Free | This year is the 75th anniversary of the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Peruvians in concentration camps during World War II under the executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Free | by Steve Early | Steve Early has been an active labor journalist and organizer for over forty years. His work appears in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and The Nation, among other publications. He is the author of four books, including Save Our Unions: Dispatches of a Movement in Distress. He lives in Richmond, CA.
Free | The growing dangers of a war in Asia are accelerating, particularly with the U.S. strategy of “Asian Pivot”. This forum will examine what the “Asian Pivot” is and the militarization of Asia, including the construction of more bases in Okinawa and Jeju, Korea.
Free | Come to share an interesting labor story you’ve led or experienced. It could be a memory of a key labor figure or event locally or internationally. This will be an open regular meeting of FORUM (Federation of Retired Union Members), an organization of retirees affiliated with the San Francisco Labor Council.
Free to current SF Museum & Historical Society members. Admission for non-members is $10 per person or $5 for seniors, students. | by Robert Cherny |
Free | May 10, 2019 will be the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, a momentous accomplishment which has excluded recognition of the contribution of Chinese railroad workers to the wealth of The Big Four and the building of the American Empire, which connected East Coast to West across the Pacific to the China Trade.
Free | with The Revolutionary Poets Brigade & The Juana Briones Cultural Committee | Capitalism uses racist attacks on African-Americans and threats of deportation on Latinos and Muslims to divide the working-class revolution in this country. The Revolutionary Poets Brigade and the Juana Briones Cultural Committee in this neo-fascist Trump period will soundly refuse those betrayals.
Free | by Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz | Professor Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz in this talk will look at the history of the U.S. military in expanding U.S. imperial interests and establishing a state based on genocide and slavery.
Free | Public education has been under attack for many years. The forms of attack include inadequate funding, privatization, corporatization, and hostility towards teacher and staff unions. Many students and public school employees have been harmed. One college that has been relentlessly assaulted is City College of San Francisco (CCSF). It is a very popular public institution as reflected in the fact that over 80% of voters approved a parcel tax to help fund CCSF in the November 2016 election.
$40 (at door: $50) | Seventh Annual San Francisco Living Wage Coalition’s Awards Dinner with cultural and musical performances.
Labor Woman of the Year Award - Lita Blanc, President of United Educators of San Francisco. Labor Man of the Year Award - Michael Theriault, Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council.
$10 - No one turned away due to lack of funds | The growth of charter schools and privatization of public education in California and throughout the US is a cancer threatening students, teachers and staff at all public schools. This education/action conference will look at what charters are and how they are siphoning off billions dollars from public taxes for profiteers. It will also examine how religious tax-funded charter schools like the Gulen Magnolia chain and storefront “online schools” like Escondido Charter High are growing in California and throughout the country.
Free | by Joel Schor | Legal cases against labor have been fueled by hysteria over war abroad and radicalism at home, from Tom Mooney, charged with setting off a bomb during the Preparedness Day Parade (1916), to charges against Marine Fireman’s Union members Earl King, Charles Ramsay and Frank Conner, accused of murder aboard a ship docked in Alameda in 1937.
Free | by Elsa Rassbach and Harald Gindra | Longtime Berlin activists Elsa Rassbach and Harald Gindra will discuss from personal experience some of the key peace and justice campaigns in Germany today and will explore together with participants what can be learned for current struggles in the US.
Free | by Fred B. Glass | At a moment when American democracy is threatened as never before, progressives need models for building an effective resistance. In California, many examples of strategy and tactics live in the hidden history of working people and their struggles for social justice.
Free | An Evening of Poetry in Resistance to The Trumpoline Regime and The Corporate Horse It Rode In On!!
Free | with history lecturer John Holmes, SFSU Professor Bill Issel and moderated by SFSU Professor Bob Cherney | One of the most tumultuous periods in San Francisco labor and working class history was the formation of the Union Labor Party (ULP) and the role of the Socialist Party in the early 20th century.
Free | Book reading by Peter Shapiro | On September 9, 1985, one thousand mainly Mexican women workers in Watsonville, California, the “frozen food capital of the world,” were forced out on strike in an attempt by Watsonville Canning’s owner, Mort Console, to break their union. They returned to work eighteen months later. Not one had crossed the picket line. A moribund local union had been revitalized, and Watsonville’s Latino majority emerged as a major force in local politics.
Free | Join us for a presentation on how to engage audience and the media. SAG-AFTRA members will offer insight into the art of public speaking from the perspective of a performer and a broadcaster.
Free | The development of technology, including artificial intelligence, automation and platforms like UBER, Lyft, and Airbnb, are making trillions for the tech and media companies that now dominate the world. Growing marginalization of labor and complete deregulation now means that hundreds of thousands of workers are being forced to travel hundreds of miles to work on temp jobs as independent contractors.
Free | LaborFest Writers explore the issues that we face today within our families, communities and government, whether it’s housing, jobs, ageism, race and sex discrimination, immigration or homelessness. Their work gives voice to what has gone before and why we must continue to fight for our rights. Come hear Margaret Cooley, Keith Cooley, Richard Chen, Susan Ford, Phyllis Holliday, Jerry Path, Alice Rogoff and Nellie Wong as they share their memoir, storytelling, oral history, poetry, and song.
