For 500-years, “the cause of labor is the hope of the world.” We begin in the conflict over the collection of firewood and then circulate through the witch-hunts, pirate utopias and slave resistance, corresponding societies and the communards of Paris, the 8-hour day movement and mine wars, great sit-down strikes and great migrations, wartime strikes and the Treaty of Detroit, neo-liberal responses to worker-student and civil rights movements, and the return of the labor movement today. Our stories reverberate throughout labor history, across the planet, and in our working lives.  

Union organizer, labor educator, and author, Kevin Van Meter, Ph.D. is a teaching fellow at the Scontras Center for Labor and Community Education at the University of Southern Maine.