Aisha Nizar, Oakland People's Arms Embargo, Peter Olney, ILWU (retired), Sam Levens, Inlandboatmen's Union (IBU-ILWU) Gifford Hartman, Labor Studies Laney College
Building power for workers always involves building their agency and commitment. Such power is enhanced by a sophisticated understanding of production systems and logistics supply chains. This workshop will bring to bear the experiences of veteran organizers to identify choke points and key points of leverage that can enable workers to win. Historically, workers have used that power to stop arms from being sent to warzones, such as in 1980 when ILWU militants refused to send armaments to El Salvador or recently when millions of Italian workers and students went on strike, in solidarity with Gaza, to prevent weapons from being shipped to Israel.
Ansel, Cadelba, Felix, and Reilly
Four hospital workers and SEIU members will share firsthand accounts of grassroots organizing at a large public hospital. From leading a system-wide campaign to divest from weapons manufacturers, to organizing “Know Your Rights” trainings in response to ICE threats, to building cross-departmental networks that can - and did - defend from external attacks on the workforce, these workers are demonstrating how to transform their workplace through collective action. Their efforts offer a powerful example of how workers can build organization and solidarity on the job - even in difficult conditions.
Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz
Café, nonprofit, and public and private sector workers across the United States are on the move—refusing current regimes of work, fighting bosses and organizing unions, speaking about their working lives and demanding workplace democracy. Our workshop will examine two recent workers inquires with café and nonprofit workers in the US. Robert Ovetz will recount his inquiry into the nonprofit industry in his forthcoming Rebels for the System: NGOs, Capitalism and the Labor Movement (Haymarket, 2026). Kevin Van Meter will report on his recently coauthored “Class Composition in the Café Sector” (Notes from Below, 2025) and speak about his forthcoming Reading Struggles: Working-Class Self-Activity from Detroit to Turin and Back Again (AK Press). In this workshop participants will have the opportunity to practice a workers’ inquiry to understand the position of their work in the current capitalist economy to develop new tactics and strategies to build our power. The workshop teaches how workers’ inquiry can help circulate workers’ struggles and build working-class power to take on fascism.
Charmaine Chua, No Harbor for Genocide & Workers in Palestine
Samer Araabi, Arab Resource and Organizing Center
Vish Soroushian, UAW Local 2320, East Bay DSA
Jocelyn De Sena, SEIU Local 1021, Oakland People for an Arms Embargo
Palestinian trade unions have called on workers everywhere to unite to end Zionist supremacy and ethnic cleansing by halting the sale and funding of arms to Israel immediately. While the global response has not been sufficient to stop the current genocide in Gaza, certain tactical interventions have demonstrated that international labor is capable of achieving meaningful advancements in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions). This discussion will examine concrete examples of community-labor coalitions that have significantly impeded Israel's ability to engage in indiscriminate war, including successful Bay Area campaigns on divestment and blockades against Israeli shipping companies, and how these campaigns are instructive for guiding the labor movement as a force against Zionism and occupation moving forward.
Marc Lispi, Blanca Missé, Michael Hale
Under the Trump administration, we are witnessing a coordinated assault on public education at every level — from K-12 schools to colleges and universities. Budget cuts, book bans, attacks on curriculum, targeting of educators, going after undocumented students and families — this is all part of a broader authoritarian agenda to suppress dissent and impose a racist, reactionary ideology. Already, educators like, Dr. Tom Alter, a tenured professor of history at Texas State University, have been fired without due process, for political comments made not as educators, but as private citizens. Against these attacks, the response cannot be fragmented. Now more than ever, we need unity across the entire education sector: students, teachers, staff, parents, and faculty must organize collectively, from elementary classrooms to graduate programs, to defend our communities from these attacks, and fight for a free, inclusive, and quality education for all. Our struggles are interconnected, and only together can we fight back.
Mary Anne Trasciatti
Author Mary Anne Trasciatti will talk about her new biography of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, whose life was a rebellion against exploitation and injustice. Flynn led strikes, opposed sexism, resisted fascism, supported anti-imperialist movements, protested deportations, advocated for prison reform, and fought for Black liberation. She knew that working class power is only possible when people are free to organize and challenge the forces arrayed against them, and she defended that freedom at every turn. At a time when authoritarianism is on the rise and the freedom to speak out is in peril, Flynn’s story is an inspiration for how to fight for a better world and win.
