⏩ Building a Just Economy: Insights from Worker Center Leaders

A panel event on the past and future of workers’ rights

by

Co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the UIC Center for Urban Economic Development, this event features the nation’s leading workers’ rights and economic justice advocates as we celebrate the 2021 launch of the The Worker Center Library, a living archive mapping the past and future of the workers’ rights movement.

Watch these leaders reflect on the gains made in building worker power, the challenges and opportunities ahead to build a world with workers at the center.

Full video below:

PROGRAM:

Panel 1: The Moment is Now: Investing in the Labor Movement of the Future 

Sarita Gupta, Ford Foundation

Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

Moderator: Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect

Panel 2: Looking Back to Look Forward: Building Workers’ Collective Power (video timecode: 00:12:02)

Sarita Gupta, Ford Foundation

Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Pablo Alvarado, National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, UCLA Labor Center/National Black Worker Center

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

Panel 3: New Terrains of Worker Organizing (video timecode: 00:37:16)

Erica Smiley, National Jobs with Justice

Ai-jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Pablo Alvarado, National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Jennifer Rosenbaum, Global Labor Justice

Andrea Dehlendorf, United for Respect

Sekou Siby, Restaurant Opportunity Centers United

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

Panel 4: Seizing the Moment: New Opportunities for Workers' Rights (video timecode: 01:12:28)

Saket Soni, Resilience Force

Saru Jayaraman, One Fair Wage

Shanika Houlder White,  National Black Worker Centers

Michelle Miller, Coworker

Moderator: Laine Romero-Alston, Open Society Foundations

Special thanks to Anastancia Cuna, a member leader with NDWA/We Dream in Black and a Board Member of Matahari Women’s Worker Center in Boston, and Los Jornaleros Del Norte. Their music video for “El Cochinito,” a tribute to day laborers, will be released on Labor Day via the band’s website here.

Read more about Worker Centers in our Alt-Labor Chronicles series here.

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