People of SWOP
Current Staff of the SouthWest Organizing Project
Bineshi Albert: Co-Director
Ozawa Bineshi Albert is a Co-director of SWOP. Bineshi is a long-time SWOP member as well as her family. She grew up in the movement and her work has primarily been in environmental justice and Native rights. She began her organizing work with the Native Lands Toxics Campaign of Greenpeace. She was founding board member of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and served on the Youth Task Force of the Southern Organizing Committee. She developed her training experience while at YouthAction. Later she was the Lead Organizer for the SAGE Council and served as their director briefly. She serves on the board of the Progressive Technology Project and the Native American Voters Alliance as well as IEN. Bineshi is Yuchi and Annishinaabe. She is the proud mother of three, a daughter Dezbah and two sons Nez and Chii. When not working she enjoys cooking award winning green chile stew, recycled retail therapy, sci-fi movies and the creative arts including dance and theater.
Marisol Archuleta: Development Coordinator
Marisol Archuleta is a native Burquena who has a strong love for New Mexico and tries to spend her life improving the beautiful place she lives in. She likes to read and spend time outdoors camping or riding roller coasters. A life-long resident of Albuquerque, she began the Albuquerque chapter of the League of Pissed Off Voters and co-authored How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office, in 2004. She ran the LULAC Upward Bound Program at Highland High School before accepting the position at SWOP. For the past 6 years, she has served on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development Board, which gives grants to local community organizing and economic development non-profits. She loves traveling and specializes in writing and being particularly organized. Marisol brings leadership experience and a genuine passion for achieving social justice as the Development Coordinator at SWOP.
E-mail Marisol at marisol@swop.net.
Marjorie Childress: Co-Director
Marjorie Childress is a Co-Director of SWOP. She directs the Communications and Media program area, and serves as editor of the organizations publications, El Grito and Voces Unidas. She also directs the Grassroots Fundraising area of work and serves as grant writer for the organization. She has a master's degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of New Mexico. During her tenure at UNM, she worked at the Resource Center for Raza Planning. She is also a longtime local Albuquerque blogger, writing for The New Mexico Independent, a state-based political news journal, from 2008-2010.
E-mail Marjorie at marjorie@swop.net
Mónica Córdova: Co-Director
Mónica Córdova is a native New Mexican born in Clovis and raised in Albuquerque. She grew up in youth organizing, from working with her local neighborhood association youth group as the first young person elected to a neighborhood association board of director’s. She also worked with many other youth organizations from across the city regarding youth rights. This built a strong framework for social justice and empowerment that she continued to build upon as the Youth Coordinator at SWOP. At SWOP she developed her leadership at both the local and national level rapidly, through local youth rights campaigns and in planning the first United States Social Forum. Currently Mónica is a Co-Director at SWOP. Monica has her bachelor’s in Social Work from New Mexico Highlands University.
E-mail Monica at monica@swop.net
Tomás Garduño: Co-Director
Tomás Garduño is a 30 year-old, Native New Mexican Chicano, born and raised in Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico. His family is from Nambé, New Mexico (the border crossed us we didn’t cross the border). He lived in Portland, OR for seven years where he did student organizing and anti-racist organizing in the anti-globalization movement culminating in the WTO protests in Seattle, and has been doing social justice work ever since. He has worked for Western States Center, Community Alliance of Tenants, and co-founded ‘ROOTS! Reclaiming Our Origins Through Struggle, a racial justice organization. Most recently he was a campaign organizer with the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. Tomás is Co-Director of SWOP.
E-mail Tomás at tomas@swop.net
Tomasita González: Administrative Coordinator
Tomasita González was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a mother of 2 and resides within the South Valley of Albuquerque. Tomasita joined SWOP’s staff in 2003 as an environmental justice organizer. She is a community expert on the effects of industrial pollution in the South Valley. She worked a number of years as a Promotora with the Rio Grande Community Development Corporation, and represented SWOP on the New Mexico Environmental Justice Planning Committee, helping that committee plan a series of EJ Listening Sessions around the state in 2004. Since 2007 she has been SWOP's administrative coordinator, and is currently pursuing a degree in Accounting at the local community college.
E-mail Tomasita at tomasita@swop.net
Kathy Kelly: Field Organizer-Carlsbad
Kathy was born and raised in Carlsbad, New Mexico. She is the mother of three beautiful daughters, six grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. Kathy attended NMSU-C and acquired her Associates degree in Secretarial Administration. Her hobbies include football (huge Dallas Cowboy fan), cooking, singing and crafts. Her desire to make a better community for her family, friends and neighbors is what brought her to this work.
George Luján: Communications Organizer
George Lujan joined the staff as Communications Organizer in 2009, after being a life-long member of SWOP. He worked on Community Garden and Youth projects, as well as contributing artwork for Voces Unidas magazine. He studied Media Arts at the Universidad de Nuevo Mexico and now works on promoting SWOP's media presence. In his free time he enjoys walking his dog along the bosque and watching samurai movies.
E-mail George at george@swop.net
Joaquín Luján: Field Organizer
Joaquin Lujan is a native New Mexican who has been active in student, labor, community, and social justice efforts for over 30 years. In the 1970s he was a member of the Black Beret organization, an Albuquerque youth organization focused on Chicano liberation. He also collected stories and helped produce El Grito del Norte, a northern New Mexico Chicano political publication, and later worked with the Chicano Communications Center that produced the book 500 Years of Chicano History. In the early 1980s he was part of SWOP's southwest voter registration project, that brought in over 20,000 new Chicano voters. After leaving the state for a decade, he came back in the late 1990's and worked as an organizer for the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, during which time he helped organize the SNEEJ delegation to the WTO protests in Seattle. He farms four acres in Polvadera, New Mexico and joined SWOP’s staff in 2004 as an organizer working with Chicano farmers in the Middle Rio Grande valley. He currently spearheads SWOP's community garden and back yard cold-frames campaign, to reconnect our communities with the land and the food they eat.
E-mail Joaquin at joaquin@swop.net
Michael Montoya: Field Organizer
Michael is the Mass Base Political Organizer at SWOP. He runs SWOP’s civic engagement programs and sits on the steering committee of the South by SouthWest Experiment. Michael chaired the 2011 Redistricting Committee for the City of Albuquerque. He is a long-time member of SWOP and served as the board chair for a year. In 2008, he worked as a field organizer on the successful Martin Heinrich campaign for Congress. Michael is a proud nerd who earned a BA in Languages at the University of New Mexico. He enjoys connecting with people though technology and social media. Michael was born and raised in Albuquerque and is proud of his family roots from Mexico to northern New Mexico. He is an avid biker and runner, having completed both a half and full marathon in recent years. Outside of work, Michael also enjoys fine wine, local craft beer and travelling, especially when he gets to speak a language he has studied.
Juan Reynosa: Field Organizer
Juan is an organizer with the Southwest Organizing Project who focuses on environmental justice and air quality issues. Before joining SWOP, Juan was the New Mexico Beyond Coal organizer for Sierra Club, an organizer with New Mexico Youth Organized, and a Green for All fellow. Beyond his professional experience, he has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from the University of New Mexico. His hometown is Hobbs, New Mexico, which is the epicenter of the oil and gas industry in southeastern New Mexico. Hailing from Hobbs’s low-income Chicano community, Juan is a young man who brings a wealth of knowledge about the issues facing communities subject to polluting industry, and a strong skill set in organizing.
Rodrigo Rodriguez: Field Organizer
Rodrigo Rodriguez is an organizer and coordinator of SWOP's community food justice initiative, "Project Feed the Hood". His family has been sustainably farming in the communities of Northern New Mexico for many generations. Project Feed the Hood is based in traditional methods of farming and seed saving that are both sustainable and culturally relevant. Rodrigo and his fellow SWOP gardeners maintain a large seed library and host many workshops to assist community members, schools, and other community groups seeking to grow food and build healthy communities and lifestyles all over the state of NM. Rodrigo started at SWOP as a youth intern in 2006.
Roberto Roibal: Office Manager
Roberto Roibal was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico and is a graduate of the University of New Mexico, receiving a BA degree in anthropology, history and fine arts. He has been active in student, labor, community, and social justice issues in New Mexico for over 39 years. He was a SWOP volunteer since 1980 and joined SWOP’s staff in 1991, where he's had a number of positions, including the marketing and distribution of the book 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures and related materials, production of our news magazine Voces Unidas, field organizer, grant administration and now office management. He is responsible for our information and technology needs, and is our database developer and administrator. He is the father of three daughters, all of whom have gone through SWOP’s youth internship programs. Rosina, who graduated from Loyola University and received her Master’s Degree from UNM, and Lolita, a graduate of Stanford Univesity, currently live in Oakland. Lucía graduated from Barnard College in 2009.
E-mail Roberto at roberto@swop.net
Emma Sandoval: Youth Rights Organizer
Emma was born and raised in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a single mother to a little boy name Cruz who she says is her inspiration in her fight for social justice. She began working with SWOP in 2006 as a summer youth intern where she worked on a campaign against former Mayor Martin Chavez’s anti-youth agenda and the shutting down of a youth even called Rock Out with your Cause Out. Since then she has served as a member, volunteer, and completed several internships with SWOP before coming on as a full-time staff member in 2008. Currently Emma serves as the Youth Rights Organizer and coordinates youth internships and summer leadership programs. In her free time, she enjoys blogging, mural painting, and learning about firefighting with her son who wants to be a fireman when he grows up.
