Marisa Franco
Organizations
People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER); Right to the City Alliance; National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON); Mijente
Location
Phoenix, AZ
Biography
Marisa Franco was born and raised in the small Yaqui-Mexican community of Guadalupe, within the Phoenix metroplex. After college she attended an organizer training program on the West Coast and began her work as a grassroots organizer with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) in San Francisco. She also worked in New York City fighting for domestic worker rights and against gentrification. She returned to her native Arizona to work in the immigrant rights movement, serving as the national campaign organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). She is the Executive Director of Mijente, a Latinx rights and justice advocacy organization.
Audio Clips
Interviewed by Cristina Salinas on May 7, 2024 in Tucson, Arizona
Marisa Franco describes the history of the town of Guadalupe and its fight to keep its own identity in a period of urban development and displacement of Chicano/Mexicano/Yaqui communities.
Franco talks about the process of gaining consciousness and becoming political, from noticing but not having the language to name things, to learning the language to analyze injustice.
Franco describes the whirlwind of on-the-ground organizing amidst the SB 1070 fight in Arizona, and the battle between the state and federal government about who had authority over immigration.
Franco describes how they began telling the Arizona story to national networks to share strategies for how to stop the full implementation of anti-immigrant policies and to warn them that the ugly battles over immigration happening in Arizona were about to spread everywhere.
Digital Archive
Undocubus Tour at Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, 2012.
Immigration Rally, Phoenix, AZ.
Marisa Franco interview with Julian Castro, Democratic Primary Presidential Candidate.
Mijente Leadership Circle Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2021.
Pro-Palestine protest at Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 2024.