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Instruction Mode: Online
Recent community-labor collaborations to create new forms of collective representation have received considerable attention – and rightly so, since they have succeeded in reforming neoliberal modes of governing labor markets and workplaces. This course contextualizes these bottom-up innovations, by surveying the historical development of the intersection between community organizing and labor organizing. To understand the changing nature of the community-labor connection, we will examine successive case studies – from New England’s mill towns to Seattle’s ‘Fight for Fifteen’. We will use these cases not just to clarify the range of factors shaping the community-labor relationship across varying locales, but also to identify historical patterns in the resources that organizers drew upon and the constraints they faced in building solidarity within communities and among workers. Ultimately, our survey will highlight the recurrence of the community-labor connection throughout U.S. labor history, and the connection’s vital role in successive movements to democratize U.S. political economy.