Terri Nilliasca

Terri Nilliasca has been organizing around issues of
class, race, and gender since she was in college. After graduating, she
organized welfare recipients and then embarked on a 10-year career as a
labor organizer of low-wage workers in the South for the union, UNITE.
She also spent five months in the Philippines with the militant labor
organization, Kilusang Mayo Uno (the May 1st movement). Inspired by the
depth of the movement in the Philippines, Terri decided to go to law
school to gain more tools for the struggle for a more just society. She
graduated from CUNY School of Law in 2011. She has also been active in
NYC Filipino organizing for more than a decade, first as a founding
member of Network in Solidarity for the People of the Philippines and
now as a Community Advisory Board Member for DAMAYAN Migrant Workers
Assn. As an activist, she has been actively involved in the use of
storytelling. As an organizer, she encourages workers to tell their
stories of abuse by their bosses in order to build a class-based
consciousness. As a union organizer, she has strategized around how to
tell workers’ stories in order to build public support for the right to
organize. While working with Filipina/o victims of trafficking, Terri
grappled with other anti-trafficking activists around questions with
storytelling as a tactic: does re-telling of stories re-traumatize
victims; how does the telling of the worst abuses affect juries when
they hear trafficking stories that are not as “egregious;” who crafts
the stories and for whom? In a recent blog post, Terri posed provocative
questions about the narrative surrounding the passage of the NY
Domestic Worker Bill of Rights and whether legislative reform merely
reinforces a neoliberal agenda or advances workers’ rights.