| 2008 CONFERENCE HALF-DAY ISSUE FORUMS
Choose from one of the following half-day issue forums on Friday, May 2. Read more about each forum below.
Student-Labor Strategies
Share and learn strategies about incredible campaigns that students are waging on campuses and in communities across the country, and learn how to build winning student – labor alliances.
Goals
- Articulate the vision and purpose and current work of SLAP and SLAP activists on their campuses, as well as how people can use SLAP
- Highlight successes and victories through week of action, as well as discuss work happening in summer and try to project fall work and campaign
- Provide a space for students from various networks/organizations, regions, races, ideologies, and other great walks of life, to meet and connect the issues they are distinctively working on as part of a greater movement for social justice
- Identify key students and other relevant organizations to further engage in discussions of SLAP projects in their local communities, and collect contact info to transition those relationships post conference
- Provide a space for various allied and sponsoring organizations participating to engage with students and promote campaigns
Draft Agenda:
- Introduction & Welcome
- Panel Discussion: Building Student Power
- Small Group Breakouts to discuss panel
- Workshops: Intro to Direct Action Organizing; Developing a Strategic Campaign; Coalition-Building On & Off-Campus; & more!
- Closing
Low Wage Workers Organizing!
Workers’ Centers and Other Models
Come share and learn about workers’ centers & other innovative approaches to organizing workers in today’s economy.
Goals:
- Showcase models of organizing and base-building efforts among low-wage, non-union workers, and provide the opportunity for groups doing this work to meet one another and build relationships.
- Share and learn best practices for organizing the unorganized and leadership development for low-wage, non-union workers. Share perspectives on why workers’ centers have formed, what membership structures look like, who members are, and what they do as members.
- Explore how JwJ coalitions are engaging in creative efforts to organize low-wage workers, and are partnering with other organizations doing so.
- Explore how labor activists can support new organizing among low-wage workers.
Agenda:
- Workplace and Community Approaches to Organizing Low-Wage Workers: Hear case studies from workers’ centers and other organizations about how and why they are doing this work. Hear from JwJ coalitions that are doing direct worker organizing and how this fits into their coalition’s work.
- Conversation Café: Have the opportunity to have in-depth conversations with established workers’ centers and other groups doing innovative organizing with low-wage workers. Conversations will be in groups of 8-10 and will focus on the nuts and bolts of how to start a workers’ center, how to define membership and recruit members, how to do leadership development, etc.
- Jobs with Justice’s Role in Organizing Low-Wage Workers: Hear perspectives from JwJ Executive Director Sarita Gupta and local JwJ leaders on how JwJ can support the new and exciting work of workers’ centers, and how JwJ coalitions are starting to do direct organizing with low-wage workers.
Health Care Action Strategy Session
Direct action approaches for building the base we need to win the health care working people deserve.
Goals:
- Organize network around JwJ plan and the need to fight intermediary reforms in addition to (not instead of) single payer
- Map/Coordinate/Plan for May HC Week of Action
- Broaden universe and definition of “health care activist”
Agenda:
- Political Landscape: the Mind of the “Likely Voter”
- Movement Building Opportunities: Immigrant Communities and New Voters
- Approaches to Fighting for Health Care for All: 676, Electoral Work, Contract Campaigns, Exposing the Insurance Industry
- Coordinated Action: May National Health Care Week of Action and Beyond
Workers’ Rights Under Attack.
Stand Up, Fight Back!
“Right to Work” ballot initiatives. NLRB rulings. Frivolous lawsuits. Everywhere we turn, workers’ basic right to organize is being undermined. This session will explore how we are fighting back with the Employee Free Choice Act and what we need to do as labor, community, and faith allies and Workers’ Rights Boards to improve conditions for all workers.
Agenda:
- Opening
- Panel on RICO suits and the Free Speech at Risk campaign
- RICO Suits
- Free Speech at Risk Campaign
- Community engagement in the Free Speech at Risk Campaign
- Break
- Panel on Organizing and Collective Bargaining Rights Campaigns and the Employee Free Choice Act
- Overview of JwJ’s role in organizing campaigns and the opportunities with the Employee Free Choice Act
- Local and National Case studies
- Context and overview of the Employee Free Choice Act –
- 1 million member mobilization
- Small group breakouts to develop plans for the Million Member Mobilization and other opportunities around Employee Free Choice Act
- Closing
The Global Race To the Bottom:
Trade and Migration
Join global and trade justice organizations, immigrant rights organizations, unions, and allied groups to explore the links between the global economy, trade agreements, and their connection to migration of people around the world and the current climate for immigrants in the US. Share strategies on current global justice campaigns and strategies to strengthen protection for immigrant workers and communities.
Agenda:
- Opening
- Timeline Exercise:
- Key moments in neo-liberal agenda
- Key moments inImmigration policies
- Participants will identify when they became aware of or engaged in this work based on the timeline.
- Panel to lay out framework and significant moments on the timeline:
- Impact of neo-liberalism in global south- lays out debt, development (shocks)
- What motivated and how capitalists began developing this agenda
- Impact on migration patterns around the world.
- Impact of migration in the US – immigrant backlash
- Resistance- Seattle, & Social Forums
- Participation from the audience – discussion of the timeline
- Discussion on what an alternative to the neo-liberal agenda looks like(small group discussions)
- Opportunities Moving Forward ~strategy discussion
- Upcoming trade agreements
- Immigrants’ Rights – opposing anti-immigrant initiatives and supporting the plight of guest workers.
- Other
- Closing
|
|
|
