Meet the Team


  • Building Community Through Collective Action

    If power is the ability to act or produce an effect, then this team works to organize special events or table/canvass via community outreach, mobilization campaigns, calls to action, and celebrating our wins

  • Policy & Research

    The team that keeps our growing base up to date about what is happening at City Hall, demands the legislation that protects our rights and the funding to enforce it, and endorses policies that empower tenants to defeat policies that harm us

  • Social Media & Storytelling

    The team responsible for web content: creative writing, graphic design, and blogging in regard to different tenant stories, articles about particular events, and making policy accessible to workers and tenants

Vee Sanchez

Co-founder & Strategy Team Facilitator

Vee Sanchez is a co-founding organizer within Springfield Tenants Unite (STUN), a tenant power-building organization she and other local tenant leaders started in response to mass layoffs and evictions at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. She now also leads housing policy for Empower Missouri’s statewide Affordable Housing Coalition and works to seed and support tenant unions and tenant-led organizations in SWMO. At STUN, Vee works to build organizational capacity by facilitating Strategy Team meetings and supporting tenant organizers and leaders within the base through team trainings and individualized coaching. Vee’s hobbies include spending time with friends and family, traveling to new places, and being outdoors with nature. Vee’s vision of the just housing system we all deserve is rooted in the lived experiences of deeply impacted poor and working-class tenants, alongside her own experiences with housing insecurity.

Alice Barber is the North Star Team lead. She became a leader with STUN because she believes there are three things she can do about living in a system that values profits more than people: ignore it, be angry about it by herself and get nothing done, or organize and change things for the better. She chooses to organize.

Alice especially looks forward to winning tenants' right to counsel because when one eviction can cost us safe and stable housing for the rest of our lives, the people with the most to lose shouldn't be the least protected. 

When she's not organizing with STUN, Alice likes reading, playing old-school isometric computer games, and teaching herself how to sew.

Alice Barber

Co-Founder, North Star Team Leader

SAMSOM NEWMAN

Housing Justice Fellow: North Star Team Leader

Samson Newman is a member of STUN’s North Star Team. A graduate of Central High School, where he completed the IB program, he is new to organizing, yet he is dedicated and ambitious for change. He is committed to fighting the unjust and cruel system that exploits people for the personal gain of others. He has endless passion for everything he does, whether it’s organizing and fighting for a better tomorrow, playing DnD and video games, or writing fantasy and sci-fi stories.

Sampson believes that change is challenging, necessary, and possible. There can be no better world unless we are willing to break the old one. This is what he is devoting his time and effort to doing, and he won’t ever stop trying.

Jai Byrd is the leader and organizer for the Tenant Power Team here at STUN. J loves writing poetry and performing it at events, playing drums, composing music for his different projects, and having critical conversations about race, class, inequality, and other topics centered around his experience and shared experience with other people of color. Most driven to fight for tenants’ right-to-counsel, Jai feels many of us don’t know our rights nor have a way to enforce them. Jai works with STUN to change the landscape for tenants and workers so that everyone may benefit from the same privileges,. Jai is clear that we must build power for tenants beyond campaigns and elections if we are to balance the scales between tenants and those who profit from the commodification of housing.

Tenant Power Team Leader

Jai Byrd

Rex is a local arts organizer, open mic host of Poets’ Corner held at Green House Coffee + Affogato Bar , a volunteer for Show Me Poetry’s Slam Competition held every last Sunday at Nathan P. Murphy’s, copywriter, and grant researcher. Rex loves writing poetry, creating music, and cooking food for his loved ones. He fights alongside STUN in solidarity for tenants’ rights, as he has had issues with financial barriers in securing housing since 2016 and still faces issues to this day. Rex is passionate about winning rental inspections for all housing regardless of who can afford it. “Just because something is affordable shouldn’t compromise the quality of one’s living space and affordable housing is one of the many things we need!”

Rex Ybañez

Arts & Culture Team Leader

Housing Justice Fellow: Arts & Culture Leader
Devin is one of the inaugural members of the Housing Justice Fellowship with the Springfield Tenants Unite (STUN). After participating in other programs to help his community organize, Devin connected with STUN to help the mission of empowering and informing tenants. He wants to help his community in any way he can and believes that organizing tenants and renters is the most effective way. Through the Housing Justice Fellowship, Devin will be participating in the Arts & Culture team to help with social media engagement and educating tenants through the fine arts. When Devin is not organizing, he enjoys playing video games, making and playing music, going to the gym, and enjoying nature. By advocating for renter’s rights, he believes that people will be allowed more time to pursue their passions much more freely.

Devin Strayhorn

Sarah Hines

Sarah Hines is part of the Arts & Culture Team for Springfield Tenants Unite. As a local massage therapist, Sarah has heard many stories and perspectives that have shaped her views about the issues folks in Springfield face daily. Sarah believes people have an unequivocal right to shelter, food, water, healthcare, and education. She also believes that if it’s something that a person cannot survive without, then no company or person should be able to make a profit off of selling it. Sarah is thrilled to be a part of expanding STUN and is passionate about using art and storytelling to make deeper connections with her fellow tenants and leaders. When not working with STUN you can find Sarah playing Dungeons & Dragons with her husband and friends, reading fantasy novels, and eating Chinese food. Sarah loves living in the Ozarks and hopes to see it become a more welcoming and accessible place for all.

Housing Justice Fellow: Arts & Culture Leader

Sarah Barnts

Sarah Barnts is committed to serving their community by fostering healthy connections that build emotional safety and physical support. They recognize the benefits of living in a healthy, safe, and supportive home and this drives their involvement with STUN. Sarah hopes to see all tenants have affordable, clean homes that allow people to rediscover their passions and creativity—you know, those things often repressed by the struggles of fulfilling basic needs. They are a Policy Writer for STUN, independent contractor for LifeGuides, Laughter Yoga Meditation Leader, and Certified Energy Tapping Professional. Sarah’s favorite hobbies are cracking jokes with their friends, sitting in nature like a frog, and being true to their authentic self expression through dance, poetry, and music. Sarah hopes to see you building tenant power with us.

North Star Team Leader

Correna Jane

Tenant Power Team Leader
Correna Jane, originally from San Bernardino, California, has been a Springfield resident since 2018. Correna spends their time writing music and volunteering with STUN as a Tenant Power Co-Lead and aid to all teams. Since moving to SGF, they have experienced unlivable conditions, unstable housing, and predatory landlords. Correna believes in STUN’s mission of fighting for housing justice. They look forward to creating change with other SGF tenants.