Boots Riley on Power, Art, and the Radical Dr. King

Full Transcript Available Here.

Laborwave Radio presents a reproduction of audio from a live discussion between Boots Riley and Andrea Haverkamp. The event was organized by the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE 6069) and King Legacy Advisory Board (KLAB) to honor the legacy of the radical Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and the 20th Anniversary of CGE.

“Even for us as organizers the nature of power under capitalism has been obscured. We’ve been told, for any of you who are old enough to have been around during the anti-Iraq War invasion protests of the early 2000s, people would say ‘if we could just get millions into the streets then we’ll be able to stop this war.’ And we did, we got millions of people into the streets at the same time on the same day all around the world- didn’t stop the war. Because that’s not how power works. Power doesn’t just get shamed into doing the right thing.”

#cge6069 #bootsriley #sorrytobotheryou #wayfairstrike

Graduate Employee Strike at UO and Fighting for Worker Control w/ Lola Loustaunau

The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF 3544) has authorized a strike to begin on November 4, 2019 at the University of Oregon. More than 1,000 workers authorized the strike after 11 months of intense negotiations with university management.

Lola Loustaunau, a graduate employee and member of GTFF, discusses the strategy GTFF has adopted for their collective bargaining efforts, the reasons the strike has been authorized, and the broader experience these negotiations have had on fellow workers and union members.

She also provides personal insights into how public universities are using a post-Janus environment as an opportunity to try to discipline and destroy higher ed unions, and for these reasons along with many others unions need to recommit to a vision of fundamentally transforming society and ending exploitation.

We also had a brief interview with Erin Kanzig, VP of Bargaining for the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE 6069) about their current collective bargaining efforts and their goals in bargaining.

#gtff3544 #cge6069 #giveusanedraise #strike #1u #lolaloustaunau #alexriccio #erinkanzig #theeohsees #universityoforegon