Mon. Sept. 5, 2016, 6 – 10 pm

For over 40 years, the working class has been on the defensive against the relentless attack from the capitalist class - which has undermined our real income, wealth accumulation, benefits, and working conditions. 

Our unions have been decimated both in the private and public sectors and the fight against the implementation of “right to work laws” is ferocious.  While affecting all workers, this downward spiral has most harshly affected African Americans, Latinos and immigrant workers.

What has been touted as the recovery from the “Great Recession” has actually bypassed millions, and has guided us right back on the road of ruin we were on before that disaster, with most of the rising Gross National Product still going to the one percent.

Nowhere on the electoral spectrum as anyone spoken on behalf of those continuing to live in entrenched poverty and the destitution experienced by tens of millions of predominantly woman and children after President Bill Clinton shredded the safety net when he largely dismantled the welfare system.

And then came the Presidential campaign. Both Sanders and Trump rode the wave of discontent in the primaries, but it was Trump who stoked white nationalism combined with superficial promises to blue collar workers who gained the nomination while Sanders came in second to Hillary Clinton, who was forced to make some platform concessions, to gain Sanders support.

So here we are forced to choose between a neo-fascist whose announced polices would decimate even the white workers he seeks to currently favor with and the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who supported the North American Free Trade Act,  supported the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act and lobbied for The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that President Bill Clinton signed building more prisons and increasing the number of federal and death-penalty crimes.
 

But, there have been victories for the working class with the “Fight for $15 and a Union”, which has stimulated discussion around the country about and actually resulted in the implementation of higher minimum wages in cities across the land. Workers Centers' advocacy organizations have taken root in virtually every city and groups like day laborers, domestic workers and farm workers, long denied the protections of the labor laws are organizing, gaining strength and prominence. 

And the Dreamers movement emerged from an underground subculture of students and young people who were born in the US to parents who came here without documents who began to find and help each other in coming out from the shadows, and began pushing for legal alternatives to miserable lifetimes in limbo.  Then Black Lives Matter, the civil rights movement for the 21st century emerged and the LGBTQ has reinvigorated. 

And this Labor Day, our theme is to explore how do we continue to build on these working class movements and what Sanders calls the “political revolution”?  How do we “build bridges” between emergent groups?  What are the threads that bind us to form that mighty, mighty movement of the working class for its empowerment, and towards changing society to operate towards peace and justice.

We’ll travel the country to answer that question and bring you interviews with leading analysts and representatives of workers’ organizations.  Indeed we’ll go globe trekking to South Africa and tackle that question with the leader of one of the most powerful, militant unions on the globe, the 325,000 worker strong National Union of Metal Workers. As always we’ll bring to you the glorious expressions of artistic resistance and advocacy for we who do the work and see how our cultural workers answer the question What Is To Be Done?