Coming from MFT, Mary Hampton joins MRLF staff as new community organizer
By Steve Share, Minneapolis Labor Review editor
MINNEAPOLIS — Mary Hampton began working July 15 as a new community organizer for the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.
“I like organizing and building relationships within my community,” she said.
Hampton brings to the MRLF her experience as a union member and activist.
She comes from a union family and has been a union member herself for six years.
Working as a special education assistant at Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis, Hampton became active in the Educational Support Professionals Chapter of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.
Hampton served on the bargaining committee for the last two contract cycles, joined the executive board and this spring was elected as the ESP chapter’s first vice president.
“I was on the bargaining team when we were on strike [in 2022],” she noted. “If we didn’t have all our people supporting us on the outside, we wouldn’t have gotten our work done on the inside.”
On Hampton’s first day on the job with the MRLF, Hampton was providing support at a City Employees Local 363 picket site.
“Seeing the power that comes out of a strike really motivates people,” she observed. But a strike also can show a union where it can improve and grow stronger, she added. “The membership are the reason that things happen.”
Hampton grew up in south Minneapolis and graduated from El Colegio charter high school in 2010. She continued her education at Ripon College in Wisconsin and Normandale Community College in Bloomington.
She was working with special education students when she heard about a job opening doing similar work at Roosevelt. “They mentioned it was a union job. That was enticing,” she said.
“I really liked my job there — the students, the community, the school culture,” she said. “There were a lot of active union members at my site,” she added.
Hampton’s mother, Cathy Murck, is a retired union welder and Sheet Metal Workers Local 10 member. Her father, Oscar Hampton, is a retired AFSCME Local 343 member who was a Hennepin County social worker.
Hampton lives in the Phillips neighborhood in south Minneapolis with her sister and twin nieces.
In beginning her work at MRLF, “I think it’s super cool to work with a bunch of different unions and build connections with a lot of labor groups,” Hampton said. “I’m excited to learn from people and do something new.”
To contact Mary Hampton: