We have put together this timeline for the celebration of the life of Fred Ross Jr. Many thanks to all who have contributed. We recognize, however, that Fred led a full and active life, and that we may have missed important events and people, and may even inadvertently gotten some details wrong. This is a living document, and we welcome your additions and edits, which can be sent to fredrossmemories@gmail.com to be incorporated. The timeline will continue to be available on this site as part of our education program.
Many thanks to Fred and Margo’s dear friend Adam Reich who through thoughtful questions and many conversations with friends of Fred brought this timeline to life.
Frederick Gibson Ross is born to Frances Lillian Gibson Ross and Fred W. Ross in Long Beach, California. Fred Ross Sr. was an organizer in the barrios and fields of California. Frances Ross was a pioneer in service provision for the mentally ill. The family, including Fred’s older siblings Rob and Julia, lives in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Fred’s primary language is Spanish, until Fred is five years old.
1947
The family moves to Corte Madera in Marin County, where Fred attends Neal Cummins Elementary School and Redwood High School.
1952
At Redwood High School, Fred runs for student body president. After coordinating an aggressive get-out-the-vote operation, Fred is elected with seventy five percent of the vote and serves as president for the 1964-1965 school year.
1964
During the summer after his junior year in high school, Fred travels to Guadalupe, Arizona, with his father, who is organizing among local Yaqui Indians and Mexican Americans to secure basic services for the town. It is here, Fred will later say, that he first sees the power of his father’s organizing, as he watches local residents start to hold elected leaders accountable: “What I saw was a textbook, classic example of when a community begins to get organized and become truly empowered,” Fred recalled. “I saw it in the faces and the way the men and women who had never spoken publicly before… got up and were peppering the candidates with tough questions…. I’ll just never forget that summer. That made me immensely proud of what my father did, to see how [organizing] could change lives.”
1964
1965
The summer after his graduation from high school, Fred travels to Mexico as part of The Experiment in International Living.
With funding from a federal antipoverty program, Fred’s father moves to Syracuse, New York, to organize among the Black community in the area, while also teaching organizing to social work students at Syracuse University. Fred makes the move as well, and attends Syracuse for his first two years of college.
1965
The summer between his first and second years of college, Fred returns to California to work with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, who are organizing alongside workers at the DiGiorgio Ranch. The ranchers had tried to sign a sweetheart deal with the Teamsters, but workers had no vote. Fred joins with other organizers to push for a real election, and the UFW prevails.
1966
After his Sophomore year, Fred transfers to the University of California at Berkeley just as the counterculture is tuning in and the antiwar movement is heating up.
1967
On September 15, Fred is distributing leaflets in support of UFW’s California grape strike outside of a Mayfair store at the corner of Geary and Webster Streets in San Francisco. A security guard fires a gun in Fred’s direction, but is, apparently, a poor shot. In an open letter to Mayfair, Larry Itliong, then the assistant director of UFWOC writes to Mayfair, “We wish to inform you the Mayfair Stores have the invidious distinction of being the only markets in the United States to employ such violent tactics against our peaceful pickets.”
1968
Fred is walking from the UC campus to his job at an ice cream shop and passes People’s Park. He sees about ten police officers surrounding a man. “I could see he hadn’t done anything,” he would later say. “I said, ‘What did he do?’ and they said ‘Get the hell out of here.’ I started to walk away and felt a billy club in my back. I whirled around in reaction and the next thing I knew, I was arrested.”
1969
Fred graduates from UC Berkeley and joins the United Farm Workers. After the successful Delano grape strike and boycotts of 1965-1970, the UFW is shifting its attention to the lettuce industry. Fred begins working on the Salinas and Santa Maria lettuce strikes, where he is trained and mentored by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Fred Ross Sr. Unbeknownst to some, Fred was not known as Fred Ross Jr. until this year, when Dolores begins referring to him as such (he technically does not share his father’s name).
1970
Fred is sent by the UFW to organize in support of the lettuce boycott in Washington State. Because of UFW success, growers are getting nervous, and have started to lobby for anti-farmworker laws at the state level. In August, the Oregon legislature quietly passes one of these laws, which the UFW does not learn about until it is about to be signed into law by Republican Governor Tom McCall. Cesar Chavez and Jerry Cohen, worried that such legislation might diffuse around the country, focus some of the boycott apparatus on Oregon, and ask Fred to travel to Oregon and lead local grassroots organizing against the bill’s passage. Fred organizes an ongoing vigil on the steps of the capitol building in Salem, with farmworkers, clergy, and Portland community in attendance. In response to the intense public pressure, as well as UFW’s threat to organize a nationwide boycott of Oregon exports (UFW even threatens to patrol the border to limit people traveling into the state), McCall vetoes the bill. McCall says “he had never seen such pressure against a measure in 22 years as a state official and political commentator.” It’s the huge victory that no one knows about, since it likely stopped a deluge of anti-farmworker organizing bills. Ross later tells Randy Shaw, “We generated real, measurable pressure, which put us in a position to negotiate from a position of strength and save our movement.”
1971
Inter Harvest Lettuce Inc. signs a collective bargaining agreement with UFW that goes into effect in September. The growers are now panicked by the success of the UFW in grapes and lettuce, and put Proposition 22 on the ballot for the Fall – a law that would strip farmworkers of their right to strike and boycott. Fred is sent to Los Angeles to organize a voter registration drive as part of the No On 22 Campaign. He moves into a Boycott House in East Los Angeles near Boyle Heights. There he and his fellow organizers (including Art Torres and Bob Purcell) refer to themselves as the City Terrace Tough Guys (“It was more of a Doo-Wop group than a threat to anybody,” says Bob.) Fred finds allies among the Catholic Worker Community, unions, student activists, and others. The No on 22 Campaign, led by LeRoy Chapfield, finds evidence of fraud among proponents of Proposition 22 in the signature-gathering process. In what became one of the largest grassroots efforts to question the signature-gathering process in California history, the campaign sends hundreds of affidavits claiming fraud to then Secretary of State Jerry Brown, and news stories about the fraud circulate throughout the state. To counter the massive advantage the growers have in their paid media campaign, the UFW invents a “human billboarding” strategy that it deploys during Los Angeles commuting hours, to spread the word about voting no on Prop 22. Prop 22 is decisively rejected that Fall, 58% to 42%, during an election in which Nixon beats McGovern 55% to 42% in California.
1972
Gallo Winery refuses to negotiate a second contract with the UFW. 92% of Gallo workers go on strike, and in response Gallo works with local authorities to jail 68 strikers and evict 400 people from their homes. The UFW responds by organizing a boycott of Gallo grapes and wine–the union’s first national brand name boycott. Fred becomes the Bay Area lead of the Gallo boycott at the ripe old age of 26, supervising a team of five lead organizers stationed in Oakland, San Jose, Marin County, San Francisco, and the South Bay. They abide by three principles: Everyone we meet is a future ally. Every day is a training opportunity. Every setback in a campaign brings a new creative tactic. Fred constructs a powerful boycott community in the Bay through house meeting drives, church committees, and labor committees. Gallo’s head of marketing often shows up on the picket lines to see just how bad it is going for him. “Boycott Gallo” gummies – little stickers – start showing up around the Bay, along with yard and window signs. “It became a cultural thing,” Bob Purcell recalls. “You boycotted Gallo.”
1973
A UFW ally, Jerry Brown, takes over the California governorship from Ronald Reagan, providing the UFW a new political opportunity. In order to take advantage of the moment, Fred proposes to the UFW Executive Board, and then spearheads, a 110-mile march from San Francisco to Modesto, Gallo headquarters. Along the way, Reverend Fred Eyster organizes clergy in six towns along the route to host a nightly prayer rally and provide dinner and housing for marchers. The rally grows each night of the march – 70, to 90, to 150, to 500. When the marchers arrive in Modesto on March 1st they are met with over 20,000 Gallo strikers, farmworkers, and boycott supporters. In response to the march, Gallo announces support for passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA). Soon after, now with employer support, Governor Jerry Brown signs the ALRA, which guarantees the right of farm workers to unionize, vote in state-supervised secret ballot elections, and collectively bargain with their employers, while preserving farm workers’ right to strike and boycott. That summer, workers on about 400 ranches held elections, and virtually all joined the UFW. Fred moves to Santa Maria, where he is in charge of UFW organizing in the Central Coastal area.
1975
Fred leads a successful organizing drive of 500 farmworkers at Bruce Church Lettuce in Santa Maria, but the UFW loses its election of 700 farmworkers at Bruce Church in Salinas. The UFW appeals the Salinas election, and the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) calls for a new election of both crews, who have now moved south to the Imperial Valley. Fred leads a second organizing drive of the 1,100 workers from Bruce Church in the Imperial Valley, and the UFW win the election decisively in November.
1976
Fred returns to the Bay Area, where he works with Catholic Charities on a campaign for nursing home reform, which revealed mistreatment of patients and shuts down the largest nursing home in the state.
1976
On the morning of July 1, Fred leads a group of organizers to the grape fields of Harry Carian to speak with farmworkers. Robert Carian, Harry’s son, and two other ranch employees order the organizers off the property, but Fred refuses, saying they had the right to speak with employees under the ALRA. Robert punches Fred in the jaw, grabs him around the neck, and tries to pull him to the ground. Fred frees himself and continues walking into the field. Carian tackles Fred and knocks him down. The Riverside County Sheriff soon arrives. Fred and Carian are both taken into custody for a short period of time, though no charges are pursued. The California Bar Committee expresses “concern about the incident” as it reviews Fred’s application to the California Bar.
1977
Fred begins law school at the University of San Francisco (USF) while still supporting UFW campaigns. During most of law school he lives at the rectory of St. Peter’s Church in San Francisco. Within the first week or so of law school, his friend and fellow law student Jay Koslofsky tells him that a union-busting firm, Littler, Mendelson, Fastiff & Tichy, is planning to come to campus for a recruitment day. Fred organizes a delegation of 40-50 farmworkers to march into the event in protest. The firm leaves quickly, and the director of recruitment is not happy.
1977
Fred graduates from USF Law School and begins working as a public defender in San Francisco. There, he meets El Salvadoran refugees and learns of their struggle against the U.S. supported military. He begins to volunteer to help refugees seeking asylum: “The test for getting asylum was virtually impossible to meet. You had to name who you were afraid was going to kill you, but the death squads were anonymous.”
1980
Working for Clint Reilly, Fred co-directs the field campaign to defeat the recall election of San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein, who had been targeted because of her support for tough gun control regulation in the aftermath of the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk. One of the innovations of this push is to get opponents of the recall to vote by mail. Among other tactics, Fred organizes an “Ironing Board Brigade,” getting people to fill out forms to request absentee ballots outside of Safeway Markets. The ironing board becomes a favorite tool of Fred’s: it is easy to set up, the right height for writing a letter, unusual enough to get people’s attention, and, if someone tries to run you off, you can pull the latch, collapse it, and run. Fred also organizes house meetings that help to recruit hundreds of volunteers. The recall is resoundingly defeated, with 84% of votes against.
1983
Fred is hired by Nick Allen and Kit Miller to be the first Executive Director of the national grassroots organization Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N), with the goal of challenging the Reagan Administration’s Contra War in Nicaragua and its support for the death squad regime in El Salvador. Before its name was changed to N2N in 1986, the organization had been founded as the Central American Television Project (CATP, or “cat pee”). Its original goal was to produce and distribute Faces of War, a documentary about the effect of U.S. Central America policy on the lives of people living in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Fred sees the opportunity to use the documentary as an organizing tool and, under his direction, N2N combines a nationwide house-meeting campaign, political ground operation, a lobbying operation, and eventually a public boycott.
1985
N2N’s work in congressional districts – in a battle with Oliver North’s pro-contra campaign – secures the support of five of the six swing Democrats to oppose aid to the contras in Nicaragua. They win two of three votes in Congress, but in the third they are defeated by the Reagan-North alliance, falling just short of blocking aid. The organization realizes that it has to do more than pressure swing Democrats; it needs to replace them with leaders for peace. N2N starts a Campaign Fund that makes in-kind donations of skilled organizers to get out the vote in close races. In the 1986 election cycle, the organization helps to elect Congressmembers Louise Slaughter, Anna Eshoo, and David Skaggs, and helps Alan Cranston retain his seat.
1986
In February, Representative Sala Burton passes away, opening up California’s 5th Congressional District in San Francisco. Fred co-directs the grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign in the special election that elects N2N’s key ally, Nancy Pelosi, as San Francisco’s representative to Congress. In a period of 60 days leading up to the election, Fred (with Paul Milne) arranges for Pelosi to attend 118 house meetings. Fred observes that Pelosi had an “organizer’s instinct,” in that she had imagination and a “very strategic mind to about how to think about a campaign, how to organize a campaign and how to win it.” Pelosi wins the race by four thousand votes, at the age of 47. In the meantime, the organization launches a major media campaign, reaching over 50 million people through 148 print, television, and radio stories.
1987
Throughout the year, working closely with Countdown ‘87, N2N targets key House and Senate districts, building a grassroots base for ending Contra aid. Fred establishes N2N offices in Chicago and New York City, which become hubs for training a new generation of organizers. N2N hires Shelley Moskowitz to open its Washington DC office three blocks from the US Capitol. Across the country, N2N has more than 100 organizers working in 12 states and 18 Congressional districts. National coordination is old-school: organizers call into the San Francisco national office on separate lines, with phones lined up on a table on speaker, so they can hold strategy meetings with one another. This represents an advance from the training of Fred Ross Sr., who would give organizers bags of dimes to make reminder calls from payphones.
1987
On February 3, N2N helps to bring about a 219-211 vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to cut off military aid to Nicaragua’s contra rebels, the Reagan administration’s first foreign policy defeat. N2N begins to shift its focus to El Salvador.
1988
By March of this year, the far-right ARENA party controls all branches of government in El Salvador. N2N gets reports that ARENA is cracking down on labor unions and human rights leaders. More than 40,000 civilians are killed, while the U.S. government gives more than a million dollars a day to a country the size of Massachusetts. By March of this year, the far-right ARENA party controls every branch of government in El Salvador. N2N establishes a rapid response network as ARENA intensifies its crackdown on labor unions and human rights leaders. More than 40,000 civilians are killed, while the U.S. government gives more than a million dollars a day to a country the size of Massachusetts. N2N shifts its legislative strategy: instead of targeting swing voters, it works to get a majority of Democratic representatives to oppose military aid to the brutal regime. Fred works with Pelosi to create an organizing vehicle, H. Con. Res. 48, known as the “Pelosi Resolution,” which calls for a negotiated settlement in El Salvador. Ultimately 161 Democrats sign on, changing the conversation on contra aid within the Democratic Party. As part of this strategic shift, N2N establishes offices in Boston and Los Angeles.
1989
Fred leads a delegation to El Salvador in order to consult with faith and labor leaders about the possibility of a U.S. coffee boycott. The union of coffee processing workers (SICAFE) in El Salvador takes the dangerous step of publicly endorsing such a boycott. “Coffee is the story of El Salvador,” Ross is told by union officials. “If you’re able to mount a successful boycott, it will go right at the 14 families that have contributed to the problem and that will be a tremendous boost to peace.” While Fred is visiting El Salvador in August, he gets a call from union leader Ricardo Lazo, who says his home had been surrounded by soldiers with guns and he needed witnesses. Fred arrives with a newspaper reporter and photographer, where Fred asks whether the soldiers have a search warrant. An army lieutenant responds, “We don’t want any outside intervention,” to which Fred answers, “Our government is pouring in $1.5 million a day of outside intervention.” The military takes Lazo into custody, but Fred calls members of Congress who sent letters of protest, and Lazo is released the next day with no charges. Shelley Moskowitz remembers, “Fred was fluent in Spanish, he was an attorney, and he was fearless.” People saw him as “an ally who could save lives.”
1989
1989
On November 16, the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter mark a turning point in the struggle for peace. When Congress refuses to end military aid, N2N decides, “If we couldn’t cut off the tax dollars, we were going to cut off the consumer dollars.” N2N had been planning to launch its coffee boycott in 1990, but instead begins it immediately, ultimately targeting Folgers Coffee and its owner Procter & Gamble. Within 100 days of its launch, the boycott spreads to 70 cities in 42 states.
Fred reaches out to his friend Jimmy Herman, the president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The ILWU honors N2N’s picket lines and effectively seals off the West Coast from shipments of Salvadoran Coffee for the next eighteen months, from Long Beach to Canada. As Shelley Moskowitz remembers, “Our picket lines were made up of older ladies in tennis shoes, carrying signs. It was just enough to give the longshoremen a reason not to unload the ships.”
1989
In February, the Ciudad de Buenaventura, a Colombian ship loaded with 34 tons of Salvadoran coffee bound for San Francisco, is turned away from the docks. For ten days, the ship moves from port to port, as activists up and down the west coast mobilize to prevent the ship from off-loading. On February 26, the ship returns, still fully loaded, to its home port of Acajutla.
1990
N2N runs commercials on Boston’s CBS affiliate WHDH-TV proclaiming that Folgers coffee brings “misery and destruction” in El Salvador. The ads are narrated by the actor (and former SAG president) Ed Asner, and feature an image of an upside-down coffee cup pouring blood. In response, Proctor & Gamble announces that it is canceling $1 million in advertising with the station. The next day, the New York Times runs a front page story about the company’s decision, showing a photo of the ad image. $1,000 in advertising turns into huge national publicity. As Fred later writes, “Fortunately for us, the media loves to cover itself.” Fred tells Time Magazine, “There’s blood on that coffee.” Leading up to P&G’s annual shareholder meeting in October, N2N organizes a series of shareholder resolutions in support of the boycott. The resolutions are led by the grandson of the company’s founder, Jamie Gamble, as well as 16 religious institutional shareholders. Nancy Pelosi even helps Fred meet the CEO of P&G during a Capitol Hill reception. The CEO pulls his hand back as soon as he realizes who is trying to shake his hand. The boycott reduces consumption of Salvadoran coffee by 33 percent, as well as imports in Europe, and reduces El Salvador’s export earnings by at least 30 percent.
1990
In response to pressure from N2N, Procter & Gamble recruits Nestlé and Kraft to together take out full-page ads in El Salvador’s four leading newspapers, urging the Salvadoran government to negotiate a peace settlement. These three companies together control 80 percent of El Salvador’s coffee imports to the United States.
1991
On January 16, a peace agreement is signed between the government of El Salvador and the FMLN, followed by a permanent cease-fire beginning on February 1. N2N ends its boycott in March. During the 1992 election cycle, N2N’s Campaign Fund focuses on electing progressive women to Congress. N2N shifts its focus to what it considers one of the biggest human rights issues domestically, healthcare reform. N2N develops the “Health Security Card,” designed to give people a tangible feel for a single payer solution – a tool that is later used by the White House. Fred spearheads a 1,000 person march in Little Rock, Arkansas, in December of 1992 to hand-deliver Health Security Cards to the President-Elect Bill Clinton on the day he steps down as governor of Arkansas.
1992
Fred begins working in the San Fernando Valley as a community organizer with VOICE, an Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) affiliate, the network founded by Saul Alinksy and for which Fred Ross Sr. had worked many years earlier, where he focuses largely on organizing for immigrant rights.
1994
In the aftermath of California’s anti-immigrant Proposition 187, Fred works with leaders like Cecilia Barragan and Consuelo Valdez to launch the Active Citizenship Campaign under the umbrella of IAF, which successfully puts pressure on the Immigration and Naturalization Service to speed up the application process for naturalization and becomes a model for similar campaigns around the country. The campaign offers a blueprint for transforming the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act into a vehicle for building Latino political participation and immigrant rights nationally.
1995
As a result of the Active Citizenship Campaign’s success at reducing adjudication times, in August, Los Angeles grants citizenship to 60,800 applicants, the district’s highest one-month total ever. By September 30, the INS has processed 1.3 million naturalization applications and approved 1.1 million, more than double the previous year. Latino turnout in Los Angeles reaches record levels and Tony Cárdenas becomes the first Latino elected to the state assembly from the San Fernando Valley.
1996
Fred meets union labor lawyer Margo Feinberg while working in Los Angeles, sparks fly and love blossoms. They have met their match! They move together to Potrero Hill in San Francisco.
1997
Fred becomes Chief of Staff for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi in her San Francisco District Office. President Clinton signs welfare reform legislation that denies legal immigrants access to benefits like Social Security (SSI) and food stamps. Fred helps organize a coalition of San Francisco Asian American and immigrant rights groups that protects vulnerable elderly immigrants affected by these restrictions.
1997
1998
Fred and Margo marry at the Presidio in San Francisco, with 250 friends and family cheering them on.
Fred and Margo move to Berkeley, where Fred takes a job organizing with the Western Region of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) beginning in July. There he is part of a national team leading SEIU’s efforts to organize Catholic healthcare facilities across the United States. Almost immediately, Fred joins a delegation of workers to Los Angeles to participate in the National Catholic Gathering for Jubilee Justice.
1999
1999
Fred’s and Margo’s son Charley Ross is born October 6. Fred loves fatherhood and the fulfillment of family.
2001
SEIU reaches a fair election agreement with Catholic Healthcare West.
2002
SEIU reaches labor contract agreements with CHW that covers 9,000 workers at 20 hospitals across California.
Fred’s and Margo’s daughter Helen Ross is born on April 18th at a Catholic hospital in Sacramento. Fred starts his journey as a Girl Dad and enjoys everything about it.
2002
2005
Fred, with the organizing staff of UHW and SEIU International, lead organizing strategy for the St. Joseph Health System Campaign.
At Fred’s encouragement, SEIU publishes Fred Ross Sr.’s Axioms for Organizers as a tool for its organizing staff. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry recalls, “Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t burning very bright.” Fred had an intuition about “how to use art, culture, song, and storytelling as a way to educate people on a power analysis and also fuel their faith. The booklet is an example of that.”
2006
In August, the St. Joseph Health System campaign escalates, as workers and religious leaders converge at the headquarters of the St. Joseph Health System in Orange County, California, for a protest and vigil in support of a Fair Election Agreement. The event receives coverage in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other major news outlets. That month, the St. Joseph Health System expresses for the first time a willingness to negotiate a Fair Election Agreement.
2008
Fred leaves SEIU in a show of support for worker and labor solidarity. He speaks at the UNITE HERE convention. He finds support and encouragement in his family and friends.
2009
Fred is hired by IBEW Local 1245 Business Manager Tom Dalzell (a friend from UFW days) to tackle a brewing contract fight at NV Energy. Fred encourages Tom to recruit Fred’s longtime organizing partner Eileen Purcell to join him to organize a contract fight with PG&E clerical workers and help on NV Energy.
2009
Working with the 80+ strong organizing committee, IBEW 1245 leadership, and the organizing team, Fred leads the successful “Shame on NV Energy” campaign to protect retiree health benefits. The campaign includes the union’s first picket lines at NV Energy in the union’s 62 years at the company. The campaign generates solidarity from UNITE HERE in Las Vegas, IBEW Local 3 in New York, and Interfaith allies.
2010
The dynamism of the organizing campaigns at NV Energy and PG&E lead Tom Dalzell and the IBEW Executive Board to make a bigger investment in developing member organizers. Fred and Eileen develop a leadership development program predicated on trainings, hands-on campaigns, and solidarity with sister locals across the union’s jurisdiction and in other states.
2013
The IBEW 1245 Executive Board creates a new designation: Organizing Steward. The first class of organizing stewards is comprised of 28 rank and file IBEW 1245 members. The stewards support the organizing efforts of the union, as well as support other unions and key electoral campaigns in California, Nevada, and around the country. The teams play a key role in swing states around the country helping to elect candidates committed to supporting labor and working families.
2014
IBEW 1245’s Organizing Steward program grows from a first class of 28 stewards to more than 162 by 2020. Fred helps to train each new class along with standout stewards from the rank and file who bring their experience and talent to the task.
2020
Many longtime activists are wondering how to plug into 2020 GOTV efforts. Fred helps to connect over 150 long time friends and allies to get out the vote efforts in swing states, from Nevada to Georgia, along with the IBEW program and state AFL-CIO affiliates with which he was engaged.
2020
2021
Fred reactivates GOTV to help defeat the recall of Governor Gavin Newsom
Fred retires from IBEW and embarks on his dream of co-producing (with Ray Telles and John Heffernan) a documentary about his father, Fred Ross Sr., and his organizing legacy, to educate and inspire new generations of organizers. In the 10 months before his death, Fred helps conceptualize the film, arranges for interviews and archival footage, organizes hundreds to support the film, and raises more than $650,000 for the film and an impact campaign.
2022
Fred spends 2022 with Margo, enjoying life together at their home in Berkeley, supporting the union campaigns in which she is involved, watching the January 6th hearings and analyzing the midterms. His children are around to share in his love of a good laugh and chocolate milkshakes, and to cheer on the Golden State Warriors. He takes great joy in how his children have grown into thoughtful and beautiful young adults.
2022
On October 14, hundreds of friends and colleagues participate in a video tribute to Fred on the occasion of his 75th birthday, highlighting the impact he had on so many organizers: his kindness, joy, and optimism, not to mention the skills he brought to and shared with so many good causes. On November 14, Fred is awarded the National Center for Race Amity’s Medal of Honor.
2022
On November 20, Fred passes in his home surrounded by family and loved ones. His life is honored in many publications and hundreds of personal remembrances.
2022
On February 26, over 650 family members, friends and fellow activists come together from all over the country to celebrate Fred’s life and to commit to carry on his legacy, and to keep on organizing.
