A Back Room Deal for the 1%: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Murphy Institute is known for its public programming, bringing thinkers, leaders and policymakers together to discuss the issues vital to making change in our city and our world. 

Watch Celeste Drake, Trade and Globalization Specialist, AFL-CIO discussing the Obama administration and the Trans-Pacific Partnership at “A Back-Room Deal for the 1%: The Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfCGqZrjwIg&feature=youtu.be]

Film Screening to Raise Funds for Diversity Scholarship

On May 22nd, connect with both global labor history and the ongoing fight for worker justice in this country when the Murphy Institute hosts a screening of Blood Fruit, the award-winning film documentary about the historic 1984 South African anti-apartheid labor strike. Director Sinead O’Brien and subjects from the film who staged the historic strike will be on hand, as will Kendall Fells, organizing director of Fight for $15. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Joseph S. Murphy Institute Scholarship for Diversity in Labor

Tickets available here.  

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5tIr45nmxw] Continue reading Film Screening to Raise Funds for Diversity Scholarship

Lucia Gomez-Jimenez Discusses Organizing in Immigrant Communities

The Murphy Institute is known for its public programming, bringing thinkers, leaders and policymakers together to discuss the issues vital to making change in our city and our world. 

Watch Lucia Gomez-Jimenez, Executive Director of La Fuente talk about organizing immigrant communities at a panel on “Emerging Leaders/Emerging Strategies: New Directions for Labor Studies and Its Allies” at Murphy. This event was held to celebrate the launch of the Murphy Institute Scholarship for Diversity in Labor Leadership and Labor Studies.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDShWt-P1Zs&feature=youtu.be]

Murphy Prof. Michael Fortner Publishes New Book on Politics of Punishment

Assistant Professor Michael Fortner, Academic Director of Urban Studies at the Murphy Institute, has a new book available for preorder on Amazon.

Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment will be formally released on September 7, 2015. As described on Amazon, “Black Silent Majority uncovers the role African Americans played in creating today’s system of mass incarceration… Fortner traces how many blacks in New York came to believe that the rehabilitation-focused liberal policies of the 1960s had failed. Faced with economic malaise and rising rates of addiction and crime, they blamed addicts and pushers. By 1973, the outcry from grassroots activists and civic leaders in Harlem calling for drastic measures presented Rockefeller with a welcome opportunity to crack down on crime and boost his political career. New York became the first state to mandate long prison sentences for selling or possessing narcotics.”

Photo by Kate Ter Haar via flickr (CC-BY).

Prof. Stephanie Luce Explores the Higher Wages Movement

By Michael Murphy

On April 15, protesters in New York City and across the United States engaged in a coordinated demonstration to highlight the problem of low wages for workers in the fast-food industry. This issue has resonated with workers who have seen their pay diverge in real terms from the cost of living. The “Fight for $15 on 4/15” protests brought workers together with allies in the community and organized labor in what has become a dynamic social movement. Yet the origins of this stark decline in purchasing power for workers can be found several decades ago. Why has this social movement for change emerged in recent years to place higher wages on the local and national political agenda?

In the forthcoming Spring 2015 issue of New Labor Forum, Murphy Institute Professor of Labor Studies Stephanie Luce explores the origins and influence of this movement. Continue reading Prof. Stephanie Luce Explores the Higher Wages Movement

Happy May Day — and Happy Birthday!

It’s May Day again — that’s International Workers’ Day, for those not in the know. Here in NYC, the Guggenheim’s been occupied, Free University’s been liberating education from the university-industrial complex,  the Immigrant Workers Justice Tour has marched through Manhattan and at 5pm, we’ll be Shutting It Down for Freddie Gray, starting at Union Square. (For more on today’s events — of which there are many — check out the calendar at 99pickets.org.)

Here at Murphy, we celebrate May Day as the yearly commemoration of those who have fought for a better life for the working class — while continuing to wage our struggle.

This year’s May Day marks yet another milestone: the one-year anniversary of this blog.  Continue reading Happy May Day — and Happy Birthday!

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