Next Up Young Worker Council Needs Your Input!
Kurston Cook, AFL-CIO Young Worker coordinator, sends us this.
Next week, 20 members of the AFL-CIO Young Worker Advisory Council will meet in Washington, D.C., to finalize the 2012 work plan for the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Worker Program. The advisory council advises the AFL-CIO on its programming as it relates to young people, and leaders implementation of these programs. One major goal of Next Up is to be a voice for all young workers and to provide inspiring and relevant opportunities for participation within the labor movement.
So, we want to hear from you!
What would you like to see the AFL-CIO’s Next Up Program focus on in 2012? How about in the next three years? How can the AFL-CIO and the advisory council best meet the needs of young workers, young worker groups, and your respective communities? Next Up is for young workers by young workers, so your ideas and insights are important.
Please send us your ideas on Facebook here or via the Twitter hashtag #YWAC2012. We will review them at next week’s Young Worker Advisory Council meeting and report back with a plan.
As cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead has said:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
We look forward to hearing your ideas.
Teach-In Highlights Power of Students and Workers Joining Forces
Speaking at tonight’s AFL-CIO National Teach-In on jobs and the economy, Terasia Bradford summed up the sense of the audience and the nation when she said, “The attacks on workers and the attacks on the middle class affect us all.”
The Ohio State University (OSU) student and member of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) also described how OSU students have rallied around the efforts to overturn Gov. John Kasich’s (R) legislation that eliminates the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public employees.
We believe that worker power and student power together can really effect change.
The Teach-In, webcast live from the University of California campus in Washington, D.C., is part of the AFL-CIO’s National Week of Action on jobs and the economy. The event focused on the nation’s jobs crisis and how student activists are fighting for workers’ rights, equal access to education, equitable taxation and economic and social justice.
Join America Wants to Work National Teach-In Tonight
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Tune in tonight (7-8:30 p.m. EDT) to join a live webcast of the AFL-CIO National Teach-In on jobs and the economy. Click here for the live webcast. The Teach-In is part of the AFL-CIO’s National Week of Action demanding Congress promote a real jobs agenda.
The Students Rising for Jobs and Economic Justice Teach-In also will be broadcast to dozens of college campuses around the country and will be followed by local discussions. Click here to find a Teach-In event near you. You also can follow the Teach-In on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/jobsteachin.
The Teach-In will focus on the jobs crisis and how student activists are fighting for workers’ rights, equal access to education, equitable taxation and economic and social justice.
MoveOn.org’s Lenore Palladino will moderate the Teach-In that will feature Frances Fox Read the rest of this entry »
Next Up: Trumka Calls for Young People to Use ‘Critical Imagination’
Emelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, is in Minneapolis for the Next Up Young Workers Summit and sends us this report.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka came to Minneapolis today to help send off the 800 attendees concluding the Next Up Young Workers Summit. He capped off a successful weekend with an inspiring speech that called for young people to use their “critical imagination,” their ability to look at problems and come up with new and different solutions.
He told the crowd, “America needs a good dose of critical imagination right about now. We need ideas and energy. We need enthusiasm, optimism, that sense that everything is possible.…You are the future of this movement, and all of us—all of America’s working people—need and your critical imagination in a big way.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Next Up Summit Supports Occupy Wall Street Protests
The 800 young workers, activists and students at the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Worker Summit in Minneapolis announced their strong support of the Occupy Wall Street protesters:
”The world in which we live isn’t working for the vast majority of people. The top 1 percent controls the economy, makes profits at the expense of working people, and dominates the political debate. Wall Street symbolizes this simple truth: a small group of people have the lives and livelihoods of working Americans in their hands.
“In the last two weeks, young people have sparked a movement on Wall Street, just as they did through the Arab Spring and in Wisconsin against Scott Walker. Participants at the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Worker Summit left Occupy Wall Street to join with young people in the labor movement to talk about how best to take back our economy for the middle class.
Next Up Young Workers Say: America Wants to Work
Ja-Rei Wang, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, is in Minneapolis for the Next Up Young Workers Summit and sends us this report.
The focus stayed on jobs yesterday in Minneapolis on the third day of AFL-CIO’s Next Up Young Worker Summit. After attending workshops organized and led by summit participants, the 800 young workers, organizers and students came together for a town hall to discuss ways to keep the spotlight on the issue on every participant’s mind.
Fred Azcarate, AFL-CIO, led the America Wants to Work town hall and outlined the AFL-CIO’s six-point action plan to put America back to work. Participants built on those plans and brainstormed more ways to take action in their own communities. One of the main goals was to ensure people continue talking about and taking action for jobs. Some suggested using social media more effectively and consistently, which would then also draw the attention of the mainstream press.
Next Up: Young People Take Action to Address Economic Inequality
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Emmelle Israel, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, is in Minneapolis for the Next Up Young Workers Summit and sends us this report.
Along with 800 young workers, students, and activists, I marched down the streets of downtown Minneapolis, calling for “Good Jobs Now!” during the 2011 AFL-CIO Next Up Young Workers Summit.
The march from the summit to the City Government Plaza Light Rail Station was nearly a mile long. Next Up attendees chanted and raised signs to make their demand of “Good Jobs Now!” known the whole way.
Several taxi drivers, postal delivery workers and bus drivers honked their horns in support as the group marched to the light rail station.
Once at the City Government Plaza Light Rail Station, Jessica Hayssen of the AFL-CIO Young Workers Advisory Committee and the Minnesota AFL-CIO MCed the rally. First up was Mike O’Brian a.k.a. OB, from Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500, who performed his original rap, “One Day Longer.” The song was about a strike his union went through and encourages those on the picket line, telling them that “One day longer” makes them “One day stronger.”
Next, Mike Stenberg, a Metro Transit Operator from ATU Local 1005 in Minneapolis, spoke about how the union job he has now improved the lives of him, his wife and their two young children. He said:
I worked jobs before that were non-union. I wasn’t able to support my family… But now with Metro Transit I’m able to supply my family with a better livelihood. My American dream can come true where before I couldn’t see that happening.
Next Up: What Kind of America Do We Want to Live In?
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Ja-Rei Wang, a fellow in the AFL-CIO Public Affairs Department, is taking part in the AFL-CIO Next Up Young Workers Summit and sends us the latest.
What kind of America do we want to live in? This was the big question raised this morning during the State of the Union plenary, part of the second national Next Up youth summit hosted by AFL-CIO in Minneapolis. Panelists urged the 800 young workers, organizers and students in the room to work together to define their vision for the kind of economically just world they want to live in and to fight for it.
Speakers told the audience to look beyond the current attacks on working people and to recognize the incredible opportunity we have to make change for the better. Ben Waxman, from the AFL-CIO, said to participants:
This is your moment. Take back the country you love.
Young Workers to March for Good Jobs
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Hundreds of young people from across the country will march through downtown Minneapolis this afternoon to call for good jobs and a middle-class economy. Starting at 5 p.m. CDT, the group will march from the Hilton to the City Government Plaza Light Rail Station.
The young working people, students and activists are among the 800 participants at the second national Next Up Young Worker Summit hosted by the AFL-CIO. They will deliver the message that workers didn’t create the economic mess we are in, but we are poised to fix it.
This economic crisis has disproportionately impacted young people and will have long-term repercussions on their ability to raise families, buy homes and live the American Dream. But as a panel of young activists this morning told participants, young people can help make needed change.
Lisa Jordan, education director for the United Steelworkers (USW) said the short-sighted economic policies of the last 30 years that favored deregulation and privatization cost the nation millions of manufacturing jobs. We lost millions more in industries that supply and support manufacturing, she said. Any real economic recovery will require restoring the manufacturing base, she said. Read the rest of this entry »
Shuler: Fresh Generation of Activists Needed to Turn America Around
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The economic and social problems, the hate and the fear we see around us today can only be solved by a fresh generation of committed, smart, tireless and creative activists, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told the nearly 800 young workers, activists and student at the Next Up Young Workers Summit today.
“And—I’m going to go out on a limb here—but I think you are those people,” she said.
In her keynote address to the conference, which opened today in Minneapolis, Shuler said the situation in the global economy is dire. Massive change is needed to turn it around. Young workers are being told to “suck it up” and live in a world without jobs, she said.
We’re being told that America can’t afford teachers—but we can afford CEO tax cuts. We’re being asked to accept a society that rewards wealth and punishes work. A society that makes it harder for young people to go to college. A society where hate is growing and targeting people of color, people of different faiths, people who are LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer], immigrants–it’s shameful.
Shuler urged the participants to create coalitions back home to build a movement to take back the American Dream. Read the rest of this entry »
