Omar Cardenas
Organizing Director
Omar leads Long Beach’s campaign and oversees base building and leadership development in the region as Lead Organizer. He began organizing in 2007 in his hometown of Stockton, CA with Fathers & Families of San Joaquin, and the ESPINO Coalition successfully advocating for the closure of a youth prison in Stockton. In 2013, organizing alongside young people with the Long Beach- Every Student Matters Campaign and winning the LBUSD School Discipline Principles and Practices Resolution. From 2016-2019, he was the Lead Organizer with Khmer Girls in Action (KGA), and anchored the Invest In Youth Campaign and the Building Healthy Communities Youth Workgroup and Youth Committee. In his tenure at KGA Omar oversaw Youth Participatory Action Research, winning $100K seed money from the Mayor’s budget to establish the first ever Long Beach Children and Youth Fund, and the cities first ever youth-led strategic plan. His commitment to youth organizing stems from his experience being pushed-out, and coming into contact with the juvenile justice system, and continues to be grounded and moved towards justice and liberation by all the friends and family he has lost due to violence, mass incarceration, deportation and poverty. His life’s work however centers around fatherhood and raising his son Oceloeztli to be free!