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 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
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.
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]