Note: If you RSVP and do not receive the Zoom, please email doreen@nhpeaceaction.org. Sometimes the system can't get through certain email providers.

Labor and Peace Activists have worked in solidarity at times, but have been too often working on separate tracks or even divided. During the Cold War, with so many jobs in the U.S. created by pentagon contracts, the Labor and Peace movements drifted pretty far apart. But after globalization in the 1970s shattered the social contract between U.S. nationalism and domestic manufacturing, and after the end of the Cold War in 1989 even more so, the labor movement grew most strongly in true peacetime pursuits like health care, the public and service sectors, and education. Why didn't this allow a return to the unity of Labor and Peace that preceded "the total war economy"? Harris Gruman of SEIU Massachusetts will discuss the enduring legacies of partisan politics and military Keynsianism and how that have kept the Labor movement away from issues of peace and foreign affairs -- even after a rapprochement between the Environmental movement and Labor has been gaining ground.

Harris Gruman is the Executive Director of the Service Employees International Union Massachusetts State Council. In that role he has helped lead campaigns to win union rights for child care providers and rideshare drivers. Since 2013 he has helped lead the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition of labor, community and faith organizations, which has nearly doubled the minimum wage to $15-per-hour, created the most extensive paid family and medical leave program in the U.S., and won a constitutional amendment to raise tax rates on the top One Percent. In 2024 Harris joined the board of directors of Mass. Peace Action and is active in their Ukraine: a Time for Peace working group.

About NHPA’s bi-weekly Zoom Peace & Justice Conversation Series: 2020’s upheavals brought us to a new moment of reckoning and possibility. How do we want to live in the world? What do we value? How can we make the changes we’ve been yearning for? NH Peace Action has been engaged in working for change for decades. We’d like to bring you into these conversations about issues and options for the future.  There is no charge to attend, but your contributions in any amount are greatly appreciated.

Cosponsored by Massachusetts Nurses Association, Massachusetts Peace Action,  and SEIU Local 509.