Laborfest: Bookfair Readings & Music

9:30 - 11:00 AM (3rd floor Room A)
Breaking Through, Discovering the Riches Within by Allan McDougall
Allan McDougall who was a hard rock United Steelworkers miner from Canada and now works for the USW Emergency relief team which helps workers who are injured or killed on the job. We get a real look at the life of the hard rock miner in today’s world. Facing an addiction to alcohol because of the work and the stress McDougall breaks his addiction and in the process transforms himself.

9:30 - 11:00 AM (3rd floor Room B)
She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker by Brigid O’Farrell
This biography is about the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in the battles in the midst of the depression and attacks on workers rights. She used her position as wife of the president to support labor and human rights struggles throughout the US and for that she was hated by those who wanted to break unions. Her friends included Rose Schneiderman of the Women’s Trade Union League and a leader of New York garment workers and the garment unions and Walter Reuther, “the most dangerous man in Detroit” to the bosses.
http://www.bofarrell.net/index.html

10:00 - 12:00 Noon (1st floor Theater)
Panel
The Attack On Public Education and The Lessons of The Struggle of UC UAW 2865
With Jessica Taal, Head Steward, UC Davis and Katy Fox-Hodess, UC Berkeley
The continuing attack on public education, including the drive to privatize California’s university system, is threatening not only the rights of working class students to go to the
university but also the lecturers and educational process. This forum will look at the crisis in education and how this has reflected in the struggle within the 12,000 member statewide UAW 2865 lecturers local.

11:00 - 12:30 PM (3rd floor Room A)
The Power of Literature of Radical Labor in Oklahoma
With Rachel Jackson and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Oklahoma has a militant labor history that has been buried by the corporate media and politicians both in Oklahoma and nationally. As a result of the formation of LaborFest Oklahoma, the real history of the working people and farmers is now being presented. These panelists will discuss this history and its relevance today.
http://www.facebook.com/OklahomaLaborfest

11:00 - 12:30 PM (3rd floor Room B)
The Civil Wars in US Labor
by Steve Early
Long time labor writer Steve Early covers the growing internecine warfare developing within the SEIU and the internal divisions that erupted between the SEIU’s leadership led by Andy Stern and SEIU UHW led by Sal Rosselli. Tied up in this crisis is the growing attack labor faces including the failure of the Democrats to pursue EFCA after promising that this would be one of their top issues. The book looks at the causes of these internal divisions and also the cost of this civil war within labor which still continues.
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Civil-Wars-in-US-Labor

12:30 - 1:45 PM (1st floor Theater)
Concert
In Commemoration of the 125th Anniversary of May Day and the Battle At Haymarket
With The Troublemakers Union Band
May Day is a seminal event for working people around the world and it started in the fight for the 8 hour day in Chicago. The role of immigrant workers was also key at the time and is important today. They organized and fought for justice and strong unions on the job.
The SF Bay Area’s own TROUBLEMAKERS UNION presents “international music for human rights.” Jazz, rumba, rap, blues, nyabinghi, samba, funk and bomba...the T.U. brings the world together for peace and global justice.
http://www.myspace.com/the-troublemakers-union

2:00-3:00 PM (Suggested donation #5.00 to LaborFest) (2nd floor Gallary)
Learn by Suing
Performance and Discussion by Jay Martin
With a layoff looming in 2008, Jay Martin looked at the law. 60-day
notice, it said. Jay became the lead plaintiff in a class action
against his former employer, an experience more about phone calls than
courtrooms. Jay appeared previously in LaborFest reading Upton
Sinclair's memoir "I, Candidate." This year, learn what Jay learned
about the law that protects workers during a mass layoff, the WARN
Act.

2:00 - 3:30 PM (1st floor Theater)
Woody Guthrie, American Radical by William Kaufman
Woody Guthrie made a major contribution to working class music and culture in the US and the world.
This book provides an inside view of the intersection between Guthrie as an artist and labor troubadour and his political perspectives and collaborations. This is an important critical work on how one of the most powerful political artists in America drew from its tremendous working class history and wove that into his writing. His words and songs are a breath of fresh air and his work remains a force today.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/65gpr5rm9780252036026.html

2:30 - 4:00 PM (3rd floor Room A)
Rebel Rank and File by Cal Winslow
Reviving The Strike by Joe Burns
Panel on how unions can reorganize and rebuild.
The growing attacks on labor and the internal battles are forcing working people to look at new ways of fighting back for survival within their unions and against the bosses offensive.
These two authors have written about some of these internal struggles and how workers can fight back using the lessons of the past. Included is the use of secondary strikes and why the Taft-Hartley which bans these must be challenged.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/282-282-rebel-rank-and-file
http://www.revivingthestrike.org/

2:30 - 4:00 PM (3rd floor Room B)
Trampling Out the Vintage by Frank Bardacke
A dramatic new history of César Chávez and the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers. Trampling Out the Vintage is the authoritative account of the rise and fall of the United Farm Workers and its most famous and controversial leader, César Chávez. Based on many years of interviews—with farm workers, organizers, and the opponents and friends of the UFW—the book tells a story of collective action and empowerment rich in evocative detail and stirring human interest. Beginning with the influence of the ideas of Saul Alinsky and Catholic Social Action at the union’s founding, through the UFW’s thrilling triumphs in the California fields, the drama concludes with the debilitating internal struggles that left the union a shadow of its former self.
http://www.versobooks.com/books/800-trampling-out-the-vintage

4:00 - 6:00 PM (3rd floor Room A)
A Trial in Summer 2011 by Ann L. McLauglin
This novel is about the daughter of a judge who arrives in San Francisco with her father in 1939 for the trial of ILWU longshoreman and union leader Harry Bridges. The government was seeking to expel Bridges for his alleged lies about membership in the Communist Party when he applied to become a citizen.
http://www.danielpublishing.com/jdforthcoming.html

4:00 - 6:00 PM (3rd floor Room B)
Working Class Wordplay-Spoken Word Performers
Working class poets and musicians speak truth to power in the struggle for survival in a depression and open class warfare.
Spoken word & music performers
Dee Allen, Jack Hirschman, Steven Gray, Carol Denney, Edward Frank, Muteado Silencio, Mitch Park
See also:
http://www.laborfest.net/2011/2011Bookfair.htm
http://www.laborfest.net/2011/2011schedule.htm