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Labor and the Crisis of Democracy: Working-Class Politics in an Age of Authoritarianism
Conference sponsored by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Co-sponsored by the Cornell Worker Institute
Thursday, May 8 & Fri. May 9, 2025
CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
25 West 43rd Street, 18th floor, New York, NY 10036 (map)
Featuring:
THURSDAY MORNING KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
Becky Pringle – President, National Education Association
THURSDAY EVENING PUBLIC FORUM:
Bhairavi Desai – Board President, National Taxi Workers Alliance
Robin D.G. Kelley – Distinguished Professor and Chair in U.S. History, University of California, Los Angeles
SungHee Oh – International Affairs Director, Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY ACADEMIC AND PRACTITIONER PANELS
Including panels on the following topics:
– Organizing in Repressive Regimes
– Strikes
– Organizing in the U.S. / Navigating U.S. political context
– Learning from the 1930s
– Studying the Right Wing, Comparative Perspectives
– Intersectional Approaches to Organizing
Past Events
“… IF YOU CAN KEEP IT!”: The Fight for Democracy in America
Civic Engagement and Leadership Development 2025
Speakers:
Chantal Ide, First Vice President, Central Labor Council of Metropolitan Montreal (CSN)
Valentina Orazzini, European Representative, Italian Metal Workers Union (FIOM- CGIL)
Frédéric Sanchez, Secretary-General, Metal Workers Federation – General Confederation of Labor, France (FTM-CGT)
Moderator:
Stephanie Luce, Professor and Chair of Labor Studies, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
This program is sponsored by SLU’s Labor Studies Department and the Civic Engagement & Leadership Development
Program (CELD) at the Murphy Institute at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.
Intersectional Organizing: Building Solidarity in the Labor and LGBTQIA+ Movements
Join us on Tuesday, March 25th to learn about the intersection of LGBTQIA+ activism and the labor movement. This program brings together a panel of queer labor organizers, scholars, and activists to discuss how queer organizers build community within their workplaces to support civil rights and social justice movements. Speakers will also share strategies for building power to defend workplaces and vulnerable communities, as we witness increased attacks on the rights and safety of LGBTQIA+ people, especially transgender individuals, as well as an unprecedented assault on workers’ rights.
This program is the first in a new public forum series that highlights the intersection of LGBTQIA+ activism and the labor movement. It is organized as part of SLU’s participation in the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium and is made possible through the generous support of LaGuardia Community College and the New York City Council LGBT and Queer Caucus.
Speakers:
Jaz Brisack (they/them) – Co-Founder, Starbucks Workers United; Author, Get on the Job and Organize
Brittani Murray (she/her) – Co-President, Pride at Work; United Steelworkers Union, Civil and Human Rights Department
Melanie Willingham-Jaggers (they/she) – Executive Director, GLSEN
Moderator:
Joanna Wuest (she/her) – Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Author, “Queer Working-Class Politics and the U.S. Labor Movement”, New Labor Forum, Fall 2024
Global Perspectives on Labor’s Fight Against Authoritarianism
SPEAKERS:
Chantal Ide, First Vice President, Central Labor Council of Metropolitan Montreal (CSN)
Valentina Orazzini, European Representative, Italian Metal Workers Union (FIOM- CGIL)
Frédéric Sanchez, Secretary-General, Metal Workers Federation – General Confederation of Labor, France (FTM-CGT)
MODERATOR:
Stephanie Luce, Professor and Chair of Labor Studies, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies
This program is sponsored by SLU’s Labor Studies Department and the Civic Engagement & Leadership Development
Program (CELD) at the Murphy Institute at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.
What’s at Stake for Labor: Project 2025 and the Department of Government Efficiency
What are the real costs to bear on workers–especially civil service and public sector workers – with Project 2025 and the establishment of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency? What strategies can labor employ to counter this attack on working people and unions? How can looking back at previous far right policy projects help prepare us in our fight to protect workers? Join us to hear from law & policy experts and journalists as they discuss these urgent questions.
SPEAKERS:
- James Goodwin, Policy Director, Center for Progressive Reform
- Diana Reddy, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley Law
- Arjun Singh, Senior Podcast Producer, The Lever
MODERATOR:
- Samir Sonti, Assistant Professor, CUNY School of Labor & Urban Studies
Are Working-Class Voters Done with Democrats? Class Dealignment & the Two-Party System
Why did so many working-class voters support Republicans over Democrats in the 2024 elections? Was the problem simply ‘messaging’, or have Democrats entrenched themselves as the party of corporate elites and Wall Street? What can Democrats do to win back this crucial demographic and how do we define (or re-define) the working-class? Will Democrats make a strong commitment to economic populism to reverse this class dealignment?
To delve into these questions join us for a conversation with Jared Abbott, Director of the Center for Working Class Politics and Micah Uetricht, Editor-at-Large of New Labor Forum and host of SLU’s podcast Reinventing Solidarity. This program is a live in-person recording for Reinventing Solidarity.
New Directions In Labor Politics
Tuesday, December 3, 6:30-8:30pm
Limited seating available for in-person attendees. All others can join virtually via Zoom webinar.
Register: slucuny.swoogo.com/3December2024
Featured Speakers:
Maurice Mitchell – National Director, Working Families Party;
Rosslyn Wuchinich – President, UNITE-HERE Local 274 in Philadelphia;
Daniel Judt – PhD student, Yale University; Political Education Coordinator, Worker Power
Jenna Fullmer – President, Blue Compass Strategies;
Moderated by Bob Master – former Political Director, Communications Workers of America – District One.
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In the aftermath of the November 5th election, how do we assess how the political parties can best serve the interests of a multiracial working class? Although labor union membership remains at historic lows, unions are undoubtedly the largest organization of working class people in the USA. They therefore have a critical role to play in building back the multiracial U.S. working class that rejects hateful divisions, supports democracy, and holds billionaires and corporations accountable.
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Join us on December 3rd as leaders of labor and progressive organizations grapple with the challenges of reconstructing working class politics and explore new strategies and directions.
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Register for the Zoom link: slucuny.swoogo.com/3December2024
Day With(out) Art 2024: Red Reminds Me…
The Murphy Institute at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2024 by presenting a screening of Red Reminds Me…, a program of seven videos reflecting the emotional spectrum of living with HIV today.
Red Reminds Me… will feature newly commissioned videos by Gian Cruz (Philippines), Milko Delgado (Panama), Imani Harrington (USA), David Oscar Harvey (USA), Mariana Iacono and Juan De La Mar (Argentina/Colombia), Nixie (Belgium), Vasilios Papapitsios (USA).
Day With(out) Art is an international day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis, organized by Visual AIDS, a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.
This program is made possible through the generous support of LaGuardia Community College and the New York City Council LGBT and Queer Caucus.
About the Video Program:
Through the red ribbon and other visuals, HIV and AIDS has been long associated with the color red and its connotations—blood, pain, tragedy, and anger. Red Reminds Me… invites viewers to consider a complex range of images and feelings surrounding HIV, from eroticism and intimacy, mothering and kinship, luck and chance, memory and haunting. The commissioned artists deploy parody, melodrama, theater, irony, and horror to build a new vocabulary for representing HIV today.
The title is drawn from the words of Stacy Jennings, an activist, poet, and long-term survivor with HIV, who writes: “Red reminds me, red reminds me, red reminds me…to be free.”* Linking “red” to freedom, Jennings flips the usual connotations of the color and offers a new way of thinking about the complexity of living with HIV. Just as a prism bends and refracts light, Red Reminds Me…, expands the emotional spectrum of living with HIV. It shows us that while grief, tragedy, and anger define parts of the epidemic, the full picture contains deeper, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory feelings.
*Jennings recites this poem in the video Here We Are: Voices of Black Women Who Live with HIV, created by Davina “Dee” Conner and Karin Hayes for Day With(out) Art 2022: Being and Belonging.
ABOLITION LABOR: The Fight to End Prison Slavery
Join us for a conversation with Aiyuba Thomas and Andrew Ross, authors of the new book, ABOLITION LABOR: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, to learn about the problem of prison labor and the movement to abolish it. This program is moderated by Calvin John Smiley, author of the new book DEFUND: Conversations Towards Abolition.
Free copies of Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery and Defund will be available for SLU students and faculty who attend.