High Voltage Women: Breaking Barriers at Seattle City Light,
with
Ellie Belew novelist and community historian gave me been a wonderful read with High Voltage Women: Breaking Barriers at Seattle City Light, telling the story of ten women Electrical Trades Trainees (ETTs) and their fight against intense, long-running discrimination at Seattle’s public utility. The book is a riveting account of what it’s like for women and people of color breaking into a segregated work force. Their strength, dignity and growing confidence radiate through – my sheros!  Because we were there!
and
Megan Cornish recites her gripping story of a multi-racial group of women who put their bodies on the line to gain a foothold in the male and largely white electrical trades at Seattle's publicly owned utility in the 1970s, and how these women implemented affirmative action in the face of life-threatening sexism and racism.  Because We Were There!  

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Putting the Movement Back into the Labor Movement
with
Nelson Lichtenstein is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He is a labor historian who has written also about 20th-century American political economy, including the automotive industry and Wal-Mart.
and 
Samantha Winslow, is a staff writer, organizer and co-director of Labor Notes,.a publication which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary with its mission to help to put the movement back into the labor movment through its magazine, books, pamphlets, conferences and troublemakers schools and workshops. 

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This is the right time to talk about why we need a new economic system and how to get there. This is the time to talk about and build socialism here and around the world .

To meld practice and theory on this issue are Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary, of the South African Federation of Trade Unions (“SAFTU”), founded in 2017, and which is the second largest of the country’s main trade union confederations, with at least 21 affiliated trade unions organizing 800,000 workers, working to create an independent, campaigning and democratic trade union federation who shall defend if need be with their lives the fighting independence of their revolutionary and socialist oriented federation

Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson and  served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city. Kali also served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network.

Gar Alperovitz has had a distinguished career as a historian, political economist, activist, writer, and government official. For fifteen years, he served as the Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland.   Among his many achievements is having been the architect of the first modern steel industry attempt at worker ownership in Youngstown, Ohio. 

He is also the president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives and is a co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, a research institution developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the democratization of wealth.

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