Socialists on the Job: A Cross-Generation Conversation

Start: 2021-05-19 20:00:00 UTC Eastern Standard Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

End: 2021-05-19 22:00:00 UTC Eastern Standard Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

This is a virtual event

Socialists on the Job, Part 3 has arrived! Join us for the next panel in our series.

We will be hearing from panelists:

Ajamu Dillahunt, who organized as a postal worker in North Carolina for over 30 years.

Bill Breihan, who began working as a steelworker in the late 60’s and organized for decades.

Elly Leary, who organized as an autoworker in the 70’s and 80’s.

Eric Brandt, who organized as a coal miner through the 70’s, and as a member of the Miners Right to Strike Committee in West Virginia.

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In the 1970s, many left organizations encouraged their members to get traditional (however they chose to define that) working-class jobs. They hoped to play a part in amping up class struggle, leading fights against bosses, and replacing bureaucratic union leaders. They also hoped to recruit workers to socialist politics and to transform groups rooted in the student movement into groups rooted in the working-class.

As a result, a few thousand former student radicals got jobs as miners, auto workers, steel workers, truck drivers, railroad workers and phone company technicians. Others took the same class-struggle outlook with them as they became public employees, such as teachers, social workers, or public transit workers.

Join us for a discussion with a few who participated in that process as they discuss their experiences, what they learned from them, how their groups were affected, and what lessons there might be for a new generation of radicals looking for ways to make their jobs places where they can fight for democracy, workers' power, and socialism.

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