Born in Viet Nam, Tammy grew up in a working class immigrant household in Seattle, WA and raised by her single mother and grandmother with a house full of aunties and uncles. She has spent decades working to build a new left through grassroots movement formations trying to make history including: JustAct: Youth Action for Global Justice, Labor/Community Strategy Center, US Social Forums, and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance. Most recently, she helped to build a think tank/act tank in Los Angeles and “a working class organization on wheels” with the Labor/Community Strategy Center and Bus Riders Union. At GPP, Tammy leads our state alignment work in California and in the climate sector. Tammy is grateful for the teachers in her life: politicized by her school teacher Mary Ellen Cardella, who first handed her Wretched of the Earth, and Zinn, Mao, Hughes, Hurston, to all the teachers at the Strategy Center, Eric Mann, Lian Hurst Mann, Manuel Criollo and so many other, and to the international Third World Left tradition that has shaped her thinking and practice for liberation and self determination.
