History series focuses on food and food industry workers

Topics include farm workers, food cooperatives and the landmark 1985 Hormel strike. Also included is the popular history tour – this time visiting the South St. Paul packinghouse district.

The series is co-sponsored by a number of labor and educational organizations and is free and open to all.

This year\’s "Untold Stories" brochure features the mural that artist Mike Alewitz painted in Austin, Minn., during the Hormel strike.

This year’s schedule:

From Field to Table: Workers in the Food System Making Change
Monday, April 26, 7 p.m.
Riverview Branch Library, 1 E. George St.
Join the University of Minnesota’s Department of Chicano Studies and Centro Campesino for an interactive session examining the current agricultural system from a global, national and local lens. Learn more about farmworker efforts and local structures that lead to a more just food system.

From Populist Farmers to Urban Food Co-ops: The Cooperative Tradition in Minnesota
Tuesday, April 27, 7 p.m.
Metropolitan State University Library, Ecolab Room, 645 E. Seventh St.

Join Steven Keillor, author of Cooperative Commonwealth: Co-ops in Rural Minnesota, 1859-1939, and Dave Gutknecht, founder of Cooperative Grocer, a trade magazine for food co-ops, for a conversation on our cooperative tradition.

Workers Memorial Day Panel Discussion

Wednesday, April 28, 7 p.m.
St. Paul Labor Centre, 411 Main St.
Workers Memorial Day, which takes place annually around the world on April 28, is when unions remember workers who have been injured or killed on the job and renew the call for safer workplaces. Learn more about current safety and health issues from a panel of organizers and educators from Painters District Council 82, the United Food & Commercial Workers and the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Minnesota. Sponsored by the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service and co-sponsored by the Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Jim Norris: North for the Harvest
Sunday, May 2, 2 p.m.
Rice Street Branch Library, 1011 Rice St.
Author Jim Norris talks about his recent book, North for the Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry, which examines the complex and often surprising relationships between the participants in the sugar beet industry.

Panel Discussion: The Hormel Strike After 25 Years
Tuesday, May 4, 7 p.m.
UFCW 789 Hall, 266 Hardman Ave., South St. Paul
In August 1985, workers went on strike at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota. A quarter-century later, get a perspective from two participants in the strike, Dale Chichester and Pete Winkels, as well as historian Peter Rachleff, author of Hard-Pressed in the Heartland. Co-sponsored by UFCW Local 789.

Globalization and Workers in the Food Industry

Tuesday, May 11, 7 p.m.

Macalester College, Weyerhaeuser Chapel, 1600 Grand Ave.
Deborah Barndt is an internationally known speaker and author of Tangled Routes: Women, Work and Globalization on the Tomato Trail. The York University professor discusses globalization and workers in the food industry, focusing on two campaigns of resistance and creative alternatives – the imaginative work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southern Florida and the FoodShed Project recently initiated in Toronto.

History Day Presentations
Wednesday, May 12, 7:30 p.m.
St. Paul Labor Centre, 411 Main St.
Join Minnesota students who present their labor history-related projects for Minnesota History Day, on the topic of “Innovation in History: Impact and Change.” The program promotes the study of history by engaging students and teachers in the excitement of historical inquiry and creative presentation. Watch labor history come alive with these imaginative projects!

South St. Paul Packinghouse Tour
Saturday, May 15, 2 p.m.
Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center, 179 Robie St. E.
Dave Riehle’s annual labor history tour revisits South Saint Paul’s turbulent labor history from the 1904 national packinghouse workers’ strike to 1984’s dynamic Iowa Pork strike. From organizing in the early 20th century by Serbian, Croatian and Polish workers at the giant Armour and Swift plants, to the protracted but successful struggle by immigrant Latino workers to unionize at Dakota Premium in the 1990s, the struggle continues.
Space is limited, so please call The Friends at 651-222-3242 to reserve your seat on the bus.

Everyday Voices: Readings about Food & Work
Tuesday, May 18, 7 p.m.
Merriam Park Branch Library, 1831 Marshall Ave.
Hear the voices of packinghouse workers, waitresses, farmers and others in this program that features readings from The Jungle, Nickel and Dimed, Packinghouse Daughter, and more. Discuss how many workers’ jobs are connected to the food industry and what has changed – or has not changed – in the past century. The readings will be complemented by a performance of the Twin Cities Labor Chorus.

Reel Life: Depictions of Food Industry Workers in Films and Television
Wednesday, May 19, 7 p.m.
Highland Park Branch Library, 1974 Ford Parkway
Whether it was Lucille Ball scrambling to keep pace with the candy factory assembly line or African-American workers struggling to assert their rights in an early 20th century packinghouse, food industry workers have provided much food for thought in films and television. View excerpts from “Food, Inc.,” “Eyes on the Fries,” and other sources and join in a discussion about mass media portrayals of worker and food issues.

Untold Stories is coordinated by The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. More information can be found at www.thefriends.org

Co-sponsors include Macalester College History Department, Department of Social Sciences at Metropolitan State University, Micawber’s Books, Midwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety, Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, Minnesota Historical Society, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Saint Paul Labor Speakers Club, Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, Twin Cities Labor History Society, UFCW Local 789, and the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service.

The series is supported by an endowment created with grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation.