Who We Are
Board
Dilcia Molina
Hondurena, Investigadora, Educadora Popular y Psicologa Social (en Honduras) Viviendo en asilo politico en USA por nine anos. Lesbiana, Feminista,madre soltera y fundadora-Presidenta de "Madre Tierra" Organizacion de Derechos Humanos para Mujeres Latinas Inmigrantes en Virginia, Actualmente coordinadora de la Alianza de Agencias Latinas Contra la Violencia de Genero de DC,MD y VA.Ademas ejerce como opinion de experto para casos de asilo politico por orientacion sexual para personas que viven persecusion por su orientacion sexual en America Latina y para casos de VAWA, U-VISA, T-VISA. Es miembra del Virginia Anti-violence Project y de La Coalicion de Pueblos Inmigrantes en Virginia.
Dilcia Molina: Honduran, researcher, popular educator and social psychologist (in Honduras) has lived as a political asylee in the United States for nine years. Dilcia, lesbian, feminist, single mother and founding president of “Madre Tierra,” a human rights organization for Latina immigrant women in Virginia. Currently, she is coordinator of The Alliance of Latina Agencies Against Gender Violence of Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia. She also acts as an expert opinion in cases of political asylum for sexual orientation for people who experience persecution for sexual orientation in Latin America as well as immigration papers such as VAWA, U-VISA, T-VISA. She is a member of the Virginia Anti-Violence Project and the Virginia Immigrant People’s Coalition.
Virginia Leavell
Virginia Leavell grew up on a farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia and has lived in and around DC since 1997. As a student, she was a founding member of the successful Georgetown Living Wage Campaign and the subsequent Living Wage Action Coalition. After working two years in Northeast Thailand for a grassroots study abroad program, Virginia returned to VA and DC to work for immigrant justice with the People United and Mexicanos sin Fronteras. In DC she worked at a string of Thai restaurants, the Washington Peace Center, and currently works with Change to Win organizing green jobs with the Laborers International Union of North America. Virginia is working to make Wayside a resource for DC and NOVA communities and organizations.
Josh Diamond
Josh Diamond grew up in southeast Virginia in Chesapeake and currently lives and works in Harrisonburg, VA. He recently returned from living and working as a farm and education intern at the Highlander Research and Education Center where he solidified and further developed his passion for popular education. There he began the process of cultivating their newly acquired apple orchard organically and helped to build their new vegetable garden. Josh has been part of both organizing and facilitating workshops on land sovereignty, language justice, and political education. Currently, Josh supports immigrant justice in Harrisonburg and works with immigrant youth and families in the Shenandoah Valley through the Migrant Education Program. Josh loves music, cooking, and tries to bring humor and love into movement spaces whenever possible.
Amanda Altman
Amanda Altman grew up in New York City and still lives there. She became interested in popular education during her study abroad experience in Thailand. She worked with thai organizers and communities, fighting for sovergnity in the face of World Bank projects and industries seeking to exploit local resources. She connected study abroad students with villagers who scavenged recycleable materials from a landfill and teachers creating place based curriculum. Amanda now works for a labor union, organizing resident physicians. She is also the co-chair of the Shalom Bayit campaign, which organizes employers of domestic workers to work in solidarity with Domestic Workers United (DWU). DWU is an organization of nannies, house cleaners and elder care givers fighting for dignity, respect and labor rights for domestic workers.
Niels Asmussen
Niels is currently living and farming in VA where he grew up. While studying he worked on various community based environmental and social justice campaigns. He is currently focused on building local community which can take care of itself.
Patrick Lincoln
Patrick Lincoln was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where he currently lives. He has been involved in political campaigns in Virginia around police harassment, mountain-top removal coal mining and immigrant justice. For two years he lived in DC and worked as the National Director of Consulting and Training for Men Can Stop Rape and organized a tenant's association in the building where he lived. He has facilitated many workshops with a variety of communities on themes ranging from positive male sexuality to prison justice. In the fall of 2007 he worked in Oaxaca, Mexico, on Teaching Rebellion, a book of firsthand testimonies from the grassroots social movement there. Much of his recent learning and growth as an organizer has come from working with the Highlander Center for Education and Research on multilingual capacity building, Training for Change, and most recently, from S.O.N.G. (Southerners on New Ground), a grassroots organization of queers in the South working for economic and racial justice. He will be studying counseling for the next three years, harvesting skills to be used in building more sustainable and nurturing social movements for revolutionary change.
Leslie Moncada
Luis Oyola
Patrice Schwermer
Arnoldo Borja
Staff
Jeff Winder brings 20 years of experience with organizing and activism to his role as Coordinator for the Wayside Center. For 15 of those years, his three children, Fiona, Rourke and Ammon have been his most important and cherished teachers. He works hard to save their future from global capitalism and is deeply grateful when they spend time at Wayside.In 1990, while marching against the military build-up in the Persian Gulf, Jeff discovered how alive and powerful he felt when adding his voice to an angry mob in the street. The ensuing years have been a journey to understand the phenomenon of thousands coming together, the work that it takes to create those moments and the strategy for harnessing that power to create the future that we want and deserve.
Though you won’t find him in a church, Jeff connects most easily with a sacred energy that sustains him while alone in the forest. He doesn’t identify as Christian now, but faith-based organizing is an important part of his history as an organizer. For a number of years he lived and worked in Catholic Worker Communities, first in Norfolk where he served meals to homeless veterans in the shadow of the military base while protesting war. Later, he was a founding member of the Little Flower in central Virginia where he continued organizing around international issues while exploring sustainable living. Jeff spent seven of these years as a part-time organizer with the Office of Justice and Peace of the Catholic Diocese, helping to create the state-wide group Sowers of Justice.
In 2,000 Jeff accepted a job as Program Director for School of the Americas Watch and spent next few years, working to shut down this military training school through street protest, direct action and legislative work. During this time, Jeff was fortunate to be part of the transition from a hierarchical, executive director model to a staff collective. Through all of this work, he began to discover through many painful lessons that despite his best intentions, he had internalized cultural oppressions like sexism and racism and that confronting and overcoming them would be a life-long process.
The Latin America solidarity work begun at SOAW became a theme for Jeff that continues to this day. His travel in Latin America with Witness for Peace eventually led to five years term on their board including a term as chair.
Returning to his home state of Virginia in 2,003 Jeff founded The People United. This group has grown into a vibrant network that has supported struggles for justice across the region from mountain justice to prison issues. In recent years, much of Jeff’s organizing work with The People United has been focused on immigration issues including the campaign to stop the Farmville Immigrant Detention Center.
Jeff likes to recall the words of a dear friend who once said that the most important part of any of these events are the conversations that happen late at night around the bonfire afterwards. He’s thankful for the network of relationships that sustains him and from whom he has learned so much and looks forward to seeing everyone at Wayside.
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