Kent Wong, 69, immigrant rights champion and former director of UCLA Labor Center

Kent Wong, former director of the UCLA Labor Center from 1991-2023 and professor of labor studies and Asian American studies, died Oct. 8. He was 69.

The community leader was renowned across Los Angeles and the nation for his advocacy on labor and immigrant rights. As director of the UCLA Labor Center for 32 years and, more recently, its project director of labor and community partnerships, Wong established the center as a groundbreaking hub for research and leadership development programs that serve workers and immigrants.

He was also well known on campus. A key founder of the UCLA Department of Labor Studies, Wong taught a popular introductory course to thousands of students over three decades. He also developed and co-taught "Nonviolence and Social Movements" with his longtime mentor, the late civil rights icon Rev. James Lawson Jr. Wong also wrote and edited several books, including "Asian American Workers Rising" and "Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom."

"Kent's tireless leadership and dedication helped place UCLA at the forefront of community engagement, academic research and a push for a worker-centered economy in Los Angeles," said Abel Valenzuela, UCLA's dean of social sciences. "Because of him, a community asset bears Rev. Lawson's name in the heart of MacArthur Park. For generations to come, Kent's legacy will continue to endure through this center as a profound reminder of our obligation to support research and policy solutions that advance economic justice for all."

Expanding UCLA's labor education and research model

Under Wong's leadership, the UCLA Labor Center grew from three to 42 staff members, and the Re:Work research justice team, Dream Resource Center, Community Scholars policy research program and Los Angeles Black Worker Center were developed.

"Kent's internal compass was guided by justice," said Saba Waheed, current director of the UCLA Labor Center. "He challenged the legal systems restricting undocumented students, pushed for a more inclusive labor movement, and ensured that the university was accountable to the communities it was meant to serve."

In 2021, with state Sen. María Elena Durazo's support, Wong helped secure $15 million in funding from the California state legislature to establish a permanent home for the center - the building it had rented for 19 years in MacArthur Park. The historic space was renamed in Lawson's honor.

In 2022, the UCLA Labor Center expanded its model to seven University of California campuses and collaborated on an effort to establish labor centers at three Mexican universities.

Wong believed global solidarity with workers would strengthen the movement. In 2007, he and Durazo led a delegation of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor to China, where the group established the first-ever sister-city relations between a U.S. central labor council and its counterparts in Shanghai and Beijing.

"Kent Wong dedicated his life to building bridges - between workers and communities, between nations, between education and action," Durazo said. "At the heart of everything Kent did was his unwavering commitment to protecting and uplifting immigrant workers, whose struggles he understood deeply and whose dignity he fought to defend."

An unwavering commitment to immigrant justice

Wong, a fifth-generation Chinese American, was determined to bring union strategies to immigrants. After graduating from the People's College of Law in 1984, he was hired as the first staff attorney of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center for Southern California, now known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice. He next became a staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union Local 660.

Wong, Durazo, current Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other young activists gathered regularly to study nonviolence and strategic movement-building under Lawson. This shaped local campaigns for hotel employees, janitors, security officers and other workers.

Wong helped create organizations, including: the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), AFL-CIO; the Tourism Industry Development Council, which later became the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE); Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE); and the United Association for Labor Education (UALE).

He was also dedicated to empowering undocumented communities. After the passage in 2001 of AB 540, which exempts certain students from paying nonresident tuition at colleges and universities, he taught the first class in the U.S. about the challenges undocumented students face in higher education. "Immigrant Rights, Labor and Higher Education" provided a space for undocumented students to collaborate and advocate for the DREAM Act of 2010.

When the proposal failed, Wong helped launch Dream Summer, the first paid national fellowship program for and by undocumented youth. In 2012, the youth who started Dream Summer alongside him established California's first Dream Resource Center.

"Kent was my greatest mentor. I was privileged to be part of the first cohort of Dream Summer fellows in 2011," said Ju Hong, director of the UCLA Dream Resource Center. "He will be deeply missed in the movement and in our lives."

Dream Summer enables undocumented youth to lead advocacy efforts such as the Opportunity for All campaign, launched in 2022, which aims to ensure equal access to employment opportunities for undocumented students at California's public universities and colleges.

"Kent was more than a labor leader - he was a teacher, a bridge builder, and a source of light who inspired all of us to lead with courage and compassion," said Yvonne Wheeler, president of the LA County Federation of Labor. "His vision, wisdom and unwavering belief in the power of collective action transformed countless lives and strengthened our movement in ways that will be felt for generations."