Laborfest: BookFair & Forums on KPFA & others

7th Annual LaborFest BookFair

10:30 - 12:00 Noon
(3rd floor Room A)
Gone Postal
By Ron V. Ramirez (2009)
Ron V. Ramirez who spent his career in the post office as a letter carrier is in touch with the dangerous and sometimes deadly working conditions. This novel is about a postal worker who has a murder conviction on his record. At work, he finds himself in love and busy engaged in affairs with coworkers. He is being pushed to the edge not only by his relationship and history but the stress that is called “going postal”.
http://www.gone-postal.com

(3rd floor Room B)
Dollar Democracy: with Liberty and Justice for Some, How to Reclaim the American Dream For All
By Peter Mathews (2014)
Peter Mathews, professor at Cypress Community College, was involved in working for a tax on oil to fund education.
His book looks at how the wealthiest corporations and the billionaires are able to avoid paying taxes while they push privatization of public education and public services.
http://www.epetermathews.com/dollar-democracy-op-ed

(First floor theater)
The Border-Labor, Immigration And Worker Organizing
With Al Rojas - LACLAA Sacramento, founder of United Farmworkers
Al Rojas grew up as an agricultural worker in California and was one of the founders of the UFWA. He later became a Labor Commissioner and is now active in Labor Council For Latin American Advancement in Sacramento.
Adan Robles is a member of Los Angeles Unite Here Local 11 and works as a hotel worker in Los Angeles. He was also active in the SEIU 399 janitors struggle in Los Angeles and a member of the Multi-Racial Alliance.

Discussion will focus on the events since 2006 when the largest mobilization among worker class immigrants in modern U.S. history took place. It will also look at the effects of the militarization of the border and ongoing ICE campaigns of terror resulting in the deportation of thousands of workers and the separations of families, which is responsible for nearly 30,000 children placed in foster care. The forum will also look at the effect of SB 744, the so-called “Immigration Reform” legislation and explore the reasons it is being supported by the AFL-CIO and the UFW.

12:30 - 2:00 PM
(3rd floor Room A)
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies
By Seth Holmes
Seth Holmes’ book is an ethnographic witness to the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants. The book is based on five years of research in the fields following migrant workers from Oaxaca as they travel up and down the U.S. West Coast following seasonal crops. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies weds the theoretical analysis of the anthropologist with the intimacy of the journalist to provide a compelling examination of structural and symbolic violence, medicalization, and the clinical gaze as they affect the experiences and perceptions of indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers, farm owners, doctors, and nurses. This reflexive, embodied anthropology deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which socially structured suffering comes to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care.
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520275140

(3rd floor Room B)
Empire-Logistics & Global Supply Chains Mapping international networks of solidarity
With Gifford Hartman and Frank McMurray
This presentation examines the modern system of production and distribution of goods along vast supply chains, a “factory without walls,” that encircle the planet. This system has decimated the ability of workers across the world to fight for better pay, benefits and working conditions. Gifford Hartman (an adult education teacher) of the Empire-Logistics Mapping Project is creating an online, interactive map to chart commodity chains across the globe. The Project’s goal: Give workers information they need to create solidarity up and down the supply chain, and across sectors, borders – and even oceans – as they struggle against rampant exploitation.
http://www.transportworkers.org/node/1126

(First floor theater)
Migrant Workers In China, Culture, Media and The Communication Revolution
By Bu-Wei
Professor Bu-Wei, who is a professor at the Institute For Journalism & Communication with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, studies the migrant workers in China. These 260 million workers are now becoming urbanites and are using their use of the cell phone to communicate and get their stories out.
She also works with Chinese migrant worker artists, film makers and cultural workers including a Migrant Workers Band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbMURTERnk&feature=youtu.be

2:30 - 4:00 PM
(3rd floor Room A)
Income Inequality, Thomas Picketty and Capitalism
A Critique By Charles Andrew
Thomas Picketty has written a new book called Capitalism In The Twenty-First Century. His view is that capitalism is creating growing economic inequality that threatens the social and political stability of capitalism itself.
Charles Andrews who is a writer about healthcare, and worked in the past with the California Nurses Association, will look at the contradictions and problems with Picketty’s new book.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/andrews220314.html

(3rd floor Room B)
Save Our Unions Dispatchers From A Movement In Distress
By Steve Early
Labor Journalist and CWA-TNG Local 39521/Pacific Media Workers Guild member Steve Early’s latest book Save Our Unions Dispatches from A Movement in Distress looks at the state of the labor movement from the struggles of activists and dissidents within many unions including the Teamsters, TWU, miners and CWA. He looks at programs such as “corporate wellness” program and labor management partnerships and how these programs end up emasculating workers and their unions.
He also looks at the battle within the AFL-CIO that led to the formation of Change To Win and what that did to the labor movement.
As the war on labor continues this book shows some of what labor is doing to respond.
From: http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb4277/
"Piketty's work is a demonstration of the adage: follow the money. Good advice. But when you need deep understanding of society, follow the labor."

(First floor theater)
Panel Discussion -
From the Border to the Valleys –
Oppression and resistance in the fields of California, Washington and the Southwest
From the U.S./Mexico border regions to the farm valleys of Washington, California and Arizona, farmworkers face low wages, long hours, sexual abuse including rape in the fields, dangerous and punitive border conditions, high rates of injury and death and a host of other issues. A broad grouping of authors and activists will discuss the structures that produce “colonized labor”, some of the key features of the fields today and the beginnings of some new activism.

Panelists include:
Gilbert Gonzales, UCI professor author of Guest Worker or Colonized Labor
http://www.paradigmpublishers.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=367828
Seth Holmes, UCB Medical Anthropologist and author of Fresh Fruit and Broken Bodies
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520275140
Maria Blum-Sullivan, activist with the Center for Farmworker Families in Watsonville
http://www.farmworkerfamily.org/
Froilan Medina, veteran farmworker activist from the 1970s and currently active in the Calexico-Mexicali border area
Bruce Neuburger, author of Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California.
http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb3324/

4:00 - 5:30 PM
(3rd floor Room B)
Labor Struggles in the Carnation Revolution
By Sharat G. Lin
The overthrow of the Estado Novo military government of Portugal after a 48-year-old dictatorship in 1974 freed Portugal’s remaining colonies and spawned new political parties, trade unions, and social movements for land reform, worker takeovers, nationalizations, and even collectivization. It was accomplished without a shot being fired and the revolution was named the “Carnation Revolution”

Sharat will discuss the historical and socio-economic context and recount his experiences during the Portuguese Revolution.
http://www.sanjosepeace.org/article.php/20120126083538624 (Sharat Lin)

(First floor theater)
Forum - KPFA, Pacifica, Unions And Labor
KPFA and Pacifica are the most important broadcast platforms for labor news and information. They provide more news and voices from working people and unions that any other national broadcast network. This panel will look at the struggles at KPFA and Pacifica and the role of organized labor in KPFA and Pacifica. It will also look at how KPFA and Pacifica can help develop a national multi-media labor platform.
Initial Speakers: Jeff Blankfort, Journalist and radio host at KZYX; Speakers from KPFA CWA Staff and Unpaid Staff Organization
See also for this forum:
http://www.unitedforcommunityradio.org/
https://www.facebook.com/UnitedForCommunityRadio

See also:
http://www.laborfest.net/2014/2014Bookfair.htm
http://www.laborfest.net/2014/2014schedule.htm