Alex taught for 22 years in Compton and South LA, mostly at Crenshaw High School, before being elected to full-time UTLA office in 2014. As UTLA/NEA Vice President since 2020, Alex has been involved in initiating the national NEA Community Schools Strategic Campaign Institute and has played key roles in the community/labor coalition Reclaim Our Schools LA, in UTLA’s approach to Bargaining for the Common Good, and in building the Community Schools model out at local, state, and national levels. As UTLA President from 2014 to 2020, Alex played a key role in moving UTLA to an organizing, democratic, racial justice, class struggle model of unionism; in the Build the Future, Fund the Fight campaign, which made UTLA financially solvent and completed UTLA’s AFT/NEA merger; in the formation of the California Alliance for Community Schools and Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools; in UTLA’s historic 2019 strike and its contract and Common Good victories; in placing measures on the ballot for school funding; in UTLA’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders for US President and its ripple effects into AFT Executive Council and others spaces; and in working with Black Lives Matter, Students Deserve, and Reclaim Our Schools LA to cut funding to the LA school police. During his teaching, Alex was deeply involved in organizing with the Labor/Community Strategy Center, helped found the Coalition for Educational Justice and the Extended Learning Cultural Model, and was honored to receive teaching awards from the LAUSD Academic English Mastery Program, UTLA Bilingual Education Committee, and UCLA Education Department.
