Feb. 21st – Green Collar Jobs: Environmental Opportunity and the Labor Movement
7:30pm (bring food to share)
at the Mess Hall (6932 N. Glenwood; 'Morse' stop on the Red Line; 773-465-4033)

The mainstreaming of the environmental movement and the push toward an economy based on clean energy is leading the way toward the growth of "green collar jobs." What makes a job "green collar?" How many jobs will there be and where will they be found? How can we ensure that these jobs will go to those who need jobs the most and provide a pathway out of poverty? What is the role of Labor in growing these jobs and what impact could these jobs have on the Labor movement? This presentation will attempt to provide an overview of current thinking, explore local, regional, and national research into the economic benefits of green collar jobs, and provide resources for those thinking about entering the green collar workforce or organizing green collar workers.

Presented by Gregory Ehrendreich
Policy Associate, Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance,
Steering Committee, Chicago Green Collar Jobs Initiative
Chicago General Membership Branch, IWW

This is part of an ongoing series of events:

Work against Work

A series of discussions, presentations, and participations aiming to understand the changing nature of work in our time and in history. All events approach work as a complex activity through which we may be utterly debased or magnificently elevated, through which we may destroy the world—or revolutionize it.

All events take place on Thursdays at 7:30 PM in the Mess Hall (6932 N. Glenwood; 'Morse' stop on the Red Line; 773-465-4033). Attendees are encouraged to bring food and drinks to share, and to spend a few minutes chatting before we get—to work.

Session 1: Jan. 17th – The Legacy of the “Ultraleft,” Part I: Left-Wing Communism in the Wake of WWI
This version of Left theory and practice, advocating democracy through workers councils and an uncompromising rejection of bourgeois political methods, is often appealed to as a way to escape the pitfalls of the Stalinization of Marxist and Left politics. But it is rarely closely examined. We will take a critical and historical approach to these movements, attempting to understand them in their moment, understand what was revolutionary about them in that moment, and critically appropriate that which may still be revolutionary and may inform our contemporary left politics. We do not arrive at these texts with a dogma and are open to all directions that the discussion might lead us. This is a process of critical exploration.

Session 2: Feb. 21st – Green Collar Jobs: Environmental Opportunity and the Labor Movement
The mainstreaming of the environmental movement and the push toward an economy based on clean energy is leading the way toward the growth of "green collar jobs." What makes a job "green collar?" How many jobs will there be and where will they be found? How can we ensure that these jobs will go to those who need jobs the most and provide a pathway out of poverty? What is the role of Labor in growing these jobs and what impact could these jobs have on the Labor movement? This presentation will attempt to provide an overview of current thinking, explore local, regional, and national research into the economic benefits of green collar jobs, and provide resources for those thinking about entering the green collar workforce or organizing green collar workers.
Presented by Gregory Ehrendreich

Session 3: March 6th – A film, details to be announced

Session 4: March 13st – The Legacy of the “Ultraleft,” Part II: Workerists and Gauchistes around 1968
The rebirth of global radicalism in the 1960s is best known by the image of a hippie counter-culture and a “New Left” student movement which (as it is popularly understood) had little interest in work or the working class. Some of the most important radical activity of the period, however, can be placed in the tradition of the “Left-Wing Communist” analysis of capitalism and its call for worker control. This discussion will focus on the “Workerists” (“Operaisti”) in Italy and on the variety of “ultraleft” (gauchiste) tendencies that combined in the student-worker uprising across France in 1968. The goal is to understand each tradition in its own right and at the same time to understand their mutual relation and their place history. They are treated both as historical products and as theories worthy of consideration for practice today.

April 3rd – Anarcho-syndicalism and Shipyard resitance: The CNT in Puerto Real, Spain

April 10th – The Labor of Ecology (Three Presentations, details to be announced)
May 8th – The Legacy of the “Ultraleft,” Part III: “Autonomism” Today
Concurrent with a recent resurgence of radical street protests in many parts of the world, there has been a rebirth of interest in many of the theories that informed the last major global wave of insurrection, in the 1960s. At the same time, there been many new attempts to re-formulate older theoretical formulations in ways appropriate for the current historical moment. The combination of these two tendencies can be seen most clearly in the most recent contributions coming from the “autonomist” tradition, including especially the works of Toni Negri and John Holloway.

June 12th – Hobohemia
A presentation about the community of radical artists and intellectuals formed by Hobos and other migrant and occasional workers in twentieth-century North America. Given by Franklin Rosemont, author and editor of many books on the subject.

The series is co-organized by the 49th St. Underground, Finding Our Roots, and members of the Industrial Workers of the World.