Cindy Boland
Cindy Boland is a former organizer and Political Director for Service Employees International Union 880 which was a sister organization to ACORN, and shared offices with them in Chicago. She began her work with them in 1991. Coming out of college Cindy knew she wanted to work in social justice, and SEIU was her first job. She started as an organizer, working six days a week knocking on doors of low income home health care workers trying to recruit them into the union. She and other organizers would go into workers homes and discuss workplace rights and the right to a fair living wage. It was hard work, but very rewarding work, she had great success bringing in new members, she estimates that 90% of the workers she spoke with joined the union. Even people living in dire circumstances with no utilities shut off were willing to pay the $5.00 to join. She made many deep friendships that last to this day. She also worked closely with ACORN organizers who were working in the same communities organizing people around banking issues, lending issues, utilities cost and the living wage campaign. As political director she ran a lot of electoral and legislative campaigns, as well as doing a lot of coalition work around policies around child healthcare and banking issues. She organized town halls and voting drives. The most memorable and impactful campaign she worked on with both SEIU and ACORN was the Fair Share campaign, organizing and negotiating for a statewide contract for over 40,000 home healthcare workers. She remembers Keith Kelleher as a shrewd negotiator. Getting the contract signed was a big win. She believes the work she was involved in helped lay the groundwork for some of the social justice movements of today. She no longer works in organizing, but still feels the pull of it, and thinks that someday she may return to the field.