Public Programs And Events

The New School University Student Senate, Haymarket Books, and Jacobin magazine present a labor panel featuring Labor Notes founder Kim Moody, “one of the leading intellectuals of the labor movement” according to Robin Kelley, as well as working class activists in the fields of education and low-wage-work.

The panelists will sketch a picture of the state of US labor today. They will draw out the challenges facing labor, from neoliberal restructuring to overcoming racism and sexism. And perhaps most importantly, they will point the way forward for a rank-and-file union movement that can win real change.

Moderated by Sarah Jaffe, panelists include:
 - Virgilio Oscar Aran (Laundry Workers Center)
 - Emily Giles (MORE)
 - Kim Moody
 - Tim Sylvester (Teamsters Local 804, President)

The event will also celebrate the release of Kim Moody's new book of essays, In Solidarity: Essays on Working-Class Organization and Strategy in the United States. In his latest work, Moody takes up many of the important questions facing labor today:

What has happened to union organizing in the United States? Is there an alternative to the strike? How does the increased presence of immigrant and women workers change the balance of forces? What strategies can workers use to counteract company “union avoidance” campaigns and bureaucratic “business unionism”? What is the role of socialists in the labor movement?

Endorsing organizations include The New School University Student Senate, Labor Notes, and the International Socialist Organization.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

About our Panelists:
*Virgilio Oscar Aran is the executive director and co-founder of Laundry Workers Center. The Laundry Workers Center supports workers who have been mistreated in their jobs; empowers workers to formulate policies that help to improve their lives inside the workplace as well as in their communities; and promotes civic participation among members, in the attempt to create future generations of community leaders who seek to develop their communities as the main unit to make social-economic changes.

*Sarah Jaffe is a journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. She is a staff writer at In These Times magazine and the co-host of Dissent magazine's Belabored podcast. Her work has been published in The Nation, The American Prospect, Bitch magazine, Bust magazine, AlterNet, TruthOut, and many other publications. She was a contributing editor on The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement is Changing America, as well as a contributor to the anthologies At The Tea Party and Beautiful Trouble.

*Emily Giles is a founding member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) caucus of the United Federation of Teachers. She has been a New York City public school teacher for eleven years, five as a chapter chair/delegate. She is also a member of the International Socialist Organization.

*Kim Moody is a founder of Labor Notes, which has since 1979 reported news about workers that the mainstream media doesn't find worth printing—from workers’ point of view. He has written US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, The Promise of Revival from Below, and From Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York City, 1974 to the Present, among others. Moody is a member of the National Union of Journalists and a senior research fellow at the Work and Employment Unit of the University of Hertfordshire.

*Tim Sylvester is the president of Teamsters Local 804 in New York. Sylvester came into office in 2009 out of a rank-and-file movement called 804 Members United. Lately his local has been in the national spotlight in its successful fight to defend 250 fired UPS drivers.