Jeff Ordower

Jeff Ordower has been an organizer for 25 years and got his start as a queer activist in college. A graduate of the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute and an organizer with SEIU in Texas, he then went on to run ACORN offices in Houston, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Connecticut and spent ACORN’s last six years at ACORN as its Midwest Director.  After the destruction of ACORN, Ordower helped start-up Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), a community organization in Missouri that worked at the intersection of economic, climate and racial justice. MORE ran campaigns targeting the largest coal companies in the world, many of which were based in St. Louis while also playing a role in undergirding the Ferguson uprising.  Ordower was privileged to also support the Occupy Homes and Home Defenders League movements. Recently, Ordower helped with organizing rideshare drivers in California and is also helping to launch a Green Worker Alliance. Ordower serves on the Leadership Team of Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ) and in the Rising Tide North America Collective. He is trying to live his best life as an itinerant organizer and spends a lot of his time thinking about sustained mass action. With some comrades, he is (hopefully) imminently launching something called The Disruption Project.