On Strike, Shut It Down!
Featuring: Bob Muehlenkamp ◼ Ann Gordon ◼ Jackie Young ◼ Jim Russell

The East Side Freedom Library invites you to view a documentary film about the 1970 graduate employees strike at the University of Wisconsin. View the documentary on YouTube ahead of time, and then attend a Zoom panel discussion featuring participants involved in this historic series of events. The panel discussion takes place Tuesday, November 28, 2023, at 7PM Central Time.  Register here for the Zoom link.

In March 1970, University of Wisconsin-Madison teaching assistants struck for 24 days to win the first collective bargaining agreement by graduate employees. Jim Russell, in collaboration with two other strikers, Bill Pratt and Mike Oberdorfer, documented their activism in a video, The Wisconsin TA Strike. None of the three had any film-making experience. Still, this powerful video addresses 1) why TAs organized; 2) the roles played by labor solidarity; and 3) management union busting. Recently, Jim re-edited the video. This new version includes a 2021 epilogue by Bob Muehlenkamp, former Executive Vice President of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees and Teamsters Organizing Director. It’s a valuable resource for activists today.

ESFL and Jim Russell invite you to watch his video here (29 minutes):

Last fall, ESFL hosted a panel discussion of University of California graduate employees who were involved in the nation’s largest strike in 2022  You can watch a video of that conversation here:

The labor upsurge of the past two years has included a number of groups of workers who are leading a “new” union organizing movement. The historical precedents, however, are never taught in school or by our mass media. When we become aware of these historical precedents, we are able to participate in a conversation between the past and the present, a conversation that can help us organize for a better future.

Bob Muehlenkamp is the Chair of Our Revolution Maryland, and has been active in the social justice and trade union movements for more than forty-five years. A stalwart of the modern-day labor movement, he has coordinated hundreds of union organizing campaigns and was the organizing director of the Teamsters and SEIU 1199, the hospital workers union. He is a co-founder of US Labor Against the War.

Ann Gordon, in retirement, chairs the Retiree Assembly of the faculty union at Rutgers University. She earned a PhD in American history from the University of Wisconsin. Though not a teaching assistant the year of the strike, she was an active member of the TAA leading up to the year of the strike and won election to the Executive Board after the strike.

Jackie Young was a student during the TA strike.  After college, she was an unpaid “plant” organizer at a Waunakee, Wisconsin factory, and later an organizer for District 1199, Hospital Workers Union in NJ.  She later went to law school, and worked as a labor lawyer until retirement.

Jim Russell is the editor of the new version of The Wisconsin TA Strike. With Bill Pratt and Mike Oberdorfer, he made the original 1970 version. Then a sociology TA and strike participant, he went on to teach in universities in the United States, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. His latest book is The Labor Guide to Retirement Plans (Monthly Review Press).

This event is free and open to the public for the cause of solidarity!