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| CONFERENCE BROCHURE | FOLLETO EN ESPAÑOL | AGENDA HIGHLIGHTS | HALF-DAY ISSUE FORUMS | WORKSHOPS | ISSUE AREAS | CONFERENCE SPONSORS | HOST COMMITTEE | FACEBOOK PAGE | |||
| Highlights from the 2008 National Jobs with Justice Conference
Participants arrived on Friday, May 2, to attend five concurrent half-day issue forums on Student Labor Strategies; Low Wage Workers Organizing! Workers' Centers and Other Models; a Health Care Action Strategy Session; Workers' Rights Under Attack - Stand Up Fight Back!; and The Global Race to the Bottom: Trade and Migration.
Saturday morning, participants attended the first of three plenary sessions, “Celebrating Our Victories & Exploring New Trends in Organizing.” The plenary featured inspiring testimony from members and organizers of some of our network’s most exciting campaigns. SEIU 615 steward Celca del Pozo and organizer Amarilis Rodriguez spoke to the critical role that Jobs with Justice played in winning good contracts and organizing new workers in While the first plenary session highlighted new, successful approaches to the work of the JwJ network, the second plenary session later that day, “Intersecting Movements: Building More Power for Social and Economic Justice,” allowed us to explore the ways in which JwJ can be a grounding organization for activists working on a variety of issues to come together to build power for working families. Edith Rasell, of the United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries, provided an invocation, and Michael Leon Guerrero of Grassroots Global Justice moderated. Plenary speakers included: Stewart Acuff, Organizing Director of the AFL-CIO; Ajamu Baraka, Executive Director of the U.S. Human Rights Network; Alyce Gowdy-Wright, Executive Director of South Florida JwJ; Matt Howard of Iraq Veterans Against the War and a Steering Committee Member of Vermont Workers’ Center/JwJ; and Ai-Jen Poo, Lead Organizer for Domestic Workers United. After discussing their own work and campaigns, the panelists discussed the role that JwJ can play in movement building and cross-movement building. We then showed a clip of “At the River I Stand” before Stewart Acuff led the panel in honoring the memory of Reverend James Orange, co-founder of Atlanta JwJ. As a civil rights leader and union organizer, Rev. Orange was a long-time ally and supporter of JwJ who traveled across the country to numerous JwJ coalitions to speak in support of local struggles and about the importance of engaging faith leaders and young people in our work. The third and final plenary session was held the following day, “An International Dialogue on the Labor Movement as a Political Force and Social Movement.” Moderated by Esther Lopez, Director of the Civil Rights and Community Action Department of the United Food and Commercial Workers, this plenary featured the work of our international allies and lifted up the ways in which labor movements can act as forces for social change.Speakers included:Alci Matos Araujo, International Relations Secretary of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores in Brazil; Ashim Roy, General Secretary of the New Trade Union Initiative in India; Tim Waters, Director of Rapid Response for the United Steelworkers; May Wong, Coordinator of the Globalisation Monitor in Hong Kong; and Sang-Hoon Yi, Policy Director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions in South Korea. All of the speakers shared their thoughts on the labor movement as a political force and social movement.
Saturday evening, we enjoyed a banquet that showcased and celebrated JwJ’s work to build a movement for workers’ rights. One banquet highlight included the moment when members of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice and Indian “guest workers” came on stage. After hearing about the ways in which they were exploited as “guest workers” and their current struggles for justice, the crowd gave them a standing ovation for their courageous work. Many were moved to tears. We were also honored to present the first Reverend James Orange Award to Fred Azcarate, who served as Jobs with Justice Executive Director from 1992-2007. Several friends and colleagues shared their thoughts about Fred and his work and presented him with the award. At various points throughout the evening, the crowd enjoyed music from the Raging Grannies and Beats for Justice, a poetry reading from Christine Lewis of Domestic Workers United, a video clip of Friday’s march, and the Jobs with Justice Highlights video that featured our work from 2005-2008. On Sunday morning, we held an Interfaith Service. Reverend We closed the conference on Sunday with a Call to Action Luncheon with Ricardo Valadez, Program and Communications Director of National JwJ; Allison Duwe, Director of the Coalition for Economic Justice/JwJ in Buffalo; Terence Courtney, Organizer of Atlanta JwJ; and Margaret Butler, Director of Portland Jobs with Justice. As the final Conference speaker, Margaret Butler called on local coalitions to make pledges to collect signatures as part of an upcoming Million Member Mobilization for the Employee Free Choice Act. Local coalition members responded enthusiastically to this call with pledges ranging from several hundred to several thousand signatures!
At a time when the attacks against working people are so devastating and widespread and when the labor movement is in commotion, it is more important than ever for Jobs with Justice to build deeper, stronger, and larger Special thanks to our 2008 National Conference Sponsors: PLATINUM: American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, Change to Win Federation, The Ford Foundation, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers’ International Union of North America, Service Employees International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, United Steelworkers; GOLD: American Income Life, Communications Workers of America, The Panta Rhea Foundation, The Solidago Foundation; SILVER: American Rights at Work, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, National Education Association, The Phoenix Fund of the New World Foundation, Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, Wal-Mart Watch Available materials include: JwJ Highlights Video, 2008 Workers' Rights Directory, and more. Contact naomi@jwj.org to order. |
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From May 2-4, nearly 1,000 Jobs with Justice activists came together in Providence, RI, to celebrate our accomplishments, learn and strategize together, and recommit ourselves to the battles ahead. Those in attendance included rank-and-file union members, students, international delegates, and members of community and faith-based organizations, as well as workers’ centers. In total, the Conference hosted representatives from 32 local JwJ coalitions and organizing committees, 34 states and the District of Columbia, 44 organizations, and several countries: Brazil, Columbia, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, and South Korea.
After the issue forums, participants donned rain ponchos, grabbed JwJ rally signs, and marched roughly one mile to the Rhode Island Capitol building alongside puppeteers, firefighters, a bagpipe brigade, and a drumming band. JwJ has always valued direct action that is relevant to local issues, and despite dreary weather, the JwJ national network was excited to stand in solidarity with Rhode Island JwJ and its allies as we came together to make it clear to the state’s anti-worker and anti-immigrant Governor Carcieri that we will not stand for balancing the state budget on the backs of RI’s working class. Upon arriving at the Capitol, five speakers, including National JwJ Executive Director, Sarita Gupta, delivered compelling speeches that spoke to the fact that Rhode Island and state governments cannot and should not attempt to combat the recession by cutting social safety net programs, cutting pensions, promoting massive layoffs and attacking immigrants.
a steward of CWA Local 7800 and Paul Bigman, Secretary of Washington State Jobs with Justice and a union representative of OPEIU Local 8 spoke about innovative ways to use transportation unions to strengthen campaigns. Carolina Delgado, Membership Director of South Florida JwJ, and Regla Gonzelez, a key leader of the Mobile Home Council and South Florida JwJ Director of Membership, spoke passionately about organizing for urban land use development that puts people before profit. Lara Granich, Director of Missouri JwJ and National JwJ Board Member spoke about several inspirational victories and building state-wide power. Finally, Bishop Dwayne Royster, Pastor of the Living Waters United Church of Christ and Thomas Robinson of the Philadelphia Officers and Workers Rising Campaign fired up the crowd by telling us about huge victories in raises and sick days won with the help of Philadelphia JwJ. The panel was ably moderated by National JwJ Interim Field Director Treston Davis-Faulkner, and proved to be an energizing way to start Saturday’s jam-packed agenda.
In addition to the plenary sessions, Conference participants attended 36 workshops on Saturday afternoon, during which they discussed the many struggles and victories within the JwJ network and strategized for future campaigns and coalition-building work. Workshops focused on workplace organizing, student organizing, organization-building skills, immigrant rights (including two workshops on workplace raids and Social Security No-Match letters), health care justice, global justice, and a variety of additional social and economic justice issues. Here’s a sample of the workshops we offered along with comments from those who participated in the workshops:
Leadership Development. “It was very useful for stimulating thought, especially on developing women of color as leaders.”
Duane Clinker, Imam Yasser Saleh Arafat, and other faith leaders joined conference-goers in a Call to Brotherhood and Sisterhood. Through the Service, JwJ activists celebrated our shared future and the universal aspiration for justice embraced by the many faith traditions that sustain us in the struggle.
In the midst of these inspiring program activities, the Conference also provided time and space for entertainment and a lot of fun. During the Conference, we screened a number of movies related to issues of workers’ rights and struggles, including “Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican?”, “At the River I Stand”, “Detained”, and “Morristown: In the Air and Sun.” Friday night showcased the musical, poetic, and theatrical talents of JwJ with an “open mic” night. On Saturday night, participants attended a dance party that featured live music from Boston’s Los Sugar Kings.
local coalitions that engage a diverse group of allies. Jobs with Justice will continue to engage key allies like faith leaders and students, and to build an ever-larger base of Jobs with Justice activists who will pledge to be there for one another's struggles. As the Jobs with Justice Pledge Card says: If more of us are there, we'll all start winning!