"Labor, Empire and Globalization," a talk by US military veteran, Assistant Professor of Sociology (Purdue University North Central) and long-time labor activist Kim Scipes, will take place Monday, February 9, 2009 at the Lincoln Park Public Library, 1150 W. Fullerton in Chicago from 6:45-8:45 pm. This talk is sponsored by the Open University of the Left.

Scipes will build on and critique Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin (University of California Press, 2008). Scipes argues that Fletcher and Gapasin, while beginning strongly with a critique of the current labor movement, fail to recognize the larger social situation: that the US has a global empire, and that US efforts to control the world mean that the attacks on working people in the US and around the world will not only continue but must escalate, and that the key target of attack will be the labor movement, the only organized sector of society that is of, by and for working people. By refusing to recognize that reality, Labor's "leaders" undermine efforts to resist and cannot develop a strategy by which to help create a new society than benefits us all.

Please pass on widely to your networks--many thanks! Kim