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 | by Gifford Hartman and David Duckworth | Launching from the historic General Strike of 1934, historians David Duckworth and Gifford Hartman converse on the broader ramifications of this moment in West Coast labor unity. Considering the scope and tactics of that defining moment, examples of other significant strikes are examined and contrasted, principles and philosophies are drawn out, and analysis of effects assessed. .
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 | with Jon Golinger, founder of Protect Coit Tower | “What do powerful men fear most? Honest questions from free minds. Brush fresh paint on a blank slate – who knows what you may find?” So says artist Bernard Zakheim in a scene from “Painting Coit Tower,” a new play that tells the amazing story of the Coit Tower murals – how they came to be and why they remain just as meaningful today as when they were painted 83 years ago.
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 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 | 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.
Come to share an inspiring labor event or leader in your life. It could be in San Francisco or elsewhere in the U.S.A. or the world. Photos, news clippings, prose, and poems are welcome. This will be an open regular meeting of FORUM (Federation of Retired Union Members), an organization of retirees affiliated with the […]
Millions of workers have come to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley to work and live. The conference will hear from workers who are fighting for union and worker rights in Silicon valley from service workers to tech workers. While billionaires are being made every year in Silicon valley the workers who make their money […]
The collection includes a selection of works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by writers Phyllis Holliday, Margaret Cooley, Keith Cooley, Adele Kearney, Nellie Wong, Jerry Path, and Alice Rogoff. Hear stories about the lives and struggles of laborers, farmers, cooks, cowboys, and coalminers from China, Ireland, Britain, rural Wisconsin, and the Old West. The anthology […]
The escalation of open racist attacks is happening not only in our communities but on our jobs. There is a national epidemic of “hanging nooses” and workplace bullying to terrorize African American workers and other workers on the job. At the same time there is systemic racial discrimination in many industries and in the City […]
Two independently produced videos will explore San Francisco labor movement history and current efforts to protect the Redstone Labor Temple (yet again!) from redevelopers and keep it as a community resource. We will trace major events that led to construction of the San Francisco Labor Temple in 1915, some of the history it has created […]
Presented by Robbin Henderson Matilda Rabinowitz’s memoir challenges assumptions about the lives of early twentieth-century women. In Immigrant Girl, Radical Woman, Rabinowitz describes the ways in which she and her contemporaries rejected the intellectual and social restrictions imposed on women as they sought political and economic equality in the first half of the twentieth century. […]
The deregulation of taxi workers began in San Francisco during the 1970’s. It has escalated with the introduction of tech platforms for Uber and Lyft, which have allowed the massive introduction of drivers, pitting workers against workers for the profits of the billionaires who own these platforms. It has also led to massive gridlock and […]
The SAG-AFTRA san Francisco-Northern California Local in conjunction with LaborFest presents: The Performance of Public Speaking Join us for a presentation on how to engage audiences and the media. SAG-AFTRA members will offer insight into the art of public speaking from the perspective of a performer and a broadcaster. No RSVP is requited for this […]
This commemorative event honors the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco State Strike. What are the lessons of that strike for today when students have to go into debt to attend college? The mass SF State Strike, which was supported by campus unions including the AFT Teachers Union, was the longest student strike in the […]
Videos and Presentation The privatization of public services, transportation, and education is a threat not only to unions but to the public in the U.S. and globally. This forum will look at privatization elsewhere in the world on a global scale, and how workers are organizing and educating to stop these policies. Partial list of […]
By Donna T. Haverty-Stacke The 1934 Minneapolis Teamster general strike coincided with the San Francisco General Strike. After the Minneapolis strike, the government, the companies and more conservative union officials sought to go after the leadership of the Teamster Local 544 for organizing the strike and fighting against corporate unionism. Donna T. Haverty-Stacke who is […]
Airbnb has had a profound effect not just in San Francisco but around the world. For cities, it has turned neighborhoods into hotel districts. One example of the role of Airbnb is in North Beach where the elderly have been evicted to move tourists in. It has also threatened local businesses that make San Francisco […]
San Francisco Bay Area is ground zero for the world tech transformation from platforms at Uber and Lyft to social media networks like Facebook and search engines like Google. The collection of big data without privacy rights, or the introduction of automation by Tesla and AI without any real controls and regulations, is not only […]
Presentation and Discussion of Sol Nitzberg:Sponsored by California Historical Society Join Barry Nitzberg, grandson of tar-and-feathering victim Sol Nitzberg, and historian Ken Kann, for a retrospective on early farm labor organizing and vigilante terror in Sonoma County, California. Learn about the 1935 Sebastopol apple pickers strike, the assault on Barry’s grandfather and other labor organizers, […]
Whistleblowers on the job are under attack. This forum will hear from whistleblowers about their struggle to defend health and safety and the public. Their actions are taking place in a period of growing financial corruption in our society. One of the whistleblowers, Darrell Whitman, who is a member of AFGE and worked as an […]
Labor Woman of the Year Award - Juana Flores, Executive Director, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Labor Man of the Year Award - Arnulfo De La Cruz, Executive Vice President, SEIU Local 2015 The Living Wage Coalition’s current efforts are workshops and campaigns to organize workers and educate the community on a Five Point Program to […]
French Social Movements: There have been ongoing rail strikes, major demonstrations, and university occupations protesting Macron’s government’s attacks. Come to a skype presentation by trade unionists from the Fraction l’Etincelle of the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party)
Book reading by Jonathan Karmel Writer and labor lawyer Jonathan Karmel has written a book about the cost to workers and their families of the lack of health and safety protection on the job. He visits workers and gets their stories on the deaths and permanent injuries that have destroyed their lives. He also looks […]
Slavery, observed Frederick Douglass, is a “hydra-headed monster.” In California this monster appeared and reappeared as if shape-shifting. The history of slavery in California unsettles the North/South view of American slave labor. This is a history of captivity, flight and resistance, of Indians held captive at the missions, Alaska natives brought to Fort Ross in […]
Sharat Lin is an international labor researcher looking at the lessons of the Spanish Mondagron Cooperative system. He reports on how it works and how workers who are using their collective control can innovate and develop their enterprises. The Mondagron cooperative forum. Additional information http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/8/eu-law-puts-a-dent-in-scandinavian- labor-organizing.html is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of assets […]
American-Swedish trade unionist Jordin Williams will discuss how workers are organized across the Nordic spectrum: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. He will give a Powerpoint presentation to discuss labor rights and labor laws and the issues that they face. The rights of Swedish workers on the job allow greater unionization and solidarity than is […]
Part of the so-called American Dream is the notion that if you work hard and get a good education you will make a decent living. However, many of our most educated workera are teachers in higher education institutions and suffer from the worldwide trend, endured by an increasing number of workers, of being grossly underpaid […]
The dystopian world we live in will be challenged by words and music that will bring solidarity and unity of all working people. Poets: Mahnaz Badihian, Lisbit Bailey, Kristina Brown, Pauline Craig, John Curl, Diego De Leo, Agneta Falk, Maria Cristina Herrera, Martin Hickel, Jack Hirschman, Karen M. Magoon Rosemary Manno, Sarah Menefee, Barbara Paschke, […]
Thousands of drivers now come into San Francisco and other cities on the coast to drive for Uber and Lyft. These workers are forced to leave their homes because they cannot make enough where they live. The technology is now being used to further the exploitation of the drivers. This has led to gridlock, environmental […]
Workers Rights has no borders and the struggle and lives of Palestinian workers are the focus of this forum. Palestinian journalists have been targeted by Israeli snipers in increasing numbers. At the same time, Palestinian workers face brutal slave-like discriminatory conditions, not only in the occupied lands, but also inside the state of Israel. Unions […]
