While union representation in the US remains at an all time low, labor organizing is resurgent. But as the US economy shifts from an industrial to a high-tech and service economy, and as the working class confronts intensified forms of criminalization, the sites of worker agitation have expanded beyond the factory floor. In the process, workers traditionally at the “margins” of the labor movement—such as sex workers and formerly incarcerated workers—are reshaping the struggle for worker power and deepening our understanding of how capitalism exploits and punishes workers in the twenty-first century. Moderated by journalist Kim Kelly, this panel will hear from Maya (Sex Worker Organizing Project—Chicago) and Kat (Beyond the Bars) about their organizing and the ways the wider labor movement can learn from labor at the “margins.”
This panel introduces the Board of Butchers framework, an abolitionist project in opposition to the neoliberal university, actualized through the pursuit of the Popular University. The panel further strategizes how academics and intellectuals can use their skills to effectively support the Palestinian liberation movement and the abolition of the university.
Anarchism is often the least understood branch of socialism. Anarchists walk a revolutionary path separate from the brutality of state systems, whether social democratic or Stalinist. Join us to discuss how anarchists are organizing and building toward a directly democratic world without capitalism, the state, and systemic oppression.
In their field jackets and signature purple berets, the Young Lords mobilized their community for liberation and against gentrification, poverty, racism, and police brutality. Join historian Jacqueline Lazu and Chicago 33rd Ward Alderperson Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez as they explore how the Young Lords grew into one of the most dynamic revolutionary community organizations of the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Jacqueline Lazú is a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at DePaul University and the author of numerous scholarly articles on the Young Lords in Chicago.
