Greetings comrades,

The Labor Committee is proud to say that our Chapter has endorsed and sponsored the Bay Area Labor Notes Conference Fundraiser & Dance Party <[link removed]> occurring Saturday, February 22, 7 p.m.–midnight at the Omni Commons in North Oakland. 

Our name is added to a list of sponsors that includes OEA, NUHW, AFSCME 3299, AFSCME DC 57, AFT 2121, UC-AFT, PFT, IUPAT 510, IATSE 16, IATSE 107, CWA 9404, and our sister chapter DSA SF.

Come eat, drink, dance, and meet others in the labor movement while fundraising to send low wage, youth, non-union, and union workers to the Labor Notes Conference this April in Chicago!

A small donation at the door of $5–35 covers food, music, camaraderie, and stories about the Bay Area labor movement from local labor activists. Cash bar available, Venmo also accepted. Nobody turned away for lack of funds. All ages welcome.

Please consider volunteering <[link removed]> to help put on the event or donating (VenMo @LaborNotes).

If you would like to attend the Conference in April but need financial assistance, please fill out this form <[link removed]>.

Your support will help to (re)build a fighting, democratic labor movement across the U.S. and around the world!

What is Labor Notes and the Labor Notes Conference?
Labor Notes is a network of union members, workplace organizers, union officials, staffers, labor historians and journalists. It facilitates cross-union and cross-industry connections to promote workplace organizing and share organizing strategies, stories, and other resources to strengthen labor from the bottom up.

The Labor Notes Conference is a biennial conference that occurs in Chicago (this year April 17 - 19) where an expanding network of labor activists from the US and around the world meets to attend skills-building workshops, share effective strategies, and grow their network of labor militants who are putting the *movement* back in the labor movement. Face-to-face meetings where union activists share tactics and swap notes are the heart of the learning that takes place at the Labor Notes Conference. The last conference in 2018 attracted more than 3500 hundred attendees and featured over 200 meetings and workshops.

Why is this important for socialists? 
Socialists recognize that change comes from the bottom up from the ability of working people to disrupt the sale and provision of goods and services by withholding their labor. In short, working people disrupt business as usual by withholding their labor to disrupt the production of profits in order to achieve the concrete changes that they need to live better, fuller lives and which capital (bosses, CEOs, investors, “the billionaire class”) refuses to give them. This disruption creates a crisis to which capital must respond since the accumulation of profits is the driving motive behind its actions and being. From its standpoint, anything that impedes the accumulation of profit is to be avoided or denied.

If we are to win the policies of Bernie Sanders’ platform and more, working people will have to be able to create crises (or at least their credible threat) in the continued production of profits. That means that working people will have to be able to withhold their labor and the only way they will be willing and able to is through the creation of strong self-governed organizations that teach them how to do just that -- those organizations are unions. 

It is for that reason that we must build the confidence and ability of workers to take action to win transformative materials gains, dignity, and respect in their everyday lives in their workplaces. Labor Notes contributes to this movement through education, training, and support networking.

The perceived inability to have any sort of control over where a major if not majority portion of one’s life takes place has profound implications for what one thinks is possible on the larger scale whether in the near term or the long term such as excellent public schools, affordable housing, universal comprehensive free healthcare, and a society that doesn’t continue our plunge into the self destruction of global warming.

It is not enough to be able to want those things, we must have a credible means that produces the power to attain them if we are to win them. Part of that credible means is through strong, democratic, rank-and-file-active, militant unions and that is Labor Notes’ contribution.

Solidarity,

Aaron H.
Co-chair, EBDSA Labor Committee
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>



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East Bay DSA - United States
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