Labor Caucus at Netroots Nation
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Elana Levin, communications director for the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), joined us at the recent Labor Caucus during the Netroots Nation 2010 conference of bloggers and online activists.
We had a lot to cover at this year’s Labor Caucus at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas last week. Some 70 participants took part—the largest-ever since we met five years ago at the first such national blogger conference. Participants included union staff, union members, political activists, labor bloggers, community organizations and candidates both past and present. The moderators were the AFL-CIO’s own Tula Connell and Matt Browner Hamlin of SEIU. We focused our discussion on young workers/young people in labor and how to improve public perception of labor unions.
Browner Hamlin brought up how the enemies of the netroots are the same pro-greed forces who are enemies of working people and the union movement. We have a lot of experience fighting against the corporate lobbies who sponsor astro-turf campaigns against the public interest and it would be good for the labor movement and the netroots to work together to stand up to the usual suspects that vex us all. Read the rest of this entry »
Netroots Nation: Tell Us Your Ideas for the Labor Caucus
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Netroots Nation, the annual gathering of some 2,000 progressive bloggers and activists, is coming up fast—July 22–25—and we need your input on topics we should focus on at the Labor Caucus we hold there every year.
Labor communicators from the AFL-CIO, Change to Win and independent unions take part in the Labor Caucus, as well as allies from groups such as Jobs with Justice. This year, Matt Browner-Hamlin from SEIU and I are co-hosting it, and we want your input to help frame the agenda.
Netroots Nation: The Labor Caucus
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The union movement has come a long way online, and at this year’s Netroots Nation conference, online union activists got a chance to check in and talk about where we still need to go. This year’s Labor Caucus was the largest yet since we first got together at what was then the YearlyKos convention in 2006.
About 60 people came out for the caucus, mostly union members and union staffers from across the movement but also bloggers and activists who support workers. Our own Tula Connell and Michael Whitney of SEIU moderated the session.
We kicked off the caucus by noting what we’ve accomplished thus far. The strong union participation in Netroots Nation is a good sign we’re a vibrant, important part of the progressive blogging community now. We’ve made the case that working family issues are progressive issues.
