deliver justice to those neglected by the profit-driven healthcare industry

Daisy Benitez Paz comes from a Mexican immigrant family and began getting involved in a community organization (GWC) in RI as a teenager. She volunteered with ENG-SPN translation and phone banking. In 2018 after she graduated from high school, she faced family separation due to unfair immigration laws. She was not able to continue her education and was forced to return to Mexico. After almost 6 years later, she is excited to be back in RI, continuing where she left off in her education and community involvement with the George Wiley Center, educating community members on utility access, restoration of their services and most importantly encouraging these communities to push for systemic change.

Growing up in a very conservative state in a blue city, Sky Cambron has experienced the effects of polarization first hand her entire life. After spending three years in the mountains of Idaho wildfires drove her to the city. This would carry with her and inspire her to work with various organizations focusing on climate change. Her focus would begin to shift as she joined a wider variety of groups that focused on other issues such as class and sex based discrimination. In her future she wants to take this intersectional approach further and look at how all kinds of topics connect back to base level human rights issues through intersectionality.

AJ (they/any pronouns) is constantly seeking joy at the end of the world. They work as an ethnic studies teacher, organizer, and basketball coach. Reading, surfing, gardening, and biking are some of their favorite activities. They dabble in pizza making, poetry, and co-creating new worlds into existence. Their interests orbit the interstices of afropessimism, anti Eurocentric thinking, and school abolition. Born and raised on the west coast, AJ brings a little bit of sunshine wherever they go.

Lucille Elliott attends the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts studying painting and printmaking. She is the creator of intersectional radical zine Riot Ghoul RVA which works to amplify the voices of everyone in the wider Richmond, Virginia community. She works with the Queer student lobbying group the Pride Liberation Project which has been collectively named an Outstanding Virginian of 2023. Additionally, she is proud to have been named a Hampton Roads Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, serving as a representative of the power of poetry for young people.

Nicholas Greven is a long-time abolitionist community organizer from Indiana who is now pursuing a JD at the City University of New York School of Law in order to advance the causes he has been organizing around for years. Nicholas has been involved in the prisoner solidarity and abolition movement by organizing with IDOC Watch and FOCUS Initiatives LTD for the past eight years. He has also been involved in tenant and worker defense through the Little Village Solidarity Network in Chicago and Bloomington Solidarity Network in Bloomington, IN, and student organizing through IU on Strike and Students Against State Violence. Nicholas holds a BA in History and an MA in Latin American & Caribbean Studies from Indiana University-Bloomington. His goal upon completion of law school is to establish an abolitionist law firm in the Midwest.

Destiny Hodges (they/she) is a Black queer organizer, multimedia director/producer, and senior interdisciplinary communications major at Howard University from Birmingham, Alabama. They are the founder and executive director of Generation Green, where the concept “environmental liberation” evolved into an ideological framework and movement. As a student of Black liberation movements with a love for narrative organizing, Destiny’s storytelling methods are rooted in their lived cultural experience and connections to the more than human world. Their work is rooted in the belief that climate justice and environmental justice are key components of Black liberation, along with building community and solidarity across the Global Black/African Diaspora to build collective power needed for systems change. They are exploring the role of African/African diasporic traditional religions in movements as a practitioner in the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe Lágbà (Yoruba) tradition as a priest of Ifá (Ìyánífá) and several Òrìṣà (Ìyálòrìṣà). As a singer songwriter, their stage name, Emere, means the child who roams between the spiritual and physical world at will. The music they write does the same, as they create R&B that blends in elements from their practice in the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe tradition and contemporary alternative influence. They are also a producer for the award-winning climate and culture focused podcast The Coolest Show presented by Hip Hop Caucus. Destiny supports the growth and care of the climate and environmental justice movement as an advisor on the boards on Climate Critical Earth and Young Black Climate Leaders

Victoria Huynh is a PhD candidate in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. With the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, she advocates for refugees and migrants facing criminalized deportation and helps facilitate ROOTS, an Ethnic Studies program at San Quentin State Prison. Victoria hopes to become an educator and writer of anti-imperial history, memory, and social movements. She is invested in the survival and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and hopes to lend support to ongoing liberation and mutual aid efforts.

Sally Jeon is an MD student at the University of Minnesota (UMN) Medical School. Their diverse experiences between undergrad and medical school deepened their passion for community-based health education and advocacy. Most formative during this time was their volunteering with the Berkeley Free Clinic, where they provided health insurance & food benefits enrollment, delivered hepatitis and HIV testing and education, and served as a board member supporting clinic operations. In medical school, they served in collaborative roles to deliver various workshops with White Coats for Black Lives and for the UMN Medical School. They have focused their medical school research in youth participatory action research with Latinx youth with the clinic, Aqui Para Ti, and in opioid overdose with the Health, Homelessness, and Criminal Justice Lab. Their continual work is to align themselves with communities most impacted by systems of oppression and to explore sustainable strategies in collective healing.

Banah Khamis, born and raised in Amman, Jordan with Palestinian heritage, has found her home in the city of Philadelphia for past few years. Pursuing her B.A. in Global Studies at Drexel University, Banah is a student, writer, and community organizer. Thus far, she has worked in establishing the Philly Palestine Coalition and currently takes the lead in Drexel's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Banah actively organizes within her community, collaborating with various solidarity groups within Philadelphia, working toward land justice, Black, brown, indigenous, and queer liberation, and transnational solidarity. Over the past few months, Banah has worked to support mutual aid networks in Gaza and Cairo for displaced Gazans.

AJ is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Gender, Women, and Sexuality at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on transnational social movements, immigration and diaspora studies, policy diffusion, and queer of color critique. AJ's dissertation examines the circulation of ethnicity and race within intersectional queer organizing, and its impact on mainstream movements and public policies across Europe and North America. A significant aspect of his work involves studying Palestinian activist circles in Europe, where he has been actively involved for years as a student. AJ's research is deeply informed by themes of immigration policies, imperialism, and Islamophobia from a relational framework across various Global North contexts, aligning with his commitment to advocating for interconnected struggles on a global scale.

César Mosquera Illustrator, graphic designer, web developer, and comic book artist. He is part of the Comando Creativo, the Utopix community Organization Commission, and an USSW illustrator. In Venezuela, he has published the comic books La Noche de Prometeo (2015), La Fiesta de los moribundos (2016), and El Pueblo donde Mataron a Dios (2019) with El Perro y la Rana Publishing House. He was recognized in 2018 and 2022 with the Venezuelan National Journalism Award, Graphic Mention. In 2020 he traveled to the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic with the Brigade of Solidarity with the Sahrawi People. He’s now in Savannah, Georgia, to complete his Master’s in Sequential Art at SCAD, while working and organizing against Capitalism and for the People.

free (they/them) is a proud native of Newark, NJ, a Haitian-American, student of abolition and a poet at heart. free is passionate about uncovering their own personal movement towards embodiment and liberation within their Black body, as well as supporting movements within Black communities. free is a resting being who occasionally believes in their own magic, and the magic within everyone around them. They hope to better understand the law and the ways in which legal structures can support and are a hindrance to imagining abolitionist futures. When they are not imagining fantastical futures with friends, free enjoys supporting mindfulness spaces through their yoga practice and losing at game nights.

Hasti Aryana Rostami graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a quadruple major in Honors Middle Eastern Studies, International Relations and Global Studies, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and History, along with minors in Religious Studies and Persian. Aryana’s research focuses on Marxist thought and practice in the Middle East and North Africa through the lens of Ethnomusicology and Media Studies. She is currently a first-year master’s student at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, where she is concentrating her research on Iran-Levant guerrilla relations, in and out of the context of Third World Internationalism. Outside of her academic research, Aryana is an avid organizer advocating for Palestinian liberation and the right to return.

Gabriel Singer is a Project Rebound student at San Francisco State University. He is currently pursuing a degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Reentry Services. Gabriel is dedicated to establishing Restorative Practices and Justice in society instead of the traditional punitive system our society currently has. He teaches a class on Restorative Practices through the Experimental College at San Francisco State University in hopes of bringing to light the many ways Restorative Practices can be implemented throughout our society. In addition, Gabriel is a member of Initiate Justice Action, which fights to end mass incarceration and bring more voting rights to people who are currently incarcerated. He is also a CBT coach for an organization called Getting Out by Going In (GOGI), which helps all people make positive, powerful and productive decisions to help them find their ultimate freedom. Lastly, Gabriel works at Larkin Street Youth Services, a nonprofit whose mission is to end youth homelessness by making it brief and a one-time experience.

Isaac (they/he) is a working class first generation nonbinary latine cultural worker and organizer, who works at the intersection of the ending of worlds that fragment us and towards the beginning of worlds that can hold us in our entirety. Raised in the Bay, Isaac is heavily influenced by the revolutionary history that flows through their home. Isaac enjoys playing guitar as a tool of resistance, combating liberalism, practicing collective healing and mental wellness, and re-connecting to the natural world. Seeing the liberation of land and people as central, they are deeply invested in the environmental justice movement. Isaac is an organizer with Rich City Rays, which brings young working class BIPOC back into deep relation with the water and strategizes ways to combat extractive companies who exploit and destroy our communities and environment. They work at an urban agricultural nonprofit focused on food justice, and attend SFSU as an Ethnic Studies major to deepen their historical knowledge in order to better understand our present and future.

Nakia Wallace is a co-founder of Detroit Will Breathe, an anti-capitalist organization addressing police violence, evictions and gentrification. Born-and-raised in Detroit she was part of organizing efforts to save schools as a child, learning it was connected to other forms of systemic inequality. Black liberation is the premise of her work, and she believes there is no such thing as Black liberation without global liberation requiring multi-prong, multi-issue, multi-generational organizing that’s inherently anti-capitalist. She organized an event with US Palestinian Community Network, Project 1948, and SJP looking at police repression of protesters. She has worked with Communities for Police Transparency and Accountability Coalition, a large Latine community coalition on police violence in community events. Seeking accountability for a recent police killing and police out of neighborhoods work, she successfully sued the police department for brutality of protesters. She saw the power of law as a tool and decided to go to Law School at Wayne State. Nakia seeks to be a people’s/movement lawyer connected to the lived experiences of the organizers/communities she represents.

Karter Strider is a first-generation undergraduate at the University of Nevada, Reno studying Gender, Race, and Identity with a minor in English. Since moving to Reno, he has found joy and meaningful relationships through grassroots groups like Trans Support Reno, Palestine Solidarity Reno, River Justice, and the Hampton House community garden. Karter is committed to learning and engaging in intersectional praxis that emphasizes decolonization, anti-racism, and dismantling capitalism and oppressive power structures. Karter envisions liberation on the global scale and hopes to attend law school following his graduation.

Breanna Wheeler began organizing as an undergraduate through art to promote masking and vaccination among vulnerable marginalized indigenous communities during the COVID pandemic. She works with Native American Public Health advocacy organizations like the California Department of Public Health’s “California Reducing Disparities Project,” and the Native American Health Center in Oakland, CA researching how Native American traditional practices can help curb high rates of disease and suicides. She is active in a number of Palestine solidarity groups such as Queers for Palestine, Artists against Genocide, and Labor for Palestine, creating public protest art for local actions. She is also an organizer with the Omni Commons Media Lab in Oakland, creating messaging for Palestinian justice, indigenous land back and disability rights efforts. Breanna sees all struggles for liberation and decolonization as interconnected, the parallels apparent in the effects of ongoing colonial violence in Native American and Palestinian communities. Ultimately, she seeks to create a framework for dismantling sources of health inequities by changing US colonial systems. Breanna is working toward a Master’s in Public Health at Harvard and is the first in her clan to go to college. She aims to become a community-based clinical psychologist and organizer using both western medicines and traditional ceremonies to work with indigenous, queer, and two-spirit youth. She will continue prioritizing Indigenous land back fights, as well as public health research and advocacy campaigns surrounding health disparities in BIPOC communities, justice for the incarcerated, and transformative justice.