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Labor Day Ain’t No Picnic

Name: Labor Day Ain’t No Picnic
Start: 2020-09-03T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2020-09-03T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Zoom

September 3, 2020 @ 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm CDT

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Labor Day Ain’t No Picnic
An event about Amazon, workers’ rights, and our community
Made possible in part with support from Cummins and Cummins

Old editorial cartoon of an octopus gathering all the goods in its tentacles and leaving nothing for workers

A century ago, farmer, labor, and community activists used an octopus to depict the ways they saw capitalist greed grasping control over work, business, community, and political life. Today, it is hard to imagine a more appropriate metaphor than such a creature for Amazon. Yet, the very breadth of its reach makes possible the weaving of intersectional and international alliances.

Join the East Side Freedom Library for a special pre-Labor Day conversation, online, on Thursday evening, September 3, at 7pm. Broadcasting on our Facebook and YouTube pages, we will convene a group of activists who are using research, social media, art, and on-the-ground organizing to rein in the modern-day octopus. Learn what they are doing and how we can get involved in ways that, as ESFL’s mission statement says: “inspire solidarity, work for justice, and advocate for equity for all.”

Dania Rajendra

Our lead presenters are Dania Rajendra, director of the Athena Coalition, which brings together more than 50 organizations that are wrestling with different aspects of Amazon’s power and influence, and Stacy Mitchell, co-director of one of those organizations, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Graduates of Macalester College, both have deep connections in the Twin Cities and to the East Side Freedom Library. Dania is a poet, essayist, and journalist. She served in the early 2000s as the editor of both the St. Paul UNION ADVOCATE and the Minneapolis LABOR REVIEW, then moved to New York City to be associate editor of THE CLARION, the newspaper of the faculty union at the City University of New York. She taught at the Institute for Labor Relations at Cornell University, and, recently, contributed an essay to the book, WHAT GOD IS HONORED HERE? WRITINGS ON MISCARRIAGE AND INFANT LOSS BY AND FOR NATIVE WOMEN AND WOMEN OF COLOR, edited by Twin Cities writers, Kao Kalia Yang and Shannon Gibney.

Stacy Mitchell

Stacy is a researcher and writer, author of HOME-TOWN ADVANTAGE: HOW TO DEFEND YOUR MAIN STREET AGAINST CHAIN STORES AND WHY IT MATTERS (2000) and BIG-BOX SWINDLE: THE TRUE COST OF MEGA-RETAILERS AND THE FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S INDEPENDENT BUSINESSES (2006). Last year, Stacy was a significant voice in CNN’s documentary film, “The Age of Amazon,” and in April 2020 the New York TIMES did an in-depth profile of her on the front page of its Sunday Business section.

COVID-19 has greatly expanded Amazon’s reach and CEO Jeff Bezos’ wealth, making him the richest man in the world. It has also revealed the corporation’s disregard for workers’ safety and security, their resistance to workers’ efforts to organize, their economic impact on independent small businesses, and their political influence with city, state, and national governments. Dania and Stacy will discuss their work to weave together the wide range of people whose lives are being undermined by the modern-day octopus, and they will be joined by some of the grassroots activists with whom they have been working.

Grassroots responses to both COVID-19 and the murders of George Floyd and others have revealed the potential power that still exists across this country, across this world. Learn how organizations like Athena and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance are amplifying this power, and learn how we can become involved in productive and constructive ways to promote economic and political democracy.

All proceeds from this fundraiser with be evenly split between the East Side Freedom Library and the Education Minnesota Foundation School and Child Care Worker Relief Fund.

Special thanks to our Labor Leader Sponsor!

Minnesota Nurses Association