MWA ADVISORY BOARD:

Phil Andrews (he/him) is an organizer and music worker. As a multi-instrumentalist, bandleader and songwriter, he has recorded, played live and written songs for many bands and projects, fromradical marching bands tofloating art boat collectives toqueerpunk toart rock tomusicals about labor strikes and beyond. He’s currently the bandleader and composer for the 15-piece disco punk outfitFunkrust Brass Band. As an organizer, Andrews started out as a community organizer in Baltimore before moving to New York to work for CIR/SEIU, a union of medical interns and residents. He then spent ten years with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union as the organizing director of the retail sector. There, he revitalized and led the union’s national strategy on new organizing in the retail sector, winning campaigns and contracts in music instrument retail, fast fashion, thrift stores, retail financial services and adult toy stores, from locally owned small chains like Babeland, national chains like Guitar Center and global retail industry leaders like Zara. He also helped to establish and develop the Retail Action Project, a union-sponsored worker center for retail workers. He’s currently serving as an independent organizing consultant. Find links to his projects and work here: www.philandrews.org

Donald Cohen is the founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national research and policy center that studies the impacts of privatization on public goods. He is the former political director of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council. He is currently on the board of the Ballot Initiatives Strategy Center Education Fund. He is a co-founder of the Rainey Day Fund that provides assistance to BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled artists, and others who add to the rich fabric of roots music. He is on the Music Council of the Artists Rights Alliance. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The New York Daily News, The New Republic, The American Prospect, The Nation and other online and print outlets. He is also the co-author of the upcoming book, The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back to be released in November 2021.

William A. Herbert (he/him) is a labor scholar and attorney who leads a national labor-management research center located in New York. Bill’s research interests focus on labor and employment law, labor history, collective action, new workplace technologies, and precarious employment issues. While not a player, he listens by ear. Bill is a former Deputy Chair of the New York State Public Employment Relations Board and a former union-side attorney. He authored the chapter “Public Workers” in Joshua B. Freeman (ed.) City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York (Columbia University Press 2019) and is a co-author of “Geoprivacy, Convenience, and the Pursuit of Anonymity in Digital Cities” in Wenzhong Shu, Michael Goodchild, Michael Batty, Mei-Po Kwan and Anshu Zhang (eds.), Urban Informatics (forthcoming Springer 2021). His previously published works are available here: https://works.bepress.com/william_herbert/

Paul Frank has served as Director of Organizing  at the American Federation of Musicians (AFM). He also served as Deputy Director of Organizing for CSEA, Local 1000, AFSCME where for over a decade he coordinated comprehensive campaigns to organize over 2,000 direct care workers in the private sector in New York City as well as public sector workers in Long Island and the Hudson Valley. Currently Paul is a working as a consultant, advising unions and community-based organizations on organizing and strategic campaigns.

Paul has an extensive background in public and private sector union organizing using creative and innovative approaches to build real power. He has a long history of coalition building working with elected officials, community leaders and organizations both to meet specific campaign objectives as well as to build solid relationships between labor and community. His major focus has been on creating comprehensive, community-based campaigns that empower working people to make real change in the workplace and in the community at large. He brings particular expertise in grass roots organizing and comprehensive campaigns.

Naoki Fujita (he/him) is currently a Staff Attorney at TakeRoot Justice (formerly the “Urban Justice Center”). TakeRoot provides legal, participatory research and policy support to community-based organization through New York. He is a member of the Workers’ Rights Team. At TakeRoot, his practice includes representing service sector and construction employees in discrimination and wage/hour employment actions. He started his legal career as an Honors Attorney at the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) located in Brooklyn. He has provided testimony on employment-related legislation before the NYS Legislature and the NYC Council. His research on labor conditions of frontline retail workers has been cited by the New York Times and NPR’s Marketplace. Before his legal career, Naoki worked as an organizer for SEIU, UNITE HERE! and the Retail Action Project (RAP). He also serves as a shop steward for UAW, Local 2320.

Olympia Kazi (she/her) is an urban activist, an architecture critic, and an advocate for arts and culture. A co-founder of the NYC Artist Coalition and the Music Workers Alliance, Olympia currently serves as the vice-chair of the New York City Nightlife Advisory Board and on Manhattan’s Community Board 3.

Neil Turkewitz (he/him) is President at Turkewitz Consulting Group. A copyright activist and member of the Artist Rights Alliance, he served as EVP International at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was Vice-Chairman, Industry Trade Advisory Committee, and a former member of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center. Follow him on Twitter @neilturkewitz and on Medium.

Sean Quinn (she/her) is an EU and UK trial lawyer (barrister). While practicing in Ireland she had a dual specialization in Intellectual Property and Criminal Law. Sean's criminal practice, among other cases, involved being hired by a police representative body to represent 22 whistle-blower police officers in a 4-year long trial involving, inter alia, police manufacturing fake terrorist bombs, the IRA, MI6, the planting of evidence by the police to frame innocent people for murder, and death threats against the Tribunal judge and lawyers by a member of the police force. (The Morris Tribunal). Sean practiced at the bar in Ireland for 12 years and was called to the bar in England in 2007 where her practice at Lamb Chambers focused exclusively on intellectual property. In 2013 she set up a sole practitioner’s chambers, Quinn Walpole IP, focusing on private client advices for film makers, authors, artists, composers and musicians. Sean lectured in law at Blackhall Place (law school/ solicitors) and at Trinity College and from time to time gives a private seminar to creatives entitled “Understanding and Managing your rights” and has worked with the highly regarded IP firm Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein and Selz in the U.S.