Erin Heaney
Erin Heaney is the national director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), a US-based organisation that brings hundreds of thousands of white people into fights for racial and economic justice. In her time at SURJ, Erin has shepherded significant growth and strategic shifts. She grew the SURJ membership to over 15,000 individuals and 175 chapters working on issues of policing, mass incarceration and immigration. In 2019, she launched SURJ's electoral organising programs and the robust centring of and expansion of SURJ's organising in poor, working-class, rural and southern communities.
Prior to her work at SURJ, Erin was the founding director at the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, a multiracial, grassroots, member-led organisation that supports front-line communities to win huge victories over corporations that have harmed them. While she was executive director, the coalition shut down notorious polluter Tonawanda Coke, and won millions of dollars for the community. They also won green infrastructure investments at major international ports and a just transition at the Huntley coal plant.
Erin was born in Buffalo, New York—a community struggling with the immense loss brought by deindustrialisation—and was raised in a union household. She loves door-knocking with the SURJ Chapter in Buffalo, who recently campaigned extensively to unseat a white nationalist sheriff.
At her core, Erin is a daughter, sister, queer, white organiser who believes the burden of ending white supremacy has fallen on the shoulders of leaders of colour for too long.