lot of union activism and community organizing and conducts educational workshops we've had him at the pacific northwest labor history association and i know he does great presentations then we have ri united students against sweat shops at u w she's an undergraduate public health major comes from a strong union family works as a student organizer in u s students against sweatshops  and has helped to take control of the university of washington's multimillion dollar contracts with huge corporations that explain garment workers in developing countries where  all sometimes it takes a group of leverage to take control of an issue and the students at u w have really done that the university can't sell all this paraphernalia if people won't buy it and they have a pressure point and they're using it so  we've got all that and then we've got one more person that i don't have the news for is dean mcgrath you local thirty two twenty three i'm sorry and maybe you can introduce yourself a little bit when you do it did i miss somebody yes oh yes jim buss i'm sorry sociology university of california berkeley and i have her on here also jim's a leading scholar organizer immigrants right campaigner labor historian her books include rallying for immigrant rights the fight for inclusion and twenty first century america book that a lot of us use called hard work remaking the labor movement number one rebuilding labor organizing an organizers in the new union movement with ruth milkman and a book on the knights of labor and class formation in the nineteenth century so very extensive scholarship but also very extensive activism and organizing and fighting for labor rights so our topic here is sort of multiple building alliances across movements so some questions posed hopefully each person can talk about ten minutes and i think really important in this panel is to open it up for questions probably our best way of really addressing these questions so one question you might think about this while you're hearing presentations how can community identity and labor organizations work together to build alliances time out beyond the scope of unions identity  groups community groups of all kinds how can we build alliances this is obviously very important on the fifteen dollar minimum wage campaign among many others what are the barriers that prevent that and how can those barriers be overcome third are there demographic changes in seattle and in this area that actually are opportunities for building these alliances i think that there are for how can the problems facing workers today be made visible to other groups who are working on their own sets of issues g b t women's rights environmental anti racist groups how can we highlight labor as part of all of those struggles oftentimes labor gets seen as quote a special interest kind of put to the side actually that's not what we want we want i den a fixation of labor rights and labor movement as part of everything else that's going on and how about any recent campaigns have we seen some evidence of change or progress or hope through recent campaigns and then maybe most importantly and maybe we could start with this one what experiences or perspectives have the individuals on the panel gained these kinds of issues so you know those are a lot of questions people have some prepared remarks maybe one way to start is introducing yourself a little bit in your own experience and then address some of the issues and i'll try to be you know give you a wave after about ten minutes so that we have enough time to get everybody in the audience involved sound ok so i guess we'll just go in the order of the  maybe standing is good because the people in the back and i'll give you this microphone right i can stand i'm not too tall ok can you hear me ok my name is katherine i'm a student organizer with united students against sweat shops here on campus i come from a teamster family my mom especially is a very strong teamster very active in her union i i joined us last last year for anyone that's not familiar with the work that you saw stas were an affiliate of a national student organization that organizes strategic campaigns in solidarity with elected union leadership on the campus in the greater seattle community and with workers producing has parallel around the world this my comment is a shock to some administrators that i know but believe it or not the university belongs to students it operates for the students and without the students there would be no university and using our leverage as the stakeholders in this university were able to influence decision making around multi million dollar contracts with corporate giants that are exploiting workers to make our husky apparel time and time again you sauce sas has rallied student voices to speak along with other communities whose voices aren't always heard we operate under the radical notion that our social  most effective when they're led by the people most affected by them and thus our group is bounded to the idea of collective liberation aboriginal elder watson once said if you've come here to help me you're wasting your time but if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine let us work together and that really encompasses what we do works in empowerment solidarity and as it turns out this works over the last couple of years we've got brands such as nike adidas and russell off the ticks to their knees forcing them to have a conscious conscience and respect their workers and they're afraid of us because we don't lose you sas has never lost a campaign and we do this by building those alliances that are so critical to our success as a student at the university i don't know what it's like to be a garment worker in hunter s i don't know what it's like to be a custodial worker at the university of washington but i do know what it's like to have my voice dismissed because i'm just a student and using that i am able to act in solidarity with workers around the world everywhere from our campus to around the world i do know that by building student power we can support those whose voices have been stolen from them the word solidarity is thrown out a lot but to me to use sas being supporting those who don't yet realized that they have that power when garment workers in bangladesh for example reach out to us and say hey we need help and where there but it's their voice that's being heard hearing worker testimony testimonials about sexual harassment blatant racism and other forms of discrimination is why you sassed fights labor is a movement will never progress until we intentionally invest in the leadership of those for whom workplace suppress disproportionately affects including women people of color community is another marginalized identities and we do so by building the alliances that are so critical to our success because if one of us is a press then we're all oppressed this year you saw successfully ran a campaign to change the youth of code of conduct so that every collegiate licensee is required to sign on to the accord on fire and building safety in bangladesh which is a legally binding document that holds brands accountable for the safety conditions their factories yet as of two days ago the university continues to refuse to cut the contract with jan sport and their parent company vs corporation who happens to be the biggest producer of collegiate apparel in bangladesh this is a big issue in this is happening the most recent refusal comes on the one year anniversary of the rana plaza building collapse which i'm sure many of you have heard of it was the single most devastating factory disaster in the history of the garment industry killing twelve hundred people in one fell swoop and left survivors in the rubble for seventeen days after this collapse until this last domino has fallen workers in bangladesh will not be protected but without the support of community members and students across the campus this fight will be a whole lot harder i would hate to see how ski apparel in the rubble of the next great factory disaster because i care about this university i care about the image that it sets forth and i care about the workers in those factories that are making these calls for us it's only in building these coalitions in these relationships of people that we can make that happen thank you power on the pacific northwest one of the unions that really maintains the idea of worker solidarity i was just reading about a big fight that they were leading to protest the murder of honduran trade union leaders  and the union has you know fought against south african apartheid and fought against repression and various central american countries and it really puts its money where its mouth is so please welcome dean here thank you got a planet like to stay on it please demographic i got no you didn't hurt my feelings with introduction on the new guy president down there local twenty three so no no hard feelings there  i'd also like to say before i speak a little bit i'd like to thank you guys all for being here this is really what it boils down to is what we are going to do and that includes all of you and if we if we don't think like that then it's over and we're go lose it's not about what i can do what he can do and in the present united states whoever it really boils down to what you guys are going to do and our choices that we make and i thank you for being here that show you know you could be at home doing you tube or whatever you're here this isn't you know fun by any means you guys are taking care of business in participating so thank you there he said early on part of the l w and for those who aren't familiar we load  unload the ships on the west coast of the united states we were pretty militant movement with a lot of belief in social principles you know want to take care of people that either makes us extremely loved or extremely hated and i wouldn't want to be any other way as i was going to ready for this last am a talk to you guys a little about international solidarity and ironically as i was just as i was opening i was going over some of our  our principles are ten guiding principles because it relates you know it's really important but in addition i was here to talk about solidarity and international solidarity and i got the pleasure to be the guy that really got to help someone out last night i got a call from the t f and what they are there there are international organization that goes on ships and makes sure that all the paperwork is right and some of the mates on the ships go through unbelievable you know we talk about a global world what's going on in the globe is downright scary you know these guys six months they don't get paid so the crew last night hadn't been paid the captain made assurances for them to get paid she's on the ship and he's given her the runaround  and i had the kids last night so i can go down there and i said put the phone up by the captain i can't get down there but so she she's got the phone is no cell phones no cell phones and captain we can talk about there's no or we can talk about it tomorrow when when you're supposed to be working the ship so you do it you say or discuss it then it's up to you and why i bring that to you is because if if we don't treat each other with the same amount of respect that we treat our own organizations it's just it's no skin off my back that ship comes in my guys work but they're going to be times when i don't get to be the bigger dog and i'm going to rely on other unions other people and the public for that matter which is why i think we have survived as a union for so long in an age where obviously unions are not looked upon what the respect they deserve now it's almost you know it's like a dirty word now and even and it's ingrained in all of us through the media and what not if you know there's times when i've introduced myself like what are you depending on where i'm out because i'm either like i said respected greatly for those of us that understand unionism or those guys you know but that's ok and i think that we need to embrace that and we have no problem doing that but really would lie on all of the other organizations and why solidarity is so important to us i'll go in and touch on a couple of points or a couple of  the founding principles as i was thinking about this you know i try to get creative and try to how can we do this how can we beat this and it really comes down to this it's the same old fight that's always been it's in my eyes and what would that be does anyone wan suggestion what's the oldest fight in the book the haves and the have nots really that's all it comes down to so we can dress it up and you can hear it talked about many complicated ways but it really boils down to capital versus labor so you know i have to check myself regularly and not get caught up in that stuff get back to the ground and know and it's worth some scary times for labor i have to also remind myself not to be scared because we've gone through horrible fights in the past and we've came out so as as we've touched upon earlier yeah it's pretty ugly right now if we stick together we go back to what's worked in the past and i think solidarity and unity is key to that we'll get through these struggles but it but again it's going to come down to you it's going to come down to all of us together doing that as a collective that's our core principle as a union is built on its membership strength an understanding of unity of membership can determine their own needs so i would ask you as i say a couple of these not just to think of it as a union but as it applies to whatever organizations you're you're part of and society you know we are built on what is supposed to be a democratic society where all of our individual wills together make those decisions now as he pointed out earlier that that's being devastated that principle we really need to remind ourselves it's key to go back to what's worked in the past and i would say to any of the leaders you know harry bridges who this is founded off of this chair he made a crucial distinction when he was president that he would never make more money than the others you know any of his workers and and i think that really he had some great wisdom because it's easy and i can say good lord i'm working twelve hour days get calls nonstop i deserve more he made that principle that that notion ingrained it so that he would become stumble proof in the future because a lot of us have we separate in leadership roles we separate ourselves from who are representing and i think it's happened over the last decades that we've we've we've moved across from being who we are about and i  just think it's important principle that we always have to you know who do you represent who are you and we need to continue to reach back upon that labor unity always being the key in our decisions there's been some there's been a lot of  fighting between unions in the last few years because it were on our heels you know seven percent non private sector seven percent i'm scuse me private sector so take the public jobs out of it we're down to seven percent and i think we need to take a look at ourselves and not fight over scraps and give tug into these wars because when we do it's actually what they want they got us on their heels and they can finish this off by throwing a steak out to one and see who's left then we're down to five percent so on you see the case another thing and it works perfectly what we're talking about here is workers are invisible so as as really we got to think globally because they're thinking globally the employers right now are what are they it's ironic it's laughable they're unionizing but they're unionizing with dollars right they don't sign a pledge card they're now an alliance of some sort i love  the citizens united things like that you know they call it the opposite of what it is and then throw money at it intil their monster and we can't fight them they learned a trick from us i think someone really you know the karl roves and sat back and said to him why are these people successful well they unionize so that now we've got the corporations unionizing and they're kind of kicking butts right now it's important we got a real unionize amongst ourselves and not not allow ourselves the inner problems that we can cause i was going to go on a couple other things but you're going to ask him questions so i would just say you know as we look to moving to the future how important international solidarity is great g mother great example coincidental hong kong doctors came to town or they came to the quest coast to show appreciation to w for the support that we gave them so they were on a tour and i got to meet a couple of brothers last week and when i talk about what exists in the global market we went over there and so did australia several unions from around the world and showed up because they they were getting just hammered in their contract negotiation and they were get replaced and with our support and support of other workers international organisations they got a contract and they got some some what they thought were great things what they thought were great things made my jaw drop they got clean drinking water and they're doing the same job that i'm doing and they're working for the same employers that i'm working for so they could never do that these that you know they are doing it clean drinking water twelve hour day equipment drives to drive the cranes twelve hour shifts and now they have the ability to take a lunch break for that they're happy kind of about this that's progress and that's what we all got to do you know they're progressing and we can only get in their fight so much but as an eye opener  i won't say what i want to say about it they actually in those machines had a window that was in the machine that they threw out and you can figure out what it is they weren't allowed bathroom breaks so you put two and two together to go out and they had to eat in the same  machine those are the kind of things that are going on around the world so when we get a chance to help those guys out you know they'll be times when those guys too also said they know our contracts coming up in july so even where they're at they they let us know that d solidarity is important when they said well if the time comes you know where there and i can't even begin to ask those guys for help but what an amazing notion that they had they feel that solidarity and just to give you guys a couple examples how successful we've been through international solidarity there's been several examples of of want to ship is loaded by scab labor and and the government is in full support well sometimes we lose and we can't win that battle here but those ships got to go somewhere else and if we have allies and people we can rely on a perfect example is the neptune j in the late ninety's this ship just bounced around to different parts of the worlds and only had like seven containers on it until i went back to where it originated because everybody said we're not touching it that's how key that international solidarity is and we've been successful and we've had a long history of reaching out to other unions other people and need to continue to do that as we enter this global market i grew up i grew up a poor kid who got an opportunity to go to college because people before me fought to open up our education in may of one thousand nine hundred two i was a journeyman machinist still working on the tools and i knew i was an elected union leader and on a friday morning our own or brought us all into all the largest room in the plant and fired every one of us no notice by two thirty every one of us that outer tool box searched by armed guards they forced us to lock them wrapped duct tape around them and walked us out of the parking lot and said see ya later this was completely legal under us law i spent fifteen months out of work like sixth year on a six year lost six years on my pension exhausted my unemployment benefits and the next job i took if it took a fifty five percent because and i swore that day i'd never shut up and stop fighting for work and people until i lost my mind or they put me six feet under that's who's talking to you today since i retired i decided i was going to go out and talk to working people all over the country and in the past two and a half years i've given one hundred thirty speeches and workshops to work on people from san diego to vancouver british columbia to milwaukee detroit cleveland pittsburgh and miami florida talking to union union organizations at the national regional state and local levels but also a wide range of community based organizations to talk about what do we do what do we do to take back our country and restore our dreams that we can have a more hopeful and prosperous future for all of us where there is once again justice in our country and i got good news to report because no matter where i go work and people and their allies want to talk about this and what do they want to talk about they want to talk about their economic pain and what is being done to their families to the young people they love into their communities in very personal in real terms so that it reaches deep into their hearts and engages them they want to regain hope that people like them can actually take our country back and a critical part of that is talking about our history as a diverse working class and our allies in the past have risen up before and actually shifted the direction of history and that if our ancestors could do it so can we but without that hope we're doomed and when i bring that history to people the audience gets riled up as brother larry brown from the machinist and other folks and folks in the building trades in speech and other groups have seen the audiences get riled up their hearts are open their minds open up and then we begin the discussion of what do we do we need to they need to understand clearly the origins and the strategies of the class warfare of corporate america to smash the dreams that so many of us health and we may think that everybody knows this but they really don't people are stunned when you lay out to them this is how they're doing it this is how it works and this is a kind of catch is a decades long strategy and then the conversation begins to shift to how do we build a power that we need and how do we build coalitions across movements and across our extraordinary diversity in this country so that we can build the power that we need to take it back and and and another critical part of that is the is the fundamental question that i'm pushing people to and depending on the audience whether they're leadership or activists or just rank and file folks or regular old community folks is to get at the question what is our long term strategy to take our country back there's a lot of work at the tactical level various kinds of movements and various speakers are going to talk about those but the larger question of corporate america has been taken our country away from us now for more than thirty five years they've had a plan since the one nine hundred seventy s and needs to build that plan and we can't depend on the democratic party to do that force if we do we're being played for fools it's not like we don't need them but by god they're not going to lead the fight and that's pretty clear as we can see by what happened with the boeing machinists and not the boeing machinist the seven five one machinist one in three days boeing can walk in and get eight point seven billion dollars in tax breaks and then the governor turns around and says why don't you give up your divine benefit pension which you were the leaders in the state to actually help provide economic long term retirement security and say give it up give it up to a corporation that has record profits this is not leadership this is c these conversations that i've been leading across the country here's some of the things that come up that are that i think are truly profound and are relevant to these discussions one is the critical importance to talk to people's hearts first get them in touch with their own pain or their own families of the young people that they love and care about and how those dreams are being shattered and distorted and twisted and crushed because once they get involved with their hearts their minds open up to a set of conversations that are more difficult to have there is a deep set of hopelessness a deep sense of hopelessness but a deep sense of anger of what is being done because one of the critical parts of being hopeless used to be ignorant of your own history and as i lay out the history of working people and their fights to build a better future the vast majority of the audiences are largely ignorant not they're stupid but they are ignorant and what i point out to them your history has been stolen from you and the reason your history has been stolen from you and the reason that is so important is that if you don't know that people like you help change the course of history once upon a time what makes you think you can do it now ok so reclaiming history just isn't an interesting exercise it is about people gaining a sense of we can actually turn this around and not be victims i was victimized once upon a time but i refuse to be a victim there are too many people in the united states who have been victimized who are stuck in a victim mode and we have to help liberate them with stories of hope based on our own history and in doing so then people start the discussion of who do we unite with and one of the exercises that i use is called the blame game we start out by getting the audience to all the groups that are allegedly responsible for why america is so screwed up today and then we're going to rank them in terms of which have a lot of power which have a little power which have virtually no power and we end up with about eighteen groups with little or no power they're all the people of color they're the emigrants they're the working class people the poor folks the homeless gays and lesbians etc and then we got a few groups like the hedge fund managers and the corporate media etc who are on the top and then we kind of reflect on how is it that the groups that have no power the ones that have completely screwed it up and people are go they're lying to us i said yeah they're lying to us and then from there we move into a conversation of who are our allies currently and who should our allies be and what basis should we unite and we've used these in these workshops in different places these methods work because people's hearts are open they feel their pain it's a space where they're sharing that pain with other people they realize that they're not alone it's not their fault and that there's a way out of it because people like us have done it before we can do it again but we got to find our allies and come together across all of our diversity and across all of the barriers that are used to divide and and i'm here to tell you that we need more people out stimulating these kind of conversations in the grassroots because people are hungry for change they're hungry for hope and part of our job is to say we can do this so i thanked everybody it on yeah it's really great to be here and i'm going to have a somewhat different kind of a talk i'm primarily a researcher and i'm going to address one of the problems for this panel but michael changed it slightly when he read it to you so i'm going to give it to you here the question i'm going to address is are there recent or ongoing demographic changes creating new opportunities for building solidarity across labor and other social justice organizations but i'm not going to do it about washington state i'm here from california and i'm hoping that there are lessons in california that well at least inform i'm learning a lot about washington today but i'm hoping you can learn a lot about a little bit about california that would be useful to you  my specific question i've been researching over the last couple of years and i've been doing this with one of my graduate students and several of my undergraduates is how has large scale immigration shaped worker identities in california and i come to that question in part because if we look around at what's been happening over the last twenty years we see that the fastest growing part of the american population is recent immigrants and their children and that this is profoundly changing sort of the racial and ethnic  of the united states and certainly the way that we've understood politics in the united states yet we don't really know enough about how that's happening because we don't really know how immigrants think about the kind of traditional dividing in their own place in american hierarchy and how they think about hierarchy in general and we don't know how native born workers themselves are changing how they think about it in the wake of large scale immigration so i come to this question as really a scholar of labor not a scholar of immigration and the thing that made me really i was one of the people who looked at my whole academic career has been spent studying the labor movement  i was one of the people who talked about when the labor movement started to change i like many people in this room was very happy for example in the a f l cio change his policy about organizing immigrant workers but i was very depressed when in two thousand eight roger wallinger published a survey where he showed it is the title sort of says it all well the followers be led in which he show that they're on the ground rank and file workers in the united states and of union members in particular that there was really not that much support for that policy change so that made me wonder what's going on on the ground so i think because we don't understand what's going on in the ground we don't really know where the opportunities are for unions and n g o s to challenge growing inequality in america so the second inspiration for me was a book that was published in two thousand by michel a month which looked at how black and white workers thought about themselves and each other and the thing that was really nice about this study is that when she looked to see how workers understand themselves and others she took culture and morality into account and her study was done of new jersey and new york in the early she did interviews in the early one nine hundred ninety s and it was pretty depressing story in reality because she  when she talked to workers she found that white workers talked really a language that was focused on sort of discipline and hard work and that's how they evaluated themselves found their own sense of self worth and that when she talked african american workers that they spoke more a language  that emphasized solidarity and caring and she called that the caring self and that when they thought about those above and those below this kind of shaped how they not only thought about each other but how they thought about class in america that white workers drew very fuzzy boundaries between themselves and those above pretty sharp boundaries between themselves and those below african american workers drew less boundaries between themselves and those below most of them did not draw that many boundaries between those and those above but those who did drew sharper than the white workers and she asked them about immigrant workers and largely they were just indifferent to immigrant workers so  set out to study using that same set of questions adding a few more what workers in california think now i looked at white and latino workers and i just want to put that in perspective in terms of what's been happening with immigrant history and we see here the percent of foreign born between one thousand nine hundred and two thousand and eleven and you can see the yellow line is the u s the blue line is california california's always had more immigrants than the rest of the united states but if you look at the curve in their recent years you see that the rest of the u s is sort of following and then just so we can one more slide here if we look at the immigrants as a share of the workforce in the u s it's sixteen percent and in washington state it's almost exactly that it's sixteen and a half percent in california it's thirty five percent double that ok so as i've already said i like the study i built on i use the same set of questions i used open ended interviews i'm not going to talk now about my sampling strategy you can ask me about that later if you would like the important thing to know here is that my definition of who we would talk to were full time workers and we defined working class as had lamont by those who did not have a college education i've only talked to people in the nine county bay area but those nine counties we think the bay area is all a liberal kind of la la land i guess but in reality there is vast differences in these nine counties both demographically and in terms of politics ok and seventy eight interviews myself and my undergraduates of my graduate students forty with latino workers thirty eight with native born white workers and so we're not finished yet but i'm just going to show you what we're finding ok so when i talk to her workers the one thing that they shared in common both black and white workers was when they narrated their life with their emphasis on struggle the people we talked to they shared much more in common they definitely talked about struggle but in addition they really emphasized so for alliance and hard work and both how they understood what made their life worthwhile and how they  drew boundaries against others and you guys can all read the quotes up here on the board behind me you can see in both of these the importance of those two themes you can also see in the second quote the way in which hard work provides this sharp sort of boundaries that workers drive draw between themselves and others right so she's talking about the lazy etc and i could multiply these quotes a million times over but i won't the thing that i conclude from this is that the  people we talked to in the months terms all emphasize the discipline self that was fundamental to how they understood themselves and each other and how they evaluated that's each other however the opportunity to have children the white workers did not talk a language of obstacles instead they talked a language of choice that they had chosen a different path and this was true even for workers who grew up in terrible conditions they still narrated it as a choice and they also articulated a notion of a good life that did not depend upon a college education most of the people we talk to identify themselves as working class not all but many of them do and all believe that class divides the united states whites believe though there's their way that they thought about those above shared a lot in common but also had some differences when whites talked about those above they criticize them for using problematic short short cuts to get where they are they criticize them for using connections to get where they are and they talked about their using unfair advantages to get ahead they were very skeptical that greater education equal greater skills they criticized the weak work ethic and sense of entitlement of those above and they criticize greed big business mindset corporate corporate mindset and this was a theme that you never see when you look at the surveys about any quality and what people think about it is they talk a lot about the ways in which those above screwed with their lives  unthinkingly and here you can see two quotes that demonstrate that you know the first is by a white worker who talks about a boss he had who had a frat boy attitude and that has led to the way that he treats people and the second quote is by a white construction worker that again talks about big business mindset the problems that happens when they interfere with with with this worker and his colleagues lives when when latinos criticize those above they had a somewhat different criticism they did not focus on the undeserved privilege in fact they admire people who take advantage of the opportunities they have but they did express  unprompted great critique of any quality in the united states they also expressed disapproval of the greed of the upper class and emphasize the responsibility of the rich to help the poor which they believe they do not do and here are two quotes there that show that both from a latino construction worker and from a latino janitor talking about how the rich only look out for themselves when they talk about those below the majority of latinos expressed solidarity with the poor but is very circumscribed solidarity mainly for children for the sick for recent immigrants white workers did not shop draw that sharp a boundary as they just rarely discuss the poor even when probs but the one place and which they both grew very sharp boundaries what it was against people on public assistance but tino's did that because they felt like that showed that people had not taken advantage of the opportunities they had whites made a distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor and some had even been on public assistance themselves criticize himself for when they had ok so if we look at racial boundaries very quickly workers many especially blue collar workers see latino immigrants as a threat to their livelihoods and sometimes to their perception of themselves as skilled workers they critique them for breaking down union standards but they consistently praise them for their work ethic and maybe i'll just read this quote because i think it really sums up well what we heard latino immigrants are coming into the construction industry and breaking the union down but they are hungry right now and a hungry person will do a lot of things and i can't blame them i see immigrant workers more as a desperation they will take the worst jobs put up with a lot more because they are desperate it's not their fault or my fault it's just how it is they were born in mexico or wherever they were born and they come here and they have to make their way and i suppose i would be doing the same thing if i were born here whatever i had to do to make it do it i feel like it's not the immigrants fault it's not their fault and we see him constantly saying this and we could see the people we talked to they they would make a critique and then they would immediately but it's not their fault or they really work hard ok in contrast the study we're comparing it with their their lamont's white interviewees never expressed any positive  views about african americans the most salient group they compare themselves to even those who were anti racist talked about sort of the every every human being you know deserves god's love but it was not about anything specific given the importance that they place on hard work and so free lions our white interviewees did not draw boundaries against even then did not draw boundaries against latinos for weak work or solidarity when they were critical they mentioned other things illegal but border crossing use of fake documents not paying taxes sending money abroad endangering others bypassing bypassing safety regulations on the work site but then they would come back to the hard work trope for our latinos whites were the most salient group whites they use the term whites and americans interchangeably whites were perceived as capable disciplined orderly and rule abiding yet they were also quick to say that those positive traits did not make them superior to l us and they were quick to say that because they do feel that many whites look down on them and here's a quote that demonstrates that americans are great because they made this country but we're smart too and they don't recognize that latinos in some ways thought they were superior they thought they were warmer and more open that they take care of the elderly and as the mother of two twenty year olds i will say that one thing that they constantly very impressive to me they constantly talk about how whites push their children out at adulthood and this was something they didn't do they criticize whites for wasting their many opportunities for their weak work ethic and their being able to rely on the government they often extend those sorts of critiques for making arguments about why and documented immigrants are deserving of membership in the us and so another very positive thing is that we had many workers who expressed a multi multicultural ethic which in the earlier study nobody did this was seen as only something in the university but both our latino and white workers did ok so here's my pulmonary conclusions mental maps may be changing along with the nation's ethnic and racial landscape that the construction of  class boundaries differs in significant ways in our study from those uncovered two decades two decades ago by lamont both white and latino interviewees drew sharper boundaries against those above and drew weaker boundaries against those below and that is really in a short time a very startling reversal so let me just make a couple more comments so if i go back to that study that sort of generated the concern on my part to talk to not not activists not the kind of people who we see here in this room but just what what ordinary people out there who are not activists think about each other and class structure in america well the hopeful part here is that what i've uncovered is really a less less hostile boundary drawing more support for multiculturalism a greater sense of similarity to each other and difference from those above the worm in the apple is that maybe this is due in part to sort of some unexpressed drawing of a comparison with african american workers you know that's a would people have suggested that to me before that's a very hard thing to prove or disprove of its unexpressed but i will say that when our white workers were talking about criticizing those who were lazy and book they later on would identify those same workers as african americans and our study in fact they were criticizing other whites often and there is big fear that the country is  really in a bad state because white workers are not working hard enough the more optimistic possibility though is that in california the public debate since the failure  proposition since the proposition one eighty seven in one nine hundred ninety four has that it's totally changed it we don't hear politicians saying anti immigrant things there anymore the whole public debates different and we may be seeing that on the ground  so in answer to the panel questions i think yes there are ongoing demographic changes that are creating new opportunities for building solidarity and challenging growing inequality thanks so we've got about fifteen minutes and we have what oh richard stolz is so rich fast version of it we got about fifteen minutes left and we want to have some audience yeah i'm just realizing and so i apologize for being a little bit leitz there are lots of things going on right now in the city of seattle but i did want to maybe appropriate that i'm coming on after at the last presentation i think one of the biggest lessons i've learned over my years organizing at the national level in local communities in different parts of the country has been the importance of organizing and how easy it is for folks to forget what organizing actually is and how hard it is and why it gets overlooked and i think one of the biggest critiques of the labor movement over the last couple of decades is there's not enough organizing there's too much service delivery and in communit organizations there's been too much emphasis on politics and mobilization and not leadership development and i think there's been lots of different conversations along those lines that hav quite met in between and i think as an organization that focuses on organizing in advocacy and politics we see tremendous opportunities on the near horizon so if you look at the statistics about demographic change in this country and in washington state we know a few things we know that by two thousand and forty united states will be a majority minority country that's because of california we also in the state of washington well we won't be majority minority by twenty forty we're going to be close and king county almost certainly will be one of the things that i've observed personally since coming to washington states i've been the director of one america for a year and a half and here for about three years has been there are some exciting and interesting experiments in projects and organizing efforts underway in washington state that i think are worthy of some attention when you think about the immigrant rights movement over the last couple of decades it would have been true twenty years ago to say that one of the most significant obstacles to succeeding politically in immigration reform was the labor movement and then towards the end of the one nine hundred ninety s there was significant shifting as there was growing recognition of demographic change and the fact that unions had to start organizing again and there was a recognition around that same time there was a pretty significant convention the a f l had that made this decision that they would supports comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship now i think it's true that not everyone in the labor movement necessarily views it the same way but certainly labor leadership made a significant decision at that point time you know it wasn't long after that that wonderful organizations know i was working at one national organization and watching the growth of i'm very fond of the national day labor organizing network and they were going as day laborers in fact i think i see hillary staring at the back of the room who's executive director of casa latina and i don't remember exactly when it the rest of the of the a f l labor movement and here in washington states i think are very unique in the fact that casa latina is actually a member of the washington state labor council and i want to reflect for a moment on why that's significant because the day laborers themselves are not part of a union but they're organiz so what strikes me is that that was groundbreaking that's a big deal not only because they accepted a predominately latino low income organization into their membership but also because most significantly they began to think differently about what it means to be a member of a union or what it means to be an organized worker and what would be the mechanisms in which to build those connections and the fact that casa latina is part of the i should say labor council is a big deal and i think it's a model for the rest of the country and something we should be very proud of across the board there are strategies emerging in organizations and across unions around the country exploring how do we learn from that experience and that's the one i'm most familiar with but how do we learn from that experience and think more broadly about worker rights and ways of organizing workers that bring all workers wherever they're coming from into the labor movement because the big issue isn't just about demographic change but as mark was saying it's the it's the fact that the labor movement has been losing steam for quite some time collective bargaining is harder than ever but i think what has been exciting about the example of angela on and the a f l in costs and washing see labor councils that these new mechanisms are coming into focus whether it's the restaurant opportunities center in the work they're doing organizing workers that aren't necessarily members of a union but a worker association or whether it's thinking more consciously about mechanisms in state or local law  that can be used to organize workers and if not as union members but perhaps as associate members or other strategies emerging from community organisations around figuring out well how do we create benefits style organisations that start to look more like unions but understanding that we don't have collective bargaining rights there are other things we can do and there are the things you can do to organize and bring different kinds of benefits that are typically enjoyed by union members but make them available to other kinds of workers in similar kinds of fights around working conditions wages access to benefits of various kinds so i think in a lot of ways that body of work emerging in a very i would i wouldn't say that it's not accorded strategy but it's been very much in some ways both grassroots thought leadership just creativity and i mean to terms with the changes the labor market and what that means for you know a growing number of low wage workers in the context of greater income inequality and uncertainty about their ability to to work their way up that these opportunities  you know are just beginning to to capture steam in really interesting exciting ways you know in our own example you know their organizations are exploring similar strategies as well but as we build our own political organization when america votes you know that concept around attaching functional benefits that can help organize workers is very much on our radar screen as we think through you know how do we build organizations that can be supported by  workers that can be sustainable for longer periods of time and not be dependent upon the charity or even the strategic interests of unions and other kinds of organizations or foundations but grounded in the support of members within communities so that i'll stop and see if there are more questions