Marleine Bastien, Executive Director 

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Marleine Bastien, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Miami-Dade Community College and Florida International University. Under Bastien’s leadership, FANM has provided an array of social services while also organizing around issues such as immigration, housing, health access, education reform, gender equity, gentrification, climate justice and human rights. Bastien has dedicated herself to the betterment and benefit of others—in health, education, economic survival,  social and economic justice.

 

Bastien is the former Chair of the Florida Immigration Coalition and Vice-Chair of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition. Over the course of 30 years, Bastien has worked on many important campaigns, including: The Haitian Immigration Refugee Fairness Act of 1998, Temporary Protected Status, The Dream Act, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Living Wage and Miami-Dade County’s Human Rights Ordinance, Education,  and the Children’s Trust Campaigns (as a treasurer and spokesperson for the Black Community with Congresswoman Carrie Meek). She formed the Justice Coalition for the Haitian Children of Guantanamo and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to lend her expertise on a discussion of the devastating impact that prolonged detention at Guantanamo had on Haitian children in 1995. She has testified twice in front of the  U.S. Congress, OAS Human Rights Committee, and the United Nations (in Geneva and the Philippines). She is a founding member of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, the Haitian Neighborhood Center (Sant La), the Center for Haitian Studies, the Florida Immigrant Coalition, Girl Advocacy Project (GAP), and many other community organizations.