The International Program for Labor, Climate & Environment at the Murphy Institute will be convening a small group of trade unionists and allies to meet with Nathalie Guay, who is responsible for international affairs at the Quebec-based labor federation, Confédération des syndicats nationaux – CSN

Quebec has been the center of some major struggles in recent years, the most well known being the successful student protests in Montreal and other cities in 2012.

Nathalie will provide an update on what’s been happening in the province around union and social movement organizing.

Importantly, Montreal will be the location for the next World Social Forum (WSF) in August 2016, and unions and social movements are already planning to build a major presence. On Friday, we will also be joined by WSF organizer, Raphael Canet

Nathalie hopes that on May 29th we will have an opportunity to discuss building for a major union gathering within the WSF. There is a strong desire on the part of CSN to engage US-based union members in large numbers, and to promote stronger ties between unions in Quebec and those in the US, particularly in the Northeast.

Nathalie writes: “More information about what is a social forum and how it will be organized will be provided by Raphael Canet. As mentioned on the web site of the forum, the aim is to ‘Organize the first World Social Forum to be held in a northern country, in August of 2016, in Montreal (Canada). The objective is to reach 80,000 participants downtown of Montreal, for an event lasting 5-7 days gathering over 5,000 civil societies organisations from the local and global scene, with over 1,500 self-organized activities, an opening and closing march, a youth camp, a large cultural program and multiple convergence assemblies.”

Please join us!