Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA)

KIWA’s mission is to empower Koreatown’s low-wage immigrant workers for dignity and respect in the workplace and community, and to work together with other communities to realize a vision of a just Los Angeles. One of the nation’s most established workers centers, KIWA is one of few community groups that organizes both Korean and Latino workers. Our vision is to bring together workers, community members, and students in a broad, multi-ethnic coalition. KIWA’s primary initiatives focus on workers’ rights, equitable development, and immigrants’ justice. All our efforts are grounded in a commitment to economic, social and environmental justice and in the belief that human beings can effect real change. Our strategic approach combines cross-racial grassroots organizing, leadership development, direct services, advocacy, cultural resistance programs, community-based research and multi-ethnic coalition building. Through strategic industry-wide campaigns, persistent worker organizing, direct action and collaboration with community and labor allies, KIWA has consistently found a way to win concrete changes and to contribute to longer-term movement-building in Los Angeles. Today, KIWA is an anchor organization for Korean American progressives, Koreatown immigrant community members, as well as a hub for multi-ethnic and intersectional social and economic justice organizing in LA and beyond.