Spring 2016 Symposium: Dishwashers, Domestic Workers, & Day Laborers: Can Alternative Labor Organizing Revive the Labor Movement?
The NYU Review of Law and Social Change’s 2016 symposium, “Dishwashers, Domestic Workers, and Day Laborers: Can Alternative Labor Organizing Revive the Labor Movement?” took place March 24 and 25, 2016.
Our opening reception was on Thursday, March 24 at 6pm in Golding Lounge. We screened The Hand That Feeds, a documentary about the worker organizers of the Hot & Crusty bakery and their fight to create their own independent union. A question and answer session with the filmmakers and leaders portrayed in the film followed.
On Friday, March 25 from 10am to 5pm in Greenberg Lounge, we hosted a series of three panels on organizing workers, the relationship between labor and non-union workers, and the future of alternative labor organizing. The symposium culminated in a keynote speech by Cristina Tzintzún, Immigrant Justice Director of SEIU and iAmerica, and former executive director of the Workers Defense Project in Texas.
Panel 1: Perspectives on Organizing Workers
Friday, March 25, 2016
NYU Law, Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge
Panelists: Shawn Sebastian (Center for Popular Democracy); Elizabeth Joynes Jordan (Make the Road New York); Julie Mao (National Immigration Project, NLG); Mahoma López Garfias (Laundry Workers Center)
Panel 2: Friend or Foe? Labor Law and Non-Union Workers
Friday, March 25, 2016
NYU Law, Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge
Panelists: Kate Griffith (Cornell ILR School and Worker Institute); Wilma Liebman (formerly National Labor Relations Board); Tsedeye Gebreselassie (National Employment Law Project); Ingrid Nava (SEIU 32BJ); Steve Greenhouse (Russell Sage Foundation, formerly New York Times)
Keynote: Are Worker Centers the Future of Labor?
Cristina Tzintzún (SEIU and iAmerica)
Friday, March 25, 2016
NYU Law, Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge
Panel 3: Organizing the Gig Economy & Beyond
Friday, March 25, 2016
NYU Law, Vanderbilt Hall, Greenberg Lounge
Panelists: Cynthia Estlund (NYU School of Law); Mariah Montgomery (Partnership for Working Families); Jennifer Gordon (Fordham Law); Renee Gerni (SEIU); Jess Kutch (Coworker.org)
Other Social Change Events
Spring 2018 Colloquium: The Diverse Faces of Rural Poverty: Exploring the Unique Legal Challenges of the Rural Poor
Exploring the unique challenges that each rural community faces, the common misconceptions to which rural communities are subjected, and the innovative strategies and initiatives different organizations and communities are pursuing to address different rural communities’ legal challenges
Fall 2016 Colloquium: Beyond “Criminal Justice Reform”: Conversations on Police & Prison Abolition
A series of intersectional talks given by four community organizers, a movement lawyer, a poet, and a scholar who shared their work and reflections on abolition and building viable alternatives to policing and incarceration
Spring 2015 Symposium: Panel Series on Sex Offender Registration Laws
Examining how sex offender registration laws have affected the lives of roughly 650,000 registrants (and their families), what effect they have had on rates of offending, and how they might be reformed.
