Events

Javier Morillo is a labor leader, activist, podcaster, writer, and storyteller based in Minnesota. He is the president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26, which unites close to 9,000 property service workers in the Twin Cities metro area. As president, he leads the organizing, legislative and political activities of the local union representing Minnesota’s union janitors, private security officers and other service workers. He also works as a political strategist and appears regularly on local political talk shows as a commentator.

As a leader in the immigrant rights movement, Morillo has published commentaries in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In 2008, he received the Progressive States Network’s 2008 Progressive Leaders Award for State Legislative Immigration Campaigns. He is creator and co-host, along with former Minnesota Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, of the “Wrong About Everything” weekly podcast, a fun, irreverent, and bipartisan look at Minnesota and national politics.

Morillo is also active in electoral politics, having played a role in the elections of the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, Keith Ellison, as well as the first Latina elected to the Minnesota State Senate. In 2011, he was appointed by Governor Mark Dayton to serve on the Minnesota Legislature’s Sunset Advisory Commission, and in 2012 was elected by the Democratic Farmer Labor Party to serve a four-year term representing Minnesota on the Democratic National Committee. In 2013 the DFL honored him with the Paul Wellstone Lifetime Commitment to Labor Award.