Young California Unionists on Their Way to Detroit

A Labor Notes fundraising party in the Bay Area on Superbowl Sunday raised more than $1,500 to send young activists to the Labor Notes Conference April 23-25 in Detroit. At the “Superbowl/Anti-Superbowl” party, guests divided into separate spaces to watch the game or to ignore it. We asked for a donation of $20, or much more from those who could afford it—with excellent results.

Guests reunited to hear two short talks, from Daniel Ray, a volunteer organizer for the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and, at halftime, Juan Garcia, a local officer of the Coalition of University Employees, who described the worker/student/faculty fight at the University of California and the coalition for a statewide March 4 Day of Action to save public education. Garcia said, "We have to think of the struggle for a fully funded public education as a struggle of the workers for fully staffed jobs and for job rights."

SUPPORT LABOR NOTES

BECOME A MONTHLY DONOR

Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt.

Ray said, “We need resources so we can send our young activists to Michigan so they can become the future leaders of this movement….They have been threatened with their job, their health care, and in some cases in Fresno, their citizenship….The opportunity of learning at Labor Notes will give these workers the tools necessary in empowering their lives and allow them to pass on their knowledge to their fellow brothers and sisters, not to mention a chance to build solidarity with other rank-and-file activists who share the same experiences.”

Activists in other cities are planning their own fundraisers to send folks to the Labor Notes Conference. For advice and materials, call Tiffany Ten Eyck at 313-842-6262.