New DC Institute Connects History with Activism

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Talking with striking Verizon workers on a picketline at 3am during the 2011 strike, Dennis Serrette realized that the problem was much deeper than the telecom giant’s demands for givebacks. "Many of the workers did not know their own history,” Serrette, the former Director of Education for the Communications Workers of America, said at last Sunday’s launch of the Lucy Gonzalez Parsons Institute for Education and Justice. “They did not know about the blood and sacrifice in the history of the struggle." Bill Fletcher, Jr (left), AFGE’s Education Director, recounted the life of Lucy Gonzalez Parsons -- an American labor organizer who helped found the IWW and was described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters" -- in explaining why the new education institute in DC is named in her honor. "We need a left that draws together the strands of the oppressed into a movement committed to social transformation," Fletcher said, calling for the US labor movement to embrace internationalism and to see that struggles at home are connected to battles overseas. "Global capitalism is our shared opponent," he declared. "Democracy in this country ends the moment you step into the workplace," said author Barbara Ehrenreich, recounting stories of workers denied bathroom breaks, held for hours for interrogation, subjected to searches of their personal handbags and fired for organizing unions. "We need a workers' rights movement in this country on the scale of the civil rights movement," she said to applause from the more than 50 activists gathered for the Institute’s launch. "Our Movement: Stories & Lessons for Today" kicks off a series of classes at the Institute on December 9 at 3pm at MLK Library. Click here to sign up or call 202-618-0297 - report/photo by Mackenzie Baris