Watch Live: N.Y. Teach-In One of More than 200 to Focus on Workers’ Struggles | 
| ||||
 | |
On more than 200 college campuses across the country today, workers and student activists are taking part in a national teach-in as part of this week’s We Are Oneactions in solidarity with those whose rights and middle-class jobs are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere by Republican governors and legislators.
The Fight Back USA teach-in will be webcast live from Judson Memorial Church in New York City and has been organized by two longtime pro-labor advocates, sociologist Frances Fox Piven and philosopher Cornel West. Click here for the link to the webcast and clickhere for a list of campuses hosting a teach-in.
The national teach-in will be streamed starting at 2 p.m. ET today to participating campuses where local activists can add their own speakers to focus on issues in their communities following the webcast.
Joining Piven and West at the New York City site will be AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, economist Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University) and public policy analyst Heather McGhee. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler will be taking part in the teach-in at the University of California’s Berkeley campus.
The New York event’s organizers say the teach-in seeks to help young people across America understand how the recent actions undertaken by the brave citizens of Wisconsin are key to turning the tide away from increasing inequality and misery and toward the development of a sustainable and healthy American society in the 21st century. The teach-in seeks to infuse the fight back in the states with the energy and commitment of American youth whose future hangs in the balance.
Piven is a leading scholar of social protest movements and author of Poor People’s Movements and Challenging Authority. She has been a victim of Glenn Beck’s diatribes. Cornel West is a professor at Princeton University, where he teaches in the Center for African American Studies and in the Department of Religion. West is known for his combination of political and moral insight and criticism and his contribution to the post-1960s civil rights movement.