Tending the Soil is an alignment of five, power building non-profits and labor organizations representing more than 10,000 Minnesotans led by working class, BIPOC community leaders with a long history of effective and equitable organizing.
The organizations that make up Tending the Soil include:
Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL)
Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia | Renters United for Justice
New Justice Project
SEIU Local 26
Unidos MN
The Tending the Soil alignment formed in 2018 but its roots were planted long ago, sprouting from coalitions dating back to 2008. Through the shared struggle to improve the lives of working poor Minnesotans, what emerged was a deepened commitment by the core organizations to align, long-term. While our policy priorities may diverge from time to time, our collective analysis of power and organizing strategies are aligned.
OUR VISION: We imagine a Minnesota where every human being, regardless of zip code, race, gender or other socioeconomic status, has the ability to thrive at home and work, and live without fear of discrimination or violence.
OUR MISSION: Together, we forge a new path forward, rooted in racial, economic and gender justice that unites us, finding opportunities to align in our operations and advocacy.
OUR TEAM:
Cat Salonek (she/her) Executive Director cat@tendingthesoil.org
Alisha Volante (she/they) Research Director alisha@tendingthesoil.org
Alfred Walking Bull (he/they) Development Director alfred@tendingthesoil.org
Tending the Soil 3715 Chicago Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55407
About the TTS Alignment: Together We Rise
MISSION
CTUL is a worker-led organization where workers organize, educate and empower each other to fight for a voice in their workplaces and in their communities. We partner with other organizations and leaders to build a movement to win racial, gender and economic justice. We identify the root causes of injustice and work to shift the balance of power between those who have it and those who don’t to improve the lives of our communities for present and future generations.
HISTORY & RESULTS
Since 2007 hundreds of CTUL members have recovered over $6.4 million in stolen wages, and have led wins on paid sick days, anti-wage theft provisions, and $15 minimum wage. We have won multiple victories for long-term change, improving working conditions for 215,500 low-wage workers and securing statewide legislation that benefited 1,025,655 low-wage Minnesota frontline workers. CTUL supported retail janitors to win the first metro-wide retail janitorial union in the country, bringing an estimated $11 million in additional wages per year into the poorest communities in Minnesota. Thanks to CTUL victories, low-wage workers are receiving over $818 million in additional wages per year in the Twin Cities metro area.
Our current goals include systems change involving:
Workers and Owners: In 2018, the 15 wealthiest companies in Minnesota held over $1.2 trillion in assets. 10% of that money could have doubled the wages of every minimum wage worker in MN for over 10 years. We build campaigns that create systems change in a significant sector of the economy and that open dialogue with corporate owners so low-wage workers can shape Minnesota’s economy.
Movement Ecosystem: We need vibrant cross-racial solidarity to win systemic change. We invest in BIPOC-led, base-building and power building organizations to share resources, support leaders, align campaigns, and expand funding. When we win, we bring others with us.
Scale: CTUL supports worker centers throughout the Midwest to organize non-union construction workers so we can work together to impact industries at scale. We share resources, coordinate strategy, and learn from one another as we build transformative, collective power.
Local Ordinances: CTUL workers are organizing for a Minneapolis ordinance to move in late 2026 that ties permitting to labor standards, to ensure basic protections for construction workers.
OUR CAMPAIGNS
Building Dignity and Respect: CTUL is organizing non-union construction workers throughout the Twin Cities metro area to establish a Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model program that ends wage theft, misclassification, unsafe working conditions, and other abuses in the industry.
Downtown: CTUL is organizing non-union workers in the entertainment sector to fight for better wages and working conditions in Downtown Minneapolis. These workers will partner with other worker organizations to counter the power of businesses in Downtown Minneapolis that drive the economy of the state.
Leaders In Growth: CTUL organizes with low-wage workers of color throughout the metro area to know their workplace rights.
Transition: We are navigating changes in leadership with an intentional focus on fundraising, onboarding new staff, and engaging new and current partners in the community.
VICTORIES
RETAIL JANITORS CAMPAIGN: CTUL led the Retail Janitorial Campaign from 2010 - 2017. Janitors successfully won the first metro-wide union in retail janitorial work in the country, more than doubling worker’s wages and winning benefits including health insurance, paid vacation, and more.
FIGHT FOR $15: CTUL organized fast food workers in Minneapolis to win a $15 minimum wage and Earned Sick and Safe Time in Minneapolis/St. Paul.
WAGES WON BACK: As of the spring of 2025, CTUL has supported workers in winning back over $6.4 million in unpaid wages since 2007.
STATE AND MUNICIPAL WAGE THEFT PROTECTIONS: Since we formed in 2010 CTUL has been supporting workers in winning back stolen wages, but wage theft remains shockingly common in low-wage workplaces. In 2019 CTUL shifted this unjust status quo in Minneapolis and statewide through the passage of a city ordinance and a state statute which put stronger tools to fight wage theft in the hands of workers and their advocates.
OUR TEAM
Merle Payne, Executive Director, merle@ctul.net
Wendy Darst, Development Director, wendy@ctul.net
CTUL-Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha: 3715 Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55407, www.ctul.net
MISSION
Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia / United Renters for Justice (IX)’s mission is to build a base of tenants to analyze housing issues and to strategize, organize, and mobilize for a just housing ecosystem in the Twin Cities.
We organize tenants experiencing some of the worst housing conditions - primarily low-income Black, Latinx, and immigrant renters due to structural racism. Tenants grow their leadership and civic engagement to create long-term solutions for safe, stable, dignified, and just housing through
tenant organizing
policy advocacy
models of community stewardship.
TENANT ORGANIZING
For the past decade, IX has been organizing tenant unions in landlord portfolios across Minneapolis to win safe and dignified housing for all. We invest in tenant leaders, and co-create campaigns with renters who share a landlord to build solidarity and address systemic housing issues. Through training, support, and structured leadership development, tenants set and implement our organizing strategy.
Housing improvements achieved:
Major repairs for 500+ households, including mold remediation, lead abatement, pest control, heating, plumbing, and structural repairs.
Housing stabilized for 200+ families through rent freezes, overturned evictions, and landlord-paid relocations.
$23 million recovered for renters in returned and discounted rent and fees, restitution and compensation, and relocation assistance.
Partnership with the City of Minneapolis to hold landlords accountable for housing conditions and violations, resulting in process and policy change at city’s Regulatory Services.
Pathways to long-term affordable housing for ~300 families through homeownership or community stewardship of land and housing, in partnership with affordable housing nonprofits, community land trust, LISC, and City of Minneapolis.
Priority:
In 2025-2026, we are organizing tenants in the Investment Property Group (IPG) portfolio and expanding our organizing into Somali communities, who make up 40% of IPG tenants. We will also explore establishing formal infrastructure for tenant unions and collective bargaining for lease renewals.
POLICY ADVOCACY
We advance policies that produce systemic change for housing equity and address the root causes of our housing crisis. Policy priorities are set by our members, and initiatives are tenant-led. Tenant leaders are recruited from previous organizing campaigns to further their skills in advocacy, civic engagement, and voter education. We partner with base-building and mission-aligned organizations to coordinate strategy, grow the collective power of working-class Minnesotans, and win a host of connected demands to achieve economic justice.
Key achievements:
2019: helped pass Limited Lookback and Security Deposit Cap municipal ordinances, reducing cost and inequitable barriers to rental housing city-wide.
2021: passed ballot measure to give Minneapolis City Council the authority to enact rent control.
2022: staff and member appointed to the city’s Housing/Rent Stabilization Work Group and helped advance one of the strongest rent control proposals in the US.
2023: trained and turned out 30 tenants - most of whom could not vote - for precinct caucusing.
2025: member appointed to the Housing Committee of City of Minneapolis; 25 members appointed as delegates in DFL ward conventions.
Priority:
In 2025-2026, we are working on a social housing initiative to secure state pilot funding for local governments to build and acquire locally-owned and controlled housing. We have also launched Renters for Political Transformation, our 501(c)4 arm to elect policymakers to advocate for and enact rent stabilization.
COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIP
We create pathways to community stewardship models (cooperatives, land trust-owned housing), which curb wealth extraction, decommodify housing, and build autonomy for renters and low-income communities. Tenants deepen their capacity to envision, co-create, and co-govern an alternative housing system - one that prioritizes collective care, decision making, wealth building, and community stability. Within the Sky Without Limits Housing Cooperative (SWL Co-op), tenants are exploring participatory and consensus decision making to build community on the principles of justice, collaboration, and dignity.
Key milestones:
2020: after 5 years of tenant organizing, former landlord Stephen Frenz sold 5 buildings to the Land Bank Twin Cities to steward as we fundraise for its buyout and transition to community stewardship: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/rental-housing-crisis-minneapolis.html
2020-2021: 10+ units remodeled and rehabilitated to livable standards; tenants established Emergency Resource Center to alleviate food insecurity during the pandemic and uprisings.
2023: $2 million fundraised for final purchase; SWL establishes 501c3 status and Board of Directors.
2024: expanded cooperative programming including community food gardens and mobile health clinics conducted by the Community-University Health Care Center (CUHCC).
Priority: In 2025, we will finalize the purchase and transition to community stewardship for 4 out of 5 buildings in SWL. Fundraising and repairs will continue for the 5th building, with a projected closing date in 2027.
KEY STAFF:
Jennifer Arnold. Executive Director, jennifer@inquilinxunidxs.org
Edaín Altamirano, Director of Organizing, edain@inquilinxsunidxs.org
Rebecca Song, Director of Development, rebecca@inquilinxsunidxs.org
We envision a Minnesota with a prosperous and empowered black community.
New Justice Project MN is a black led organizing hub focused on building power for and with low income and no income Black Minnesotans by organizing in the policy areas of jobs, housing and supporting the ongoing work of reimagining community safety.
Our organization’s values are grounded in centering the most directly impacted community members, leadership development, political education and trusting the leadership of Black workers and the black community to create change in their city and state.
Our Mission
We seek to dismantle the current framing of justice and create a new gravitational pull towards equity and accessible opportunities. We frame justice as a verb–a series of actions to demonstrate our values and the promise of upward mobility in our community. The New Justice Project is a commitment to giving each their due, and ensuring resources are not a barrier toward self-determination.
CAMPAIGNS:
SAFETY BEYOND POLICING: As a movement we must be clear internally that to end the police state as well as build a base of new folks to lead our movement into the future we must build a “Big Tent” meaning we must bridge the ideological divide by utilizing broad organizing tactics, organizing people directly impacted by state and community violence all while organizing those that will combat our narrative of a world without police that means grandmothers, school teachers, small business owners to form a rainbow coalition of voices; it also means doing the political education work needed to inform these groups on police violence, city, county and municipal budgets and the concept of abolition.
WORKFORCE PATHWAYS: Our goal as an organization is to create and foster a job-readiness program as well as an organizing program based in political education, leadership development and supplying everyday black workers the skills needed to effectively organize their workplace and their communities. We do this through a holistic organizing approach that creates space for workers to “skill-up” in partnership with unions and private sector companies and using that space as the entry into workplace organizing, leadership development and political involvement.
OUR TEAM
Rod Adams, Executive Director, rod@newjusticeprojectmn.org
CAMPAIGNS
Covid-19 Essential Workers
SEIU Local 26 members have stepped up during this pandemic, often at great risk to our health. Our union family has suffered greatly during this pandemic, including seeing four members pass away from COVID-19 and over 1,000 of members miss work, almost always unpaid, after being exposed to the virus.
Winning Rent Stabilization in Minneapolis and St. Paul
This November, Minneapolis and St. Paul residents have a chance to vote to help make our cities places where every person – no matter our race, wealth, zip code or job – can be safe, happy and healthy. Below you will find information on the campaigns to win rent stabilization in Minneapolis and St. Paul and the campaign to ensure our communities have real public safety in Minneapolis.
Winning Real Public Safety in Minneapolis
Our union is proud to be part of Yes 4 Minneapolis, a unifying campaign bringing together voters, faith leaders, labor unions, businesses, and more because we have an opportunity to create a system that works for all of us.
STAFF
Greg Nammacher, PRESIDENT, gnammacher@seiu26.org
Brahim Kone, SECRETARY TREASURER & MRC, bkone@seiu26.org
Belinda Monica Mendez, OPERATIONS
Dan Mendez Moore, NEW ORGANIZING
Gerardo Cajamarca, JANITORIAL LEAD
Abraham Misgina, AIRPORT LEAD
Claire Bergen, SECURITY & INHOUSE LEAD
Maria Edith Rios, RETAIL LEAD
SEIU Local 26, 826 NE 18th Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55413, 855-265-6225, www.seiu26.org.
SEIU Local 26
SEIU Local 26 is Minnesota’s Property Services Union. We are janitors, security officers and window cleaners, more than 8,000 strong in the Twin Cities metro area. Across North America, SEIU unites 225,000 members in property services.
Unidos MN
At Unidos MN Education Fund we believe that regular people, especially people experiencing inequality are the solution to the critical problems of our society. Therefore, we are committed to cultivate an abundant generation of leaders ready to take responsibility for themselves and their communities through our campaigns and leadership development.
Unidos MN EF, also known as Navigate MN, is a grassroots statewide organization that builds power with Minnesota's working families to advance social, racial, climate, and economic justice. The issues of immigration, education, health, and climate justice are at the core of our campaigns and current implementation programs. We strive to lead by embodying our values of community, leadership, and power.
Our organization was founded by undocumented young adults who openly challenged societal norms and questioned who is accepted in society. By centering the experiences of undocumented and mixed-status Latine individuals, we bring to light the intersecting struggles they face due to their immigration status and other identities. Our reach extends across diverse communities, both rural and urban, encompassing indigenous, undocumented, youth, mixed-status Latine families, LGBTQ individuals, and differently-abled individuals.
Recent Campaign Victories
Statewide
MN Immigrant Inclusion Act: Opens access to MNCare for undocumented Minnesotans
MN Care Buy In: creates a healthcare public option for farmers, small businesses and others who can’t afford healthcare premiums
Driver’s License for all: Restores DL access for folks regardless of immigration status
Ethnic Studies: Advancing educational outcomes through statewide implementation of ethnic studies classes
Homestead and MN Child Credit Restoration: allows ITIN users to obtain tax credits as homeowners and working families that make less than 100,000 per year
Green Training and Green Jobs: Provision to build infrastructure for training and pathways for occupational segregated workers into the green economy through Rise Up Center
Rise Up Center: $9 million direct appropriation for the redevelopment and creation of a new opportunity center
Incubating Future Builders Cooperative: Mixed status worker owned construction cooperative
Inclusion of undocumented 18+ Minnesotans in the Democrat caucus process
OUR TEAM (total 20 FT)
Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, Executive Director, emilia@unidos-mn.org
Luis Argueta, Communications Director, Luis@unidos-mn.org
Sara Lopez, Policy Director, Sara@unidos-mn.org
Ulla Nilsen, Lead Organizer-Climate, Ulla@unidos-mn.org
Jose Alvillar, Lead Organizer-Immigration, Jose@unidos-mn.org
Jessica Lee Velasco, Southern MN Coalition Director (rural), jessica@unidos-mn.org
Joshua Kratzenberg, Central MN Organizer (rural), joshua@unidos-mn.org
Kevin Skrip, Development Associate, development@unidos-mn.org