BIO

James R. Tracy is based in Oakland, California. He has over thirty years of experience in Community Organizing for housing and economic justice. In the early 1990s, he co-founded the Eviction Defense Network, working in solidarity with residents of Public Housing, He co-founded the San Francisco Community Land Trust, and has been an active member of several Bay Area unions. He has organized with groups such as Jobs With Justice, Community Housing Partnership, and the Coalition on Homelessness.

Tracy has written several books on the under explored aspects of Social Movements including Hillbilly Nationalists Urban Race Rebels and Black Power (Melville House, 2011, 2022), No Fascist USA: The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements (City Lights 2020), Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes From San Francisco’s Housing Wars (AK Press, 2014) and Avanti Popolo: Italian Americans Sail Beyond Columbus (Manic D Press, 2004). He is a former member of the Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troupe. Tracy is a co-founder of the Howard Zinn Book Fair.

He currently chairs the Labor & Community Studies Department at City College of San Francisco and teaches at Laney College. Occasionally, he can be found teaching at San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco. He serves as the Vice President of the Bay Area Community Land Trust and is a Delegate to the Alameda County Labor Council.