Free | with Gifford Hartman | How was the strike organized and why are the issues from that strike still relevant to working people today? We will view some of the key historical sites in this important US labor struggle.
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 | Producer: Frosso Tsouka, Director: Aris Chatzistefanou | Following the film, producer Frosso Tsouka and San Francisco State professor Zeese Papanikolas will discuss the economic and social developments in Greece and the rise of Golden Dawn and other neo-nazi groups.
$25 | with Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith | Join Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith as they travel through history on a bus tour of sites built by the New Deal’s “alphabet soup” agencies. You will learn about the major contribution government-paid workers made during the depression- era New Deal programs.
Free | with IBEW electrician Peter O’Driscoll | This tour will focus on the history of San Francisco’s famed waterfront and the role of its Irish and Irish-American workers, leaders, and martyrs. It will also include the cases of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings who faced a labor frame-up in the Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco in July 1916, and the successful struggle for their release.
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 | "Divided We Fall", Director: Katherine Acosta, "The Great Sitdown", BBC Documentary | Scott Houldieson, Vice President UAW 551 Ford Assembly Plant Chicago, Illinois, will introduce the film “The Great Sitdown” and discuss the relevance today.
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 | Producer-Writerr: Elsa Rassbach | Director: Bill Duke (1985 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award) | One hundred years ago, a critical struggle was taking place in the slaughterhouses in Chicago to organize a union. This powerful dramatic film focuses on the Polish and African American workers and their conditions as they fight to overcome racism and class hate and greed, in order to build a union of black and white workers.
Free | Director: Françoise Davisse | This documentary film traces the struggle of workers of the PSA plant in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a poor suburb of Paris, against management’s threat to close the plant. The title comes from the slogan of the strikers, “Let’s fight like lions!” The conflict is experienced “from the inside,” showing the workers’ debates and reactions on a day-to-day basis, from 2013-2015.
Free | by Steffi domike & Nicole fauteux (The River Ran Red) and Jimmy Kelly (music) | Join labor musician Jimmy Kelly in commemorating the life and songs of Woody Guthrie and his birthday. Guthrie, a people and worker’s musician, traveled coast-to-coast singing about striking workers and people in struggle.
Free | Art and Poetry Exhibit
“Building Bridges, Not Walls” acknowledges the contributions of the multicultural population of the Bay Area and its role in creating world-renown infrastructure. This exhibit features Bay Area artists and poets whose work celebrates these contributions. Three themes will be highlighted to celebrate the bridges, the people who built them and the impact on our lives today: Immigrants, Diversity, and Internationalism.
Free | by Steffi domike & Nicole fauteux (The River Ran Red) and Jimmy Kelly (music) | Join labor musician Jimmy Kelly in commemorating the life and songs of Woody Guthrie and his birthday. Guthrie, a people and worker’s musician, traveled coast-to-coast singing about striking workers and people in struggle.
Free | by Steffi domike & Nicole fauteux (The River Ran Red) and Jimmy Kelly (music) | Join labor musician Jimmy Kelly in commemorating the life and songs of Woody Guthrie and his birthday. Guthrie, a people and worker’s musician, traveled coast-to-coast singing about striking workers and people in struggle.
Free | with Lawrence Shoup and Peter O’Driscoll | There are many stories about labor struggles in San Francisco. The walk will focus on the maritime industry from 1835 until the burning of the blue book in 1934. Also, labor historian Larry Shoup will discuss the history of the 1901 transportation workers strike led by the Teamsters, which the San Francisco police attempted, but failed, to smash.
Free | The drive to automate the docks and the maritime industry is moving forward rapidly and, in some European ports, the transfer of cargo has been automated forcing thousands of longshore workers out of the industry.
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 Peter O’Driscoll and Harvey Smith | In the past few years there has been a growing community effort to defend the Coit Tower murals from leaking water and to stop plans for privatization of the site. This led to the critical renovation of the murals on their 80th anniversary. They were being painted during the time of the 1934 general strike in San Francisco.
Free | with David Schooley | Labor unionists and environmentalists both confront the same commercial interests. In 1968, David Schooley chained himself to a bulldozer at the foot of the San Bruno Mountain. The activism of David and many other community members were crucial in protecting much of the mountain, allowing for the creation of a public park where working people can find tremendous beauty and peace nearby the cities where they live and work.
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.
Adult / $45, children 6 to 12 / $25, under 6 / free | Join the best labor maritime trip in the world. Learn about the great labor history of the Bay Area, from the 1934 Maritime Strike, which help shape the charactor of San Francisco to the effort to save the EPA to ensure the Bay stay clean.
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.
Free | Director: Ken Loach, Screenwriter: Paul Laverty | I, Daniel Blake by Director Ken Loach and writer Paul Leverty is an important film on the destruction of the lives of workers and their families in the “welfare system”. Blake is a carpenter who has a heart attack and is then forced to go back to work despite his health conditions. While he is fighting for compensation, he befriends a woman and her children who are also being ground up in the Employment and Support Allowance welfare system in the UK.
$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.
Free | Director: Jeong-keun Kim | “Island of Shadows” shows the history of Korean Hanjin shipyard workers to defend their health and safety building a union. They built one of the most industrialized countries in the world yet now face the destruction of their lives because of company unions and government corruption.
Free | with Harvey Smith | This walk will explore the “New Deal nexus” in Berkeley that includes Berkeley High School, the Community Theater, Civic Center Park, Post Office art, the old UC Press Building (now being repurposed as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), and the old Farm Credit Building.
Free | with Gifford Hartman and David Duckworth | During this walking tour, we visit several sites, which were integral to the unfolding of events following a bomb explosion on Steuart Street at Market Street on July 22, 1916. With fervor building to engage the United States in the war in Europe, businessmen in San Francisco embraced the cause, while labor leaders and the left denounced it. With the bomb killing ten people and wounding forty, no clear culprit was identified. But, two figures from the left, labor organizers and anarchists Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings, were framed for the murder of the victims and spent many years in prison before being released. On this tour, we learn not only about the war between business and labor and open and closed union shops, but also the divisive issues of American aggression in the Pacific region and against Mexico, crusading and yellow journalism in the city of San Francisco, and the mood of the country regarding World War I.
$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 | Director: Jon Silver, with Jon Silver & Frank Barnacke | In September 1985, 1,500 Teamster-organized, mostly immigrant women cannery workers walked out on the two largest frozen food companies in the United States — Watsonville Canning and Richard A. Shaw Frozen Foods in Watsonville, California. This was known as the “frozen food capital of the world”. The workers faced not only companies who wanted major concessions but also a white union leadership who did not speak Spanish and who accused them of not being union members.
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 | Director: Steffi Domike and Nicole Fauteux, and Labor in the Schools | The violence that erupted at Carnegie Steel’s giant Homestead mill near Pittsburgh on July 6, 1892, caused a congressional investigation and trials for treason, motivated a nearly successful assassination attempt on Frick, contributed to the defeat of President Benjamin Harrison for a second term, and changed the course of the American labor movement.
Free | Director: Kazim Kizil | With discussion - The Fight to Defend Academics and Journalists in Turkey: The growth of child labor in Turkey and around the world is exploding. The U.S. invasion of Iraq and Libya, the war in Syria, and now the U.S. supported bombing of Yemen, are creating millions of refugees, including many children forced to work. This film looks at the lives of these children from their own words as child workers. This new film from Turkey by director Kazim Kizil lets the children tell their own stories.
Free | Director: Basia Myszynski and Leonard Myszynski | This biography celebrates Ralph Modjeski, the chief engineer for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Modjeski designed bridges that had significant impact on urban development and commerce. The film is a tribute to innovative engineering and to bridge workers during two eras of transit, taking a deeper look at the scientific mind and artistic soul of a Polish-born, Paris-trained immigrant who contributed to the building of a modern America. This is a relevant film that brings awareness about the deteriorating state of our bridges and how communities search for sustainable solutions to maintain, rehabilitate and preserve these critical parts of North America’s infrastructure.
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.
Hosted by Danny Cruzz | LaborFest 2017 brings a night of comedy to all working class people to laugh and enjoy a night of relaxation. As labor is forefront for us all, we need to unwind and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
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 | Director: Deirdre Fishel
& The Defense of Our Elderly and Panel of Homecare and Disabled Care Workers | A panel discussion follows after the film: Brett Miller, SEIU 1021; Brad Wiedmaier, SEIU Local 2015 California long term care; moderated by David Duckworth SEIU 1021.
Free | with Gifford Hartman of the Flying Picket Historical Society | This year is the 70th anniversary of the Oakland General Strike. This walk will revisit the sites of Oakland’s “Work Holiday” that began spontaneously with rank-and-file solidarity with the striking - mostly women - retail clerks at Kahn’s and Hastings department stores whose picket line was being broken by scabs escorted by police.
Donation | by The Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus | The Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Chorus presents a musical biography of Paul Robeson, the great African American artist, athlete, and activist.
Free | with Brad Wiedmaier, SEIU 2015 member & architectural historian | San Francisco has a rich political and labor history that is also connected to its buildings. In this history-by-the-buildings walk, Brad Wiedmaier will outline artifacts and events, and their connections to San Francisco’s past and present. For more information call (415) 694-3605.
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 | Director: Terry sterenberg & Laurie Simons | This is a documentary film about our current healthcare system, why it doesn't work, and what you can do about it. The filmmakers interview doctors and nurses, patients, economists and politicians to see what they think about our current healthcare system.
Free | Director: Xiaoyu Qin and Feiyue Wu (Iron Moon), Director: Gyuri Byun (Play On) | The new film from China Iron Moon is a powerful artistic view of the massive industrialization of China through the eyes and words of the workers who have made the new China. At Foxconn, which has over 200,000 workers and produces most of our Apple phones, workers face a life of despair. One of them who committed suicide at the age of 24, left 200 poems of despair, “I swallowed an iron moon…” Using poetry as a tool to chip away at the ice of silence, they and other workers in this film express the hidden stories and life experiences of millions of the workers who are the foundation of the new China.
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.
Donation $5-20 sliding scale, free to strikers and locked-out workers, No one will be turned away due to cost | by Ann Feeney and Roy Zimmerman | LaborFest closes its annual festival with terrific artists Ann Feeney and Roy Zimmerman.
Sliding scale $15 – $50 : benefiting shaping San Francisco By Chris Carlsson From the pre-urban history of Indian Slavery to the earliest 8-hour day movement in the U.S., the ebb and flow of class war is traced. SF’s radical working class organizations are shaped in part by racist complicity in genocide and slavery. From […]
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival Directed by Wen Hai (China) China has become the factory workshop of the world. The film “We The Worker” is a documentary shot over a six-year period. We see the real conditions and issues of the Chinese industrial workers as they fight for labor and worker […]
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival Directed by Jan Hoon (Korea) Gwangju, Korea is a historic center of struggle for the Korean people and this powerful dramatic film shows the story of the May 1980 Gwangju people’s rebellion against the repressive dictator Chun Doo-hwan. His military government is portrayed through the eyes […]
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival Directed by Matthew Barr Narrated by Danny Glover In 1993, a group of employees at the Smithfield Pork Processing Plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, began to work with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to organize the 5,000 workers at the plant. In 2008, […]
Directed by Robert Greene (2018) The hidden history of the American working class is exposed in this new film Bisbee ’17 by Robert Green. This film is centered around the attack on immigrant copper miners, who in July 12, 1917, were rounded up and illegally deported out of the town by placing them in cattle […]
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 […]
Written by Rotimi Agbabiaka with Joan Holden Music & Lyrics by Ira Marlowe Directed by Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe It's Election Night 2018 and Bob swears she'll never vote again. A lifetime of fading fortunes made this former Obama voter take a chance on the new guy promising change-Donald J. Trump. But it's two years into his […]
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival Directed by Lixin Fan (China) When this documentary was made 8 years ago, the number of the migrant workers from rural area of China to big cities were 130 million, however, it is now 260 million in China. These are the workers who have built the […]
Join the walk with Gifford Hartman. Eighty-four years ago at this location, a great battle took place by workers and residents of San Francisco against the police and National Guard. We will look at the causes of the 1934 General Strike and why it was successful. How was the strike organized and why are the […]
Tour with Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith Join Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith as they travel through history on a bus tour of sites built by the New Deal’s “alphabet soup” agencies. You will learn about the major contribution government-paid workers made during the depression-era New Deal programs. Gray and Harvey will discuss the art, […]
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival Directed by Raoul Peck (Germany) On the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, many of his ideas are as relevant today as they were when he and his collaborator Frederick Engels were writing and organizing. The growing crisis of technology creating great wealth then […]
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. […]
Mike Stout has spent his life rocking the world with his music. Based in Pittsburgh, he is known as the “World’s Grievance Man” and his music has a powerful punch. In 1977 Stout became a steelworker at Homestead Works, where he was elected the union’s head grievance man. He used his music to rally his […]
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 […]
Directed by Lixin Fan (China) When this documentary was made 8 years ago, the number of the migrant workers from rural area of China to big cities were 130 million, however, it is now 260 million in China. These are the workers who have built the largest industrial power in the world. This film […]
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival Directed by Anne Lewis This new film by Anne Lewis and associate producer Laura Vare, A Strike and an Uprising, illuminates two major moments in Texas labor history: the Pecan Shellers Strike of 1937 led by young communist Emma Tenayuca, and the Jobs With Justice campaign […]
With Peter O’Driscoll (IBEW), Lawrence Shoup (UAW-NWU) There are many stories about labor struggles in San Francisco. The walk will focus on the maritime industry from 1835 until the burning of the blue book in 1934. Also, labor historian Larry Shoup will discuss the history of the 1901 transportation workers strike led by the Teamsters, […]
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 […]
Living History re-creates the 1901 Waterfront Strike that paralyzed San Francisco for five months. From July 13 to October 2, 1901, San Francisco’s waterfront was shut down by sailors,Teamsters, and longshoremen striking for better pay and working conditions. Experience the sights and sounds of San Francisco history through a Living History reenactment. Hear impassioned speeches […]
With Peter O’Driscoll and Harvey Smith In the past few years, there has been a growing community effort to defend the Coit Tower murals from leaking water and to stop plans for privatization of the site. This led to the critical renovation of the murals on their 80th anniversary. They were being painted during the […]
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 […]
5:45 PM Boarding, 6:00 PM Departure Boat leaves promptly at 6:00 PM Please arrive 30 minutes before the boarding time. Tour lasts 3 hours A complimentary meal will be provided, however, if you are on a special diet, please bring your own food. (Sorry, we do not take any special orders for food.) Join the […]
