The East Side Freedom Library invites you to our monthly labor history discussion, What Can We Learn From the Labor Upheaval of the 1930s?

Register here to join this event on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing the Zoom link.

Between 1932 and 1945 membership in American unions grew from 2 million to 14 million. The make-up of unions also changed, from predominantly skilled white men from northern and western European ancestry, to the diversity of women, workers of color, workers whose families had immigrated from southern, central, and eastern Europe, many of them unskilled workers, became the driving force of the labor movement.

How did this happen? What can we learn from these experiences as we consider the challenges facing the American working class and the American labor movement today?

Join us as we dig into some labor history from the 1930s. Here is a link to an article by Bryan Palmer about the Minneapolis Teamsters.

Bryan will be joining us by Zoom from Toronto. He has just received the honor of the publication of an entire book, edited by his former students, assessing his impact on North American labor history. His publisher writes: “The work of Bryan D. Palmer, one of North America’s leading historians, has influenced the fields of labour history, social history, discourse analysis, communist history, and Canadian history, as well as the theoretical frameworks surrounding them. Palmer’s work reveals a life dedicated to dissent and the difficult task of imagining alternatives by understanding the past in all of its contradictions, victories, and failures. ” Our ESFL conversation will be a wonderful opportunity to engage with Bryan.

When you register for the Zoom meeting, we will send you Peter Rachleff’s article about the Austin, Minnesota-based Independent Union of All Workers, and Zaragosa Vargas’ article about the Pecan Shellers of San Antonio, Texas.

We look forward to a great conversation between the past and the present, with Bryan Palmer, and among us.

Free and open to all