5th Annual LaborFest
BookFair & Poetry Reading

July 22 (Sunday) 10:00 - 9:00 PM
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
2868 Mission St., at 25th St, SF

SCHEDULE

10:00 - 11:30 AM
(3rd floor Room A)
Undocumented Labor Migration: The Trail of Globalization
By Sharat G. Lin
The surge of undocumented immigration into the U.S. from 1994 onwards was a direct consequence of the dumping of subsidized U.S. corn on the Mexican market after the signing of NAFTA. Follow the migration trail from the villages of Jalisco State to an increasingly militarized U.S. border to the fields and worksites of California. Sharat G. Lin writes on global political economy and labor migration.

 

(3rd floor Room B)
Barge Wood
By Alice Elizabeth Rogoff
She will read from her newest published poetry book Barge Wood.
DEAD BIRDS or AVIAN BLUES
By Howard Pflanzer
He reads from his new bookshort edgy poetic plays commenting on the human condition politically, socially and sexually.

 

 

 

 

 

(2nd floor Gallery)
Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq
By investigative journalist Greg Muttitt
This book looks at the role of the working class in Iraq and the conditions they faced in building strong unions under military occupation. It also discusses the role of US trade unionists in helping to support in that effort.
Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals for the first time the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq.

(1st floor Theater)
My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community & Labor History
By Professor Estelle Freedman
With a slide presentation, she will discuss the history of Allan Bérubé and particularly his work around labor history.  “My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, & Labor History” by Bérubé was an important work partly on the militant Marine Cooks and Steward’s Union MCSC. This union played a central role in integrating the segregated ships in US maritime history and also fought anti-gay discrimination.
MCSU members stopped the ships from sailing unless they were integrated. This powerful action forced the integration.
The MCSU flourished from the 5,000 members it had at the time of the 1934 maritime strike to a high of 19,000 after the Communists and radicals who had taken it over insisted on reversing the color bar and admitting blacks, Chinese, and other people of color. That leadership used strikes to end the owner-imposed skin-color bar to employment on cruise liners.
As a result of the cold war witch hunt and McCarthyism, the union was broken up and destroyed in the early 1950’s, and many of it’s members were jailed under the Taft-Hartley. The ship owners and US government controlled by them wanted no militant union that took direct action on the jobs to defend all the members regardless of race, politics and sexual orientation.
http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1905

12:00 - 1:30 PM
(3rd floor Room A)
The Lessons of The 1930s and Coit Tower
Join Ruth Gottstein, the 90-year-old daughter of Bernard Zackheim, one of the muralists of world famous Coit tower, will speak. Ruth Gottstein, who was 12 at the time that the murals were painted by her father, talks about the Coit tower project, the effort to destroy it and also the 1934 General Strike, which she was a witness to.
Ruth Gottstein is the publisher emerita editor of Volcano Press that pushes her sisters book Marsha Zackheim on Coit Tower.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-coit-tower-20120103,0,4283890.story
http://www.volcanopress.com/pages/catalog.cgi?mrchcatid=9&mrchid=132

(3rd floor Room B)
Autoworkers Under the Gun
By Gregg Shotwell
Retired autoworker, writer and blogger Gregg Shotwell spent decades fighting for justice and worker rights at GM and its subsidiary Delphi. His newsletter “Live Bait and Ammo” was distributed to auto workers on the line.
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Autoworkers-Under-the-Gun

(1st floor Theater)
On Bread and Roses Strike
Mass Organizing, Words And Music
Julia Stein, a labor poet and writer, will moderate a panel on the Bread and Roses strike and the Triangle Fire. She, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and other poets, singers and writers will discuss and celebrate the victories and lessons. juliast@earthlink.net

(2nd floor Small Gallery)
Discrimination Against Asian Americans in Academia
With writer Merle Woo and artist Judy Hiramoto
Asian Americans in academia have faced and continue to face
systemic discrimination.
Writer and UC retired lecturer and Socialist Merle Woo from the UC Women and Asian Studies won an epic discrimination case against the University of California in Berkeley. Merle Woo vs. University of California. She will speak about this struggle and read some of her work. woogok@comcast.net
Judy Hiramoto, a professor and artist at Goddard College will talk about the systemic discrimination against Asian American and Black faculty at the University and her struggle for justice against the University as well as her struggle with the UAW which represented the faculty at the college. Her struggle continues for justice.
http://youtu.be/t7X7gPO7tdk
http://www.planeteria.net/home/jmhiramoto/

2:00 - 3:30 PM
(3rd floor Room A)
Reading for Every Day is an Act of Resistance: Selected Poems of Carol Tarlen
Tarlen,who died in 2004 and who is one of the country’s most brilliant labor poets, is a voice much like Tillie Olsen’s, detailing the struggles working class women.
Jim Daniels, award-winning poet and professor of poetry at Carnegie Mellon recommends Every Day is an Act of Resistance, saying, “This book is simply a treasure. Carol Tarlen’s poems bring the human and political together in rich, heart-felt ways. She had an uncompromising commitment to the truth ....  Janet Zandy, professor of language and literature at Rochester Institute of Technology, praises both the poet and the poetry: “Tough girl, quiet Quaker, brilliant poet, worker for the working-class, ... Her luminous poetic voice is large, direct, high-steppin, and justice-driven.”  Likewise, current Indiana State Poet Laureate Karen Kovacik, endorses Every Day is An Act of Resistance: “Born of pink-collar labor, Carol Tarlen’s activist poems speak up, sass back, and never, ever cross a picket line. Keep this book next to your heart when standing up for workers. Make room for it on your bookshelf alongside Tillie Olsen and Meridel LeSueur.”
Read by Aggie Falk, Jack Hirschman, David Joseph, Sarah Menefee, and Julia Stein; introduced by Julia Stein.


(3rd floor Room B)
The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame
By Peter Dreier
The history of those Americans who have fought for women’s suffrage, federal minimum wage laws and protecting the environment is a hidden history of America. His new book looks at these activists and leaders that changed our history and the world.
http://100greatestamericans.org/

 

(1st floor Theater)
Labor Print Makers, Artists and The Class Struggle
With Lincoln Cushing, Doug Minkler and Melanie Cervantes. These labor working class artists will talk about their art and how the use of art is critical to the struggle for survival of working people. They will present slides of the art.
Also an ongoing exhibition at the Oakland Musuem is being presented titled All of Us or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area The evolution of street art with a message, March 31, 2012 - August 19, 2012
www.dminkler.com
www.dignidadrebelde.com
http://www.docspopuli.org/ArtWorks.html
http://museumca.org/exhibit/all-us-or-none-social-justice-posters-san-francisco-bay-area

4:00 - 5:30 PM
(3rd floor Room A)
Collision Course, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America
By Joseph McCartin
He has written one of the most important books on the PATCO air traffic controller strike called Collision Course, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America. This strike was used by the Reagan administration to launch a national attack on the trade union movement encouraging employers throughout the country to use the defeat of the PATCO workers to bust their unions. The lessons of this strike are still vital to understand.
http://mccartin-collisioncourse.blogspot.com/
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/?view=usa&ci=9780199836789

(3rd floor Room B)
For All The People
By John Curl
His book shows how the cooperative movement has a long history in the United States and has been used to defend people’s jobs and lives. In the light of the collapse of capitalism for millions of workers, the history of worker cooperatives in America is an important experience for today.
http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=johncurl

 

(1st floor Theater)
Wisconsin Uprising-Labor Fights 2012
By Steve Early
This collection of articles by a wide variety of labor journalists, reporters and activists looks at the lessons of the mass movement in Wisconsin, its strengths and weaknesses, and where labor needs to go today. In the Bay Area, ILWU Local 10 closed down the port on April 4, 2012 in solidarity with Wisconsin workers and thousands of other workers joined protests. The efforts of Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans to destroy organized labor led to one of the biggest working class mobilizations since the 1940's yet it has turned into an electoral effort to replace Scott Walker.
Early will discuss this development and where labor needs to go to be able to take the offensive.
http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2808/
http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb2808/

6:00 - 7:30 PM
(3rd floor Room A)
Transportation Workers Under Attack
A Panel Discussion
The deregulation of the airline industry by President Carter was the opening shot to destroy organized labor in the airline industry. It continued with the strike breaking at PATCO which included jailing by President Reagan and continued with deregulation in trucking and many other transportation areas. Professor Joseph A. McCartin and transportation workers from northern California will be on the panel.

(3rd floor Room B)
The Making of A Working Class Hero
By Sean Burns
Sean Burns, the author of the book Archie Green, The Making Of A Working Class Hero, will discuss the book and the life of worker and labor writer Archie Green. This book was recently awarded the CLR James Book of the Year Award by Working Class Studies Association.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/55xxs3ep9780252078286.html