The Collective

We were founded in 2002 by immigrant and Chicano organizers who sought to provide grassroots immigrant rights groups and organizers with tools, political analysis, training opportunities and spaces for dialogue that modeled popular education principles.

Tomás Aguilar

Tomás worked at Workers Defense Project supporting Gulf Coast organizations working with immigrant day laborers. He previously worked at Alternatives for Community & Environment in Boston where he worked doing community organizing with the Transit Riders Union and also the Services to Allies program where he provided capacity support to organizations in the struggle for environmental justice. Before that, he worked at United for a Fair Economy in Boston as a media associate supporting campaigns on a national and state level as well as with grassroots organizations. He recently researched and co-wrote for UCLA-LOSH and NDLON a report titled Risk Amid Recovery: Occupational Health and Safety of Latino Workers in the Aftermath of Gulf Coast Hurricanes. Tomás is a founding member of Colectivo Flatlander.

Francisco “Pancho” Argüelles

Pancho is Mexican, living in the US since 1997. He began working in popular education in 1983 in Chiapas as a rural teacher. He studied Pedagogy and was part of the student movement in UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico). He later worked with Guatemalan Refugees in Chiapas; with Campesinos in Nicaragua (was coordinator of the team that started the Universidad Campesina in Esteli Nicaragua, training promotores in sustainable agriculture); went back to Mexico and coordinated a research collective on Poverty and Environment; and from 1994-1996, coordinated “Caminemos Juntos” a rural development project in the mountains of Central Mexico. In the U.S., he has worked mainly with the immigrant rights movement, especially with Maria Jimenez in Houston and nationally with the AFSC groups, the National Organizers Alliance (NOA) and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) where he was a board member until December 2006. He is co-author of the Curriculum BRIDGE: Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue on the Global Economy, a book on how to use popular education while doing organizing with immigrant communities, that won the Gustavus Myers Human Rights Award in 2004. Pancho is currently working part time as training coordinator with Houston Interfaith Workers Justice and is an independent consultant on Popular Education and Training/Organizing Strategies, with the Highlander Center of Tennessee; the PRAXIS project; NNIRR and the Colorado Coalition for Immigrant Rights (CIRC) among others. He is a founding member of Colectivo Flatlander.