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April 29, 2008
National Conference On
Media Reform, June 6-8
 Labor communicators build the labor movement; but
they are also part of the movement to rebuild an independent
media. FreePress' National Conference on Media
Reform (NCMR) will offer
nuts-and-bolts strategies for regular folks to get
broadcasting, internet and print media out of the hands of a
few mega-corporations. Anyone who wants working
people's voices to be heard on the airwaves, in print or
across the Web should get to Minneapolis for this
conference. John See of the University of Minnesota's
Labor Education Service (an ILCA member) is a local
coordinator of the conference and can answer any questions
about it. Contact him at jsee@umn.edu.
Sessions planned at NCMR
include:
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Digital Divide/Digital
Inclusion
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The FCC: A How-to Guide for
Activists
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Media and
Elections
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Skills Session: Using Media and
PR Strategically
-
Skills Session: Messaging and
Telling Your Story
Check out these and
other conference sessions here.
Don't see a session you
like? There's room for conference goers to create and
run their own sessions. Details here.
For African Americans,
Organizing Is Worth The Struggle
At least, that's what the Center
for Economic and Policy Research concluded
in its March study comparing the economic situations of
unionized and non-unionized African Americans. From the CEPR
press release: "The report, which analyzed data from the
Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), found that
unionization raises the pay of African American workers by
about $2.00 per hour. According to the report, black workers
in unions were also 16 percentage points more likely to have
employer-provided health insurance and 19 percentage points
more likely to have employer-provided pension plan than black
workers who were not in unions." 
That's not news to many in the
labor movement, but Zenitha Prince reported last week in the
Afro American Newspaper online that actual numbers of
African Americans in unions have been declining for some time,
citing another CEPR study.
Still, Prince writes, the news
isn't all bad: some labor leaders are stepping up their
efforts to organize in communities of color alongside the
drive to organize Democratic voters to retake the White House.
Labor scholar and author Robert Zieger agreed with
this approach in an interview on the AFL-CIO website, saying
that "black workers are at the heart of organized labor's hope
for revitalization in the 21st century." Read the full
story here.
Great Labor Arts Exchange
and Conference on Creative Organizing, June 22-24
Want to learn how to write songs,
collect oral histories, practice choral singing and develop
educational materials for your union? Sign up to attend the
Great Labor Arts Exchange and Conference on Creative
Organizing in Washington, DC this summer. Click here for a downloadable brochure.
Two excellent stories are available
at www.ilcaonline.org from
ILCA member Allegro, the newsletter of AFM Local 802 in New
York. Both written by musicians, these pieces illustrate how
effective songs are in building support for labor's cause.
Charlie King
explains how labor songs have woven
themselves into the fabric of labor history in the U.S. And
Anne Feeney makes the
case that labor activists everywhere
need to learn the songs in order to really know the
movement.
Plus, this week in Swapping
Stories:
Unions Plan Permanent Workers Memorial by
Mark Gruenberg of PAI | 
