Sunday, March 28, 6 pm, Location: People’s Community Center of Austin, 5604 Manor Rd, Austin
Last Sunday special event with Bill Fletcher, Jr., author of “Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice”
UT professor Robert Jensen will interview Fletcher onstage, questioning him about the social justice movements that have been the focus of his life and work. What lessons about the today’s crises can we draw from Fletcher’s experience in the struggle for racial and economic justice, at home and abroad? Drawing on Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path toward Social Justice, his 2009 book co-authored with Fernando Gapasin, Fletcher will offer new ideas for progressive organizing.
Fletcher, the executive editor of The Black Commentator web magazine and founder of the Center for Labor Renewal, is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, a national non-profit organization organizing, educating and advocating for justice for the peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. He is also a founder of the Black Radical Congress and a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. Fletcher has served as Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the AFL-CIO’s George Meany Center, as well as Education Director and Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO. Beginning in the labor movement as a rank-and-file member of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, he combined labor and community work in efforts to desegregate the Boston building trades. He later served in leadership and staff positions in District 65-United Auto Workers, National Postal Mail Handlers Union and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Fletcher recently co-wrote a provocative essay on “Reimagining Socialism” with Barbara Ehrenreich for The Nation magazine, which is available at
Sponsored by: Third Coast Activist Resource Center, MonkeyWrench Books, and Workers Defense Project. The event is free and open to the public, with a suggested donation of $10 at the door. Proceeds go to the capital campaign of the Austin People’s Community Center.