Forum / Reading Events

July 1 (Tuesday) 10:00 AM (Free) First Unitarian UniversaliChurchst - 1187 Franklin Street, Kincaid Rm., SF
Share BREAD AND ROSES with Retired Union Members
Come to an open regular meeting of FORUM (Federation of Retired Union Members) an organization of retirees affiliated with the San Francisco Labor Council. Retirees come from a spectrum of unions from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. FORUM supports alliances between working people and retired people to preserve and improve health care, Social Security and pension & retirement benefits. The July program will briefly highlight the members’ current activities, focusing on personal recollections of the 1934 General Strike and other significant labor actions. Anyone with stories to share is especially welcomed to come and share their memories. Refreshments will be served.

July 6 (Sunday) 9:30 AM (Free) First Unitarian Universalist Church - 1187 Franklin Street
Working Class Housing, Ethnic Housing, Hunters Point & Bay View
- Panel Discussion
Hunters Point/ Bayview has been a working class Black community since the 2nd World War. It has the highest rate of asthma for children of any district in the city. Now many working class Black and Latino residents are being pushed out by gentrification.
Speakers will discuss what is happening to this community.
Yolanda Lewis, activist whose family has lived in Hunters Point for decades
Francico Da Costa, environmental activist
Kevin Williams, CCSF Contract Enforcement Officer and community activist
Dr. Ray Tomkins, SF State striker and health and safety advocate

July 6 (Sunday) 2:00 PM (Free) Bird and Beckett Bookstore - 653 Chenery St., SF
Remember Ludlow with Zeese Papanikolas
A century ago while trying to organize a union, miners, their wives and children died in an event that set off the Colorado Coalfields War. Zeese Papanikolas, author of Buried Unsung - Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre will give a presentation, followed by a video and a remembrance in verse. The conditions of the miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado are replicated today around the world with mining disasters in Turkey, China and Bolivia. The immigrants who built America and are the focus of Zeese’s book speak out about their lives and struggles for justice. http://zeesepapanikolas.com/?page_id=24

 

 

July 6 (Sunday) 2:00 PM (Free) ILWU Local 10 Henry Schmidt room - 400 N. Point St. at Mason, SF
Andrew Chirwa, President of SA Metal Workers Union Speaks
In 2012, at the Marikana mine in South Africa, 34 striking miners were massacred by police. ILWU Local 10 sent a letter of protest to the ANC-led government. Andrew Chirwa, president of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), the largest union the that country will address workers about the massacre and miners strike, the longest in South African history and the ompending metalworkers' strike.
On July 1, both the South African metalworkers union and the ILWU longshore contracts expire. NUMSA is preparing for a "full-blown strike" much like the maritime workers did in 1934. Now is the time for international labor solidarity.

 

July 6 (Sunday) 7:00 PM (Free) 518 Valencia St., near 16th St.
Labor, Privatization And How To Defend Public Education
Billionaires from the Walton Walmart family to the Gates Foundation, the Fisher GAP KIPP operation and the Broad Foundation are spending fortunes pushing charters to loot public education. The “Common Core” and testing schemes profiting Pearson Inc. are part of the drive to totally privatize public education. UC Regent Richard Blum and others with ties to politicians are also benefiting financially from this transformation. Politicians in California and nationally are actively supporting privatization, the “Common Core” and charters to eliminate and re-segregate our public schools.
At the same time in San Francisco privatizers are seeking to revoke accreditation of the City College of San Francisco in order to destroy the unions and privatize the largest community college in California.
This forum will look at how this privatization agenda is being implemented and what our unions and the labor movement need to do to fight it.
Speakers:
Kathleen Carroll, fired Commission On Teacher Credentialing, attorney & whistleblower; Rick Baum, member of CCSF AFT Local 2121; George Wright, retired Professor AFT 1493; Gray Brechin, UCB Geography Department, Author of “Imperial San Francisco”; Sharon Higgins, researcher on privatization and Gulen charter chain
Sponsored by United Public Workers For Action
www.upwa.info

July 7 (Monday) 7:00 PM (Free) Bird and Beckett Bookstore -653 Chenery St., SF
Poetry Reading by Nellie Wong and Alice Rogoff
Nellie Wong has four books of poetry. Her latest Breakfast Lunch Dinner was launched at Bird and Beckett Bookstore in 2012. She’s co-featured in the documentary film Mitsuye and Nellie, Asian American Poets. She has published widely with two pieces inscribed at public sites in San Francisco. She will read new poems about labor and read poems from her books.
Alice E. Rogoff is the author of the poetry books Mural and Barge Wood. She will read from her recent poetry project The Labor Union Women on Our Stairways about women labor union organizers in San Francisco. This project is supported by a Cultural Equity Individual Literary grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Explore the city’s history of women in retail, restaurants, and garment work as well as Alice’s experiences as a Delegate for the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the San Francisco Labor Council.
Open mic to follow.
https://sites.google.com/site/laborfestwriters/alicerogoff
http://socialism.com/drupal-6.8/?q=node/2067

July 13 (Sunday) 10:00 AM (Free) ILWU 34 Hall - 801 2nd St. next to AT&T ball park
Staples, Our Public Post Office, Privatization And Theft
There is a concerted organized drive to totally sell off the profitable parts of the public post office. Diane Feinstein’s husband and UC Regent Richard Blum is involved with his company CB Ellis in selling off the buildings and the postal management has a contract to turn the postal system over to union busting Staples. This outsourcing threatens an institution which has been vital for the American people.
Join with David Welsh, retired NALC postal worker with Community and Postal Workers United; Gray Brechin, geographer with the Living New Deal and representatives from other postal unions; Susan Harmon, Bank Act, Researcher on Public Postal Bank. http://www.stopstaples.com
Sponsored by United Public Workers For Action www.upwa.info

July 13 (Sunday) 4:00 - 7:00 PM (Donation) Manilatown Center - 868 Kearny St., SF
Revisiting The History of California Agricultural Workers And Filipino Labor
The history of California agricultural workers is one of struggle and the battle to organize for labor and human rights.
The significant role of Filipino labor leaders, including Larry Itliong, Pete Velasco and others have been all but erased from history. In the recent Hollywood film, their role is virtually wiped out of history, yet, the role of Filipino workers were in fact critical in the early development of the formation of the UFW. This panel will look at this hidden history of the agricultural workers in California, and will discuss and debate the myths, half-truths and omissions. Included in this history will be the purges that took place in the farmworkers, why they happened and the result of these actions in the struggle to organize one of the most oppressed worker sectors in our society.
Speakers include Johnny Itliong and others with personal experience and direct knowledge of Filipinos in the U.S. labor movement.

July 13 (Sunday) 7:00 PM (Donation) Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists - 1924 Cedar & Bonita, Berkeley
Forum- The Role of Unions in Minimum Wage and Social Justice
Representatives from the SEIU and the Minimum Wage Campaign will discuss these issues including the Berkeley city action along with Oakland and beyond.

July 14 (Monday) 4:00 - 6:00 PM (Free) Mojo Theater at the Redstone Labor Temple- 2940 16th Street, SF
Smash The Two-Gate!
Presented by United Rank and File
San Francisco is a union town?  As the beacon of union power in the region, San Francisco is at a crossroads.  There are many non-union contractors making inroads into traditionally unionized construction job sites.  These contractors are using the “two-gate” system, derived from the 1947 anti-labor law Taft-Hartley to break unions by destroying solidarity between the trades.   
Join United Rank and File in learning the history of this anti-labor law, how it is applied and how it creates unfair labor conditions for all workers, both union and non-union.  We will also discuss the history of resistance to the two-gate system and current resistance to it focusing on the city of San Francisco.  There will be a presentation followed by a discussion.
United Rank and File is a group of rank and file building trades members joining in solidarity in order to take direct action opposing anti-worker systems, starting with the two-gate system.
www.unitedrankandfile.com

July 15 (Tuesday) 7:00 PM (Free) Modern Times Bookstore - 2919 24th St. at Florida, SF
LaborFest Writers
Members of the LaborFest Writers will read their work on the theme Fighting for Survival - From Rockefeller to the Tech Titans. LaborFest writers believes everyone has a story to tell. An evening of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir to help awaken the hidden stories within. We will be exploring past histories, our uncertain future, and new changing landscapes and paradigms reflected in both anti-labor and pro-labor uprisings.
Members of the group are Phyllis Holliday, Keith Cooley, Susan Ford, Margaret Cooley, Nellie Wong, Jerry Path, Richard Chen, and Alice Rogoff.
http://www.laborfestwriters.org

July 19 (Saturday) 10:00 - 1:00 PM ILWU Local 34 Hall - 801 2nd St. next to AT&T ball park
Life And Death! The Attack On OSHA, Workers Health
And Safety And Injured Workers - Public Forum
Millions of workers are facing dangerous health and safety conditions. There are only 1200 Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors in the United States, and 170 in California for 18.5 million workers. While the Federal government cuts the budget on OSHA and the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) refuses to use the money already appropriated for OSHA staff. At the same time, technologies and industries like biotech and nano-tech are unregulated and threaten not just workers, but also the public.
This forum will look at the deregulation and attacks on injured workers and their families who are stalled on getting proper healthcare by a obstacle course with anonymous outsourced doctors who are not even licensed in California.
They also have lost compensation for mental health issues such as depression and insomnia as the rules have been manipulated to force injured workers to go on State disability and Federal disability in a massive cost shifting scam. Many of the injured workers have lost most of their vocational rehabilitation as insurance companies profits skyrocket.
At the same time workers who speak out about financial malfeasance and violations of the law are bullied and retaliated against. We will hear from health and safety advocates, whistleblowers, WC experts and injured workers.
Sponsored by Injured Workers National Network
www.iwnn.org

July 19 (Saturday) 2:00 PM National Japanese American Historical Society - 1684 Post St., SF
ILWU and Japanese Americans - Presentation
Chair, Peter Yamamoto; presenter, Harvey Schwartz; comment, Larry Yamamoto.
On Feb. 23, 1942, four days after President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans in World War II “relocation” camps, ILWU stalwart Louis Goldblatt was secretary-treasurer of the California State CIO Industrial Union Council. Soon he would begin his fabled 44 year career as ILWU secretary-treasurer. But on that February 1942 day, just weeks after Imperial Japan’s Pearl Harbor raid, Goldblatt testified before a Congressional committee set up to review the internment program. There, he condemned the government’s resort to concentration camps and charged “this entire episode of hysteria and mob chant against the native-born Japanese will form a dark page of American history.”
Goldblatt’s prediction, of course, came true. In this forum, we will explore Goldblatt’s courageous 1942 stand and many other phases of the multi-racial ILWU’s historical experience with Japanese-Americans. During its early days in the mid-1930s under Harry Bridges, the legendary union’s founding president, the ILWU stood against discrimination and for civil rights and social justice. It maintained this policy through its mid-1940s organization of 25,000 Japanese and other Asian agricultural workers in Hawaii and still practices it. We will trace these aspects of ILWU history in our forum, which will be chaired by Peter Yamamoto of the NJAHS. Harvey Schwartz, Curator of the ILWU Oral History Collection, will be our main presenter. Larry Yamamoto, Bay Area artist and retired ILWU longshore worker, will be our commentator.

July 21 (Monday) 7:00 PM (Donation) 518 Valencia - near 16th St.
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Nuke Power, Repression And Education Workers Under Attack
Forum and the Film Decontamination
The Japanese Abe government is pushing ahead with restarting Japan’s 50 nuclear plants and telling the people that they can “overcome” radiation and that Fukushima has been “decontaminated”.
(Click here for more information)

 

July 22 (Tuesday) 7:00 PM (Free) 518 Valencia - near 16th St.
The Refugee-Movement in Austria and Germany
A film will be screened by Labournet Austria on the struggle of refugees in Austria and Germany. The economic crisis and growing unemployment has been used by nationalist and racist politicians to blame the crisis on immigrants. Many of these immigrants are the direct result of the US and European run wars in the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. These refugees from war torn countries are escaping for their survival and then face discrimination and brutal exploitive conditions. The first documentary focuses on the struggle for human rights in Austria with a demonstration from Lager Traiskirchen to Vienna and a protesters comp in front of the Votiv-Church in Sigmund Freund Park in the center of Vienna where a desperate hunger strike is taking place. Another hunger strike takes place in Servitenkloster (rooms in a monastery under the control of Caritas and the Catholic Church). These refugees are fighting for survival and are organizing to speak out for their human rights.
Karl Fischbacker and Dr. Irmi Voglmayr will discuss the struggle of refugees in Austria and Germany. They have been involved in working with refugees to defend their rights.
A film of Labournet-Austria
http://www.labournetaustria.at

July 23 (Wednesday) 7:00 PM (Donation) Redstone Building - 2940 16th St. at Capp, SF
Taxi Tech And Rideshare A Forum And Video Screening
This forum with a video will look at how tech applications used by Uber and other companies and how this is affecting taxi drivers and the industry. The panel will include taxi drivers and other experts on the taxi industry and this technology.
There is a massive transformation of labor and technology with apps and other developments that confront all workers in this industry and the public.
Speakers:
Mark Gruber, United Taxi Workers UTW
John Han, Taxi driver and videographer
Keith Raskin, Uber Driver
Veena Dubal, researcher
and others.
Sponsored by United Taxicab Drivers & The Taxi Driver Institute
For more information: 415-701-8294

July 26 (Saturday) 7:00 PM (Free) 518 Valencia - near 16th St., SF
The War on Transit Workers
Lessons of Bay Area Transit Worker Battles
Last year, a major contract battle took place at BART and AC Transit as management and their respective elected boards took back even more worker benefits despite years of wage and benefit freezes. Management ordered these cuts as part of their scheme to make workers pay for upgrades in the transit system including new trains at BART.
Labor and their unions were in a one-sided war launched by management and the boards when the BART management hired Thomas Hock, VP of the international company, Veolia Transportation. They led a poisonous corporate media campaign of disinformation with the aide of the Bay Area Council which represents the billionaires.
SEIU and ATU which have over 100,000 members in the bay area had no mass mobilization of their entire membership in this crucial battle. This lack of preparation also resulted in a failure to successfully counter the anti-labor union busting campaign by mangement, the transit boards and politicians who demanded that transit workers take concessions and be banned from striking.
BART bosses and the board also sought to run the trains to break the strike by hiring scabs. This move directly resulted in the deaths of two strike-breakers. The National Transportation Safety Board, state legislators and Cal-OSHA all pointed to BART management being responsible for these deaths. The deaths finally led management and the board to agree to a contract while still pushing for concessions.
This film screening and forum will discuss the lessons of these critical transit struggles and the role of the international struggle against Veolia Transportation.
Speakers from BART ATU Local 1555, ATU 192 and other unions will be present.
Sponsored by the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee
www.transportworkers,org

July 28 (Monday) 7:00 PM (Free) Plumbers Hall - 1621 Market St. at Franklin St., SF
Korean Railway Workers Strike
Join a member of the Korean Railroad Workers Union (KRWU) who will be coming to San Francisco to report on their union’s struggle to defend their jobs and to stop the privatization of the railroad. Last December, over 8,000 railroad workers struck and won tremendous support of the rest of the labor movement, including a resolution from the San Francisco Labor Council, and the public in their battle to stop privatization.
The response of the Park regeme was to raid the headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and arrest union leaders. These actions resulted in a general strike.
The railroad workers temporarily stalled the privatization scheme, but they continue to face trials. Also, their members are being individually sued.
The fired striking railway worker from the Korean Railway Workers Union (KRWU) will be coming to the San Francisco Labor Council and two films will be shown from their struggle, Global Solidarity With Korean Railway Workers Union and Korean Railway Workers Union 2013 Struggle Against Privatization.
The recent ferry disaster resulted in the deaths of hundreds of young passengers and crewmembers. This was a direct result of deregulation of their economy that comes with privatization.
Sponsered by San Francisco Labor Council.