CHALLENGING CORPORATE CONTROL
April 16-18, at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut will be a major conference/teach-in with the labor movement. (For pre-registration and housing, see the end of this message.) A partial list of participants CONFIRMED for the conference includes:
Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer, AFL-CIO Barbara Ehrenreich, Hearts of Men, The Snarling Citizen Andy Stern, president, SEIU Katha Pollitt, poet, columnist The Nation John Wilhelm, president, HERE Representative Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia Bruce Raynor, secretary-treasurer, UNITE Frances Fox Piven, Poor People's Movements Adolph Reed, W.E.B. DuBois and American Political Thought Elissa McBride, Recruitment Director, Organizing Institute Kent Wong, APALA and UCLA David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor Hattie Canty, president, HERE Las Vegas maids local Andrew Ross, editor, No Sweat Reverend Scott Marks, New Haven Barbara Ingalls, Detroit newspaper union Steve Early, CWA Mike Parker, Labor Notes Phil Wheeler, UAW Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, No Ivory Tower Jon Wiener, frequent contributor, The Nation Ricardo Ochoa, pres. Univ. of Calif. grad student union Kate Bronfenbrenner, editor, Organizing to Win Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit Maria Elena Durazo, president, Los Angeles HERE local Richard Flacks, Making History, Youth and Social Change Robert Dahl, Who Governs? Amy Dean, executive officer, South Bay Labor Council Stephanie Luce, co-author, The Living Wage Tony Mazzocchi, Labor Party
SPONSORED BY: Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice (SAWSJ), the unions at Yale, and the Yale Student Labor Action Coalition.
THEMES: -- The right to organize, and efforts to organize the unorganized -- Transformations in the academy, and the role of the University in the new labor movement -- Labor/community relationships and the Union Cities initiative
SCHEDULE:
Friday 5:00 p.m. -- Solidarity march to support graduate student organizing. Assemble Beineke Plaza, corner of Wall and College Streets, New Haven.
Friday evening -- plenary session: what is the right to organize?
Saturday all day -- a wide range of sessions (see below)
Saturday evening -- a cultural event and evening of entertainment
Sunday morning -- a breakfast and meeting with rank-and-file activists from organizing campaigns around the country, who will tell personal stories of their experiences and answer questions. This meeting is open ONLY to those who indicate they are ready and willing to participate in a campaign to win workers the right to organize and form unions without harassment or intimidation, and to publicize violations of this right. (People planning to attend this event should pre-register to be guaranteed participation.) It will be followed by a general SAWSJ meeting and the election of officers for the coming year.
A partial list of the sessions for the conference:
A session each on the struggles in/around/at:
Las Vegas
University of California system
Los Angeles
The South
Yale/New Haven
These sessions will provide histories, analyses, and up-to-date reports on events in some of the most interesting and important on-going labor struggles.
Economics of the University Organizing Graduate Students Creating a Labor-Left Op-Ed Network Undergraduate SLACs Organizing the Health Care Industry Organizing Clerical and Technical Workers Alternative Models of Organizing Becoming an Organizer Living Wage Campaigns Sweatshops Community/Labor Coalitions Union Democracy Unions and Politics
This is a PRELIMINARY listing, both for people and sessions -- more to come.
To register or for more info: email = sawsj at lrrc.umass.edu snail mail = SAWSJ, c/o Labor Relations and Research Center, Draper Hall, Univ of Mass., Amherst MA 01003.
Advance registration fee: $5 for students and low income, $20 all others. We welcome donations to support the conference. Make (registration or donation) checks payable to SAWSJ. For information on regular and low-cost/free housing contact the SAWSJ office (info above); pre-registration is necessary to guarantee low-cost/free housing.
The same weekend, April 16-18, there will also be three locally based conferences, primarily focused on student labor activism and building a national student network (which will also be a component of the Yale-SAWSJ conference). Contact information for those: Stanford (ekaplan at leland.stanford.edu), Harvard (adube at harper.uchicago.edu -- that's right, don't let the email deceive you), Kent State (wdavis at f1n09e.kent.edu).
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. Pass this message along, pre-register for the conference, and encourage others to attend.