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Organizing 2.0, April 10-11, 2015: A conference for organizers, techies & activists @ Murphy
Organizing 2.0 brings together hundreds of leaders, organizers, fundraisers, techies and activists to share our collective wisdom, skills, and talents. There will be workshops, trainings, discussions, consulting and networking opportunities, visionary speakers, and a provocative debate around strategy and practices.
Over two days here at the Murphy Institute, we will bring together hundreds of people to learn from each other, share stories and strategies and build our skills, organizations and movements. Featured tracks focusing on online to offline organizing, digital strategy, member engagement and much more.
For more information, visit:
www.organizing20.org or email clenchner[at]organizing20[dot]org
Work, Play, Fight
By Zenzile Greene
Our idea for this piece was to use images as a way to explore the extracurricular life of a worker and place it directly into the context of her work space. It is a visual dialogue between her journey as a martial artist and the role it has played in her evolution as a mother, and worker as well as other identities.
<click through to see the slideshow>
The process of photographing Ellie in her traditional Gi uniform using our midtown city work space as a backdrop was a pleasantly disorienting experience. For me, photographing Ellie in this setting changed the meaning of the space as well as Ellie’s place within it. The passages in each slide are sections of an essay that Ellie wrote about her martial arts training. We wanted to convey Ellie’s body in trained movement, juxtaposing her thoughts against a series of battle positions. Continue reading Work, Play, Fight
News Round-Up
Longer days, sunny skies: hints of spring’s arrival. And today, a memorable conversation at Murphy with Black Feminist leader and social justice hero Barbara Smith, originator of the term “identity politics.” First Lady of NYC Chirlane McCray also spoke, along with Joo-Hyun Kang, Alethia Jones and Gerry Hudson.
- Over at In These Times, Bruce Vail describes the reckoning within labor, as leaders of the AFL-CIO get real about the “ugly history of racism” in the labor movement.
- What are prevailing-wage laws and why are states clamoring to repeal or scale them back? Cole Stangler at the International Business Times provides a primer.
- “Hundreds of Brooklynites flooded City Hall on Thursday to protest the city’s slow action on buying land for Bushwick Inlet Park, as real estate prices have soared in line with condo construction along the East River.” (via Village Voice)
- Will the new $1.86 billion Los Angeles NFL stadium produce well-paying, long-term jobs during and after construction? Labor groups worry about the lack of a sound agreement assuring them that it will. (via LA Times)
- After a year of contract negotiations, NYU’s graduate student union comes to a tentative contract agreement with the university regarding wages, health care, child care, and tuition remission. More from Rebecca Nathanson at Al Jazeera.
- How are worker co-ops and unions starting to work together again? Labor Press gives some hints.
Murphy Students Recognized in Public Employee Press
This month, DC37’s Public Employee Press features an article by Mike Lee on current Murphy Institute students Andra Maria Cojoc, Jerome B. Lane Jr., Jeffrey Wilson and Sheryl Calderon, all recipients of the Charles S. Ensley Scholarship. The article, entitled Local 371 celebrates 1965 welfare strikers, honors Ensley, recognizes the award recipients and describes the important role Charles Ensley played in the labor movement:
The impact of this victorious 28-day strike was far reaching: It set the stage for the massive growth of the public sector unions, especially DC 37’s parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and it reformed labor-city relations, establishing the framework for creating what later became the Office of Collective Bargaining.
The article is available in full here.
“A New Sacred Space of Words”: old shul poems and essay by Paul (Pinny) Bulman
By Samina Shahidi
I met Paul (Pinny) Bulman through an informal network of poets who have won the BRIO (the Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award and to whom I belong. This organization is sponsored by the Bronx Council of Arts. BRIO winners are respectively granted fellowships, community projects and monetary awards for chosen manuscripts and other forms. Bulman received the 2014 BRIO for his collection of poems entitled old shul. Continue reading “A New Sacred Space of Words”: old shul poems and essay by Paul (Pinny) Bulman
