?Our Fight for Health Care: Workplace, Community and National Strategies? is the theme of the 12th annual ?Meeting the Challenge? conference May 1 at Macalester College.

The conference runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Weyerhauser Chapel, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, and is free and open to the public.

Several major workplace conflicts in the past year have centered on the issue of health care benefits, conference organizers note. They include the fall 2003 strike by University of Minnesota clerical workers, the walkout by 70,000 grocery workers in California, and most recently the Twin Cities transit strike.

At ?Meeting the Challenge,? activists will reflect on these particular struggles and discuss the larger issue of reforming the entire U.S. system of health care. Speakers will include Kip Sullivan, a nationally-respected health care analyst, Mark Dudzik, national Labor Party organizer for the Just Healthcare Campaign, and Ajamu Dillahunt, chairperson of Black Workers for Justice and the president of the Raleigh, N.C., local of the American Postal Workers Union.

This year's conference will also include two special cultural events. On Friday night, April 30, a cast of Macalester College students will perform the newly written labor musical, "Forgotten: Murder at the Ford Rouge," at 8 p.m. in the college's Concert Hall (in the Fine Arts complex). "Forgotten" tells, through 30 songs, the story of the UAW's efforts to unionize the world's biggest factory, the River Rouge plant, in 1937, a campaign in which one activist, Lewis Bradford, was murdered.

On Saturday night, May 1, another cast of Macalester students, under the direction of Beth Cleary, will stage Bertolt Brecht's class play, "Mother Courage and Her Children," at 7:30 p.m. in the Janet Wallace Theater (also in the Fine Arts complex). Written in 1941 but set in the "Thirty Years' War" of the 1600s, "Mother Courage" is one of the most compelling anti-war plays ever written.

Conference organizers note that both dramatic performances are appropriate for children and they encourage families to attend. For more information on ?Meeting the Challenge,? contact Macalester History Professor Peter Rachleff at 651-696-6371.