Minnesota activists take part in U.S. Social Forum

Designed to connect struggles and movements, this was the second Social Forum to be held in the United States.

Thousands of workshops, cultural events, actions and plenaries were held. Many focused on labor issues. These included:

• A creative action at the Andiamo restaurant in Dearborn sponsored by the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) of Michigan, a worker center based in Detroit. In the face of racial discrimination and unpaid wages, ROC and a sizeable group of Social Forum activists picketed outside of the restaurant, joined by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra from New York, performing a spoof of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”  Restaurant managers were forced to close the restaurant during the protest.

• A workshop developed by Labor Notes on Strategies for Organizing, with speakers from UNITE HERE in San Jose, California, SEIU Healthcare Illinois Indiana, and the Retail Action Project (RAP) in New York. The RAP speakers recounted how they had brought lawsuits over clothing stores’ wage theft—the large sums of back pay they won for workers helped to establish the union. They used the suits to convince employers to sign neutrality agreements and then win union elections. All three unions were notable for creating strong community ties that went both ways—and for organizing workers to act like a union before they’d won an election.

• Labor Notes and other local organizations took USSF participants on tours across the city, featuring stories of the “hate strikes” in the 1940s and the 1960s Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. Visitors also saw sites from the Underground Railroad before the Civil War and from Detroit’s heyday as an auto town: the huge but crumbling factories still standing, the site of a 1937 sit-in, the Ford Hunger March of 1932, and the original Motown studios.

• An “Excluded Workers Congress” was one of several half-day People’s Movement Assemblies held at the Forum. New York’s Domestic Workers United reported on meetings between the state’s power brokers to hammer out the details of historic legislation to extend basic rights to housekeepers and caregivers. DWU’s success was inspirational to others at the Congress which was a self-organized gathering of workers historically shut out of labor law protections, bargaining or unions. They included the welfare/workfare workers with Community Voices Heard in New York City, public sector workers not allowed to bargain in North Carolina and Tennessee and day laborers from a variety of centers, corners, and cities who are part of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON). For a more detailed account of the Congress see http://www.areachicago.org/b/USSF/excluded-workers-congress-us-social-forum/

A flurry of sunflowers accompany the opening march at the USSF, expressing the complementary goals of good jobs and clean air. Photo by Deborah Rosenstein

• Armando Robles, one of the leaders of the Republic Windows factory occupation in Chicago  reported positive developments. The United Electrical Workers signed a four-year contract with Serious Materials, the company that succeeded Republic. Forty-four people are back in the shop, from the original 270. The contract includes wage increases of almost a dollar, and their benefits and seniority have been respected.

• Farmworkers organized with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in south Florida reported that after years of mobilizing that won agreements with eight corporate purchasers of tomatoes, they’re finally seeing important workplace changes. It’s been widely reported that the agreements CIW won with McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Subway, and others include a penny more per pound for tomatoes bought, but the agreements also include a code of conduct and worker-led monitoring that’s starting to make real changes in the fields. Organizers said that the third-largest producer of Florida tomatoes will install 40 tables and umbrellas to provide shade for workers. They now have the right not to work during lightning storms. And for the first time ever, CIW organizers are able to use work time to explain the agreement to workers.

• Eddie Acosta of the AFL-CIO pledged the federation’s support on immigration reform and said that the federation’s planning an alliance with worker centers and unions in other countries; the idea is for unions in the home countries to get involved with guest workers before they come to the U.S., so that workers don’t get ensnarled in unsafe or fraudulent arrangements.

• Jane Slaughter from Labor Notes argued that if Congress does succeed in passing legislation to start the transition to a green economy, labor organizations will need to protect the workers in the polluting industries from the pain of that transition and make sure the jobs created are good jobs. That would be in contrast to the current situation, where General Motors is applauded for building a plant that makes batteries for electric vehicles—but the jobs, near Detroit, are non-union and $12 an hour.

A representative from Damayan Migrant Workers Association in New York/ New Jersey at the Excluded Workers Congress (above) and representatives of the National Domestic Workers Alliance selling their popular t-shirts at the same event. Photos by Deborah Rosenstein

Minnesota activists reported a range of responses and experiences at the Social Forum.
 
Jessica Lettween, director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, attended the Social Forum with Ann Beuch, the Coalition’s current intern. Lettween and Beuch made it to most of the trade-related sessions and appreciated the focus on “using the TRADE Act as an organizing tool for global justice.” The most useful part of the Forum, Jessica said, was hearing the first-hand accounts of Mexican farmers who lost everything because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Such stories were highlighted at the workshop, “Losing Factory and Farm” that connected the struggle of displaced workers in Detroit with the situation facing farmers in rural areas throughout the Americas.

Jovita Francisco Morales, Dina Eudet and Maria Cisneros, all with the Minneapolis-based Latina organization, Mujeres en Liderazgo, participated in numerous workshops, films and cultural events. “We are learning tools and ideas that we can take back, like ice-breakers and other ideas for facilitation,” Cisneros reflected. She attended a workshop on popular education organized by the Highlander Center for Research and Education Center and Collectivo Flatlander and appreciated the acknowledgement of the difference between interpretation and translation, something that she works to raise awareness around in Minnesota. Francisco Morales mentioned the value of meeting women like themselves from New Mexico and other states who were also organizing for access to municipal IDs and driver’s licenses.

David B, an organizer in Minneapolis with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), remarked that “often I feel like we aren\’t thinking big picture and what I saw at the Social Forum was big picture work in action. Members from the whole array of workers centers and alternative unions got together in the Excluded Workers Congress to forge relationships for a new future. Members of the United Electrical Workers (UE) held a panel on fights in the public sector with fellow workers from Mexico and Canada that transformed how everyone saw the struggle, and connections were made to combine issues of food workers and sustainability across the supply chain.” The IWW organized a workshop at the Social Forum that brought together the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Chinese Progressive Association, CATA: The Farmworker Support Committee and the IWW to talk about specific organizing issues and to build relationships.

Everyone attending the Social Forum seemed to agree that the networking and cross-movement coordination was the highlight and strength of the gathering. To learn more about the USSF, visit the Forum website.

Deborah Rosenstein, a staff member at the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service, attended the U.S. Social Forum.

Much of this article was reported by Labor Notes staff and appears in full at the Labor Notes website.