Izzy Adachi is the Lead Organizer for Greater Victoria Acting together and works with their member organizations and local leadership on campaigns, leadership development, and community engagement. She has been an organizer for 7 years, and has led numerous grassroots campaigns for fair working conditions, affordability measures, and housing.
Izzy Adachi’s introduction to labour organizing began at age 19, when the COVID-19 pandemic made her an essential worker overnight. While working at Starbucks, she and her coworkers faced unsafe working conditions, inadequate protective equipment, customer harassment, and little control over their own safety. Feeling that they had to take action together, Izzy began reaching out to unions and organizing her colleagues. Within a month, about 90% of the workers had signed union cards. Their efforts led to an immediate improvement in protective equipment across Starbucks stores and, after a year of bargaining, a union contract. That experience introduced Izzy to the power of collective action—and to the importance of the relationships that make organizing possible.
After this experience, Izzy became a student organizer and eventually joined Greater Victoria Acting Together as a lead organizer. Her work now brings together faith communities, labour, civil society, environmental groups, and others to work toward the common good. As Izzy explains, broad-based organizing begins with listening to people’s lived experiences, building trust, and helping them recognize their own ability to act. Her stories speak to how changemaking is deeply relational work: it requires listening, navigating differences, learning from mistakes, and finding linkages between causes.
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