Tristan's 30th B-day Research Fund

I'm turning 30 this week.


For the last 7 years, I've been organizing in Nashville, a city that has become home, and I have found my closest friends and my hope for the future of the South through Workers' Dignity , an extraordinary organization dedicated to sustaining a human rights movement led by working-class people organizing for justice in their workplaces, churches, families, and barrios.

During that time, I've also studied in the PhD program in the Vanderbilt Anthropology department. My dissertation is nearly ready to defend, and I should have the degree in hand before my 30th year ends.

This year, I've found a way to combine the two parts of my life -- as an organizer accompanying the struggles of Nashville's low-wage workers; and as a researcher trying to leverage passionate curiosity into relevant and liberatory knowledge.

Yesterday, Workers' Dignity unveiled the 24-page report that I authored along with Patrick Cate and Paul Speer, based on worker-to-worker research on the health and safety crisis in the Nashville hospitality industry. We found that 94% of hotel housekeepers are living below the federal poverty threshold, that 4 out of 5 housekeepers who get hurt on the job are refused medical care, and that more than half of the city's housekeepers have to work while sick or risk losing their jobs. Check out the full report by clicking here - it's also got some bold recommendations for solutions to the problem that would improve conditions for over 2,000 Nashville housekeepers and the families who depend on them .


For my 30th year of life, and my final year in graduate school, I'll be taking this research to the next level -- helping build up a worker-to-worker research study 4 times the size of our first one, with an extraordinary team of low-wage worker investigators. For my birthday, I'm asking my family and friends to contribute to the Workers' Dignity Community Research Fund -- if 30 of my friends donate $30 each (for my 30th birthday, get it?) we'll have nearly $1,000 of seed money to get the project rolling. The money will help us conduct surveys with 200 hotel workers whose voices are crucial to transforming the industry they work in.

I deeply appreciate the friendship and support from so many of you in these years of struggle and joy. I would not be where I am today without the constant and loving investment of my family and community over the last 30 years -- and it is with pleasure and gratitude that I ask y'all to invest in the movement that has brought me and many others hope for a better future.

Tristan