Melanie is an organizer, interpreter and writer from Massachusetts. As a young person, she got to learn from worker-members at the Matahari Women Workers’ Center in Boston, and through their community she fostered a powerful, enduring belief in the value of organizing. She comes to Right to the City from member organization CAAAV in New York City, where she was a tenant organizer in the Manhattan Chinatown community. Her daily life was ruled by sixth-floor walk-ups, cross-dialect & crossgeneration tenant meetings, the dystopian Manhattan housing court, and the constant presence of hot jasmine tea. From those experiences, she carries both a deep love for neighborhood-level organizing and a deep appreciation for the necessity of broader, trans-local infrastructure in organizing movements. Her loyalty to New York City notwithstanding, she’s a life-long New Englander based in the Boston area who can typically be found practicing her language skills, wandering the woods, woefully fighting writer’s block, or restocking the spices in her kitchen.
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