Robert Chlala, a researcher and labor organizer with the USC department of sociology, will be speaking about his work on cannabis labor activism and youth advocacy. With roots in the legacy market and communities affected by the war on drugs, Robert Chlala has been conducting research and working alongside workers, labor unions and equity advocates in the US cannabis industry since 2013. He recently completed his PhD in Sociology at USC, where his dissertation and publications in journals such as Environment and Planning C explores the cannabis market’s growth in relationship to urbanized racial capitalism, sexuality, gender and social movements in Los Angeles. As part of his engaged research, he helped organize broad-based movement coalitions to include workers and community reinvestment in Los Angeles’ social equity policies and developed nuanced media on cannabis to shape the public conversation. In Summer 2021, he will be co-leading a community-driven, first-of-its-kind statewide worker and equity survey at UCLA Labor Center and Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity. He currently is a Board Member for the Social Impact Center, where he co-founded a new youth leadership program to develop cannabis equity trainers. His work is and will always be indebted to those who have shared their stories, hopes and partnership, and who have risked and at times lost their lives and livelihoods to challenge the violence of criminalization and offer another kind of vision for collective life.