Randy Parraz

Randy Parraz is an organizer, social entrepreneur, author, founder of various social justice organizations and currently co-founder and President of the Organizing Institute for Democracy. Randy has spent the past 26 years engaged in the work of building power and moving people into action. Randy’s introduction to social justice began when he observed his father, Deputy Sheriff John Parraz, organize the Latino Peace Officers Association in the 1970s to combat discrimination in the recruitment, hiring and retention of Latino officers.  Randy’s understanding of organizing and framework for building power has been heavily influenced by Ernie Cortes of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Marshall Ganz, a former UFW organizer who worked closely with Cesar Chavez for 16 years.  Randy took courses on organizing from both Cortes and Ganz while pursuing his Master’s in Public Administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  It was during this time Randy stopped pursuing his life-long goal of being a lawyer and embraced his true calling of becoming an organizer. 

From church-based organizing in East Dallas, to national coalition building on behalf of 20,000 strawberry workers in the fields of California, to working as a national field representative of the AFL-CIO—Randy has experience with many methods of social change. As an Echoing Green recipient, Randy and his co-founder, Scott Sherman, established the Transformative Action Institute to inspire, train and develop a new generation of visionaries on college campuses. Randy has taught courses on social change at UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine, Arizona State University and California State University Fullerton.

In 2008, Randy moved to Arizona and joined a labor campaign to build political support for immigrant workers in the housing industry. As the campaign progressed workers, many of whom were undocumented, began to complain about the worksite raids, harassment and mistreatment of Sheriff Arpaio. Randy developed a new strategic approach of applying pressure on the board of supervisors to hold Arpaio accountable for his corrupt behavior. Randy’s role in organizing actions and protests to expose Arpaio’s racist and abusive practices caused him to be labeled “high profile” and eventually targeted and arrested by Sheriff deputies.  

In January of 2011, Randy co-founded Citizens for a Better Arizona and spearheaded a grassroots campaign to recall the most powerful politician in the state of Arizona, Senate President Russell Pearce—author of SB 1070, the “show me your papers” anti-immigrant legislation. In November 2011, Citizens for a Better Arizona made history by recalling and removing the first President of the Senate from Office.

In February 2014, Randy returned to the National AFL-CIO to serve as the Governance and Organizational Leadership Development Coordinator for the western region of the country. Randy spent considerable time with central labor councils, state federations and affiliates to identify, train and develop leaders to take on the work of transforming the labor movement to build power for workers and their families. Two years later, Randy was recruited by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) to lead their Making Change at Walmart campaign to develop and implement a national strategy of engaging Walmart workers and allies to expose Walmart’s abuse, mistreatment, intimidation and harassment of its workers. 

In July 2018, Randy resigned from UFCW to begin the process of writing the story of the historic recall of Senate President Russell Pearce. In 2019, Randy was recruited by President Domingo Garcia of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to serve as senior advisor and organizing director. By the end of 2019, Randy, feeling inspired to finish writing the book he started in 2018, resigned from LULAC and returned to writing full time in 2020. After overcoming a number of COVID-19 pandemic family crises, Randy completed the final manuscript of Dignity by Fire: Dismantling Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Machine in August 2021.

Randy is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley Law, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Randy currently resides in Sacramento, CA, and will return to Arizona in 2022 to focus on the work of defending and expanding the idea of one person, one vote through the Organizing Institute for Democracy.  To learn more about the Organizing Institute for Democracy please go to: OIDemocracy.org.