Meeting Register Page

To Unite the Working Class - Decriminalize the Underclass

The Peter Kwong Immigrant Workers Learning Center invites you to join us for a discussion featuring presenters Michael Yates, author of the recently published Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle and Josephine Lee, a member of El Pueblo Primero workers center in Houston, TX., and the Break the Chains Alliance.

Michael Yates and Josephine Lee will give brief presentations outlining their work and perspectives to begin the conversation. Both speakers will expand upon worsening workplace conditions across trades, such as those facing restaurant workers, cruise ship employees, farm laborers, poultry packers, hotel desk clerks, adjunct professors, etc, and the criminalization of a subordinate group of workers. Additionally, Lee will focus on the role the government plays in creating and maintaining this under-class as a tactic used to divide and control workers.

The goal of this event is to emphasize the importance of uniting the working class to fight for equal rights for all in order to raise working and living conditions beyond mere survival. Participants are encouraged to join the discussion and contribute their own experiences in how the declining conditions for workers of all trades have impacted their lives, what they see as the limits of reformism, and how the underclass and super-exploited can play an important role in leading the fight to end exploitation. The discussion will be moderated by Scott Carter, Professor of Economics, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa.

Jan 12, 2023 06:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)