Monday, September 8, 7pm - Online
Peace & Justice Conversations: Uniting the Labor and Peace Movements
Labor and Peace Activists have worked in solidarity at times, but have been too often working on separate tracks or even divided. During the Cold War, with so many jobs in the U.S. created by pentagon contracts, the Labor and Peace movements drifted pretty far apart. But after globalization in the 1970s shattered the social contract between U.S. nationalism and domestic manufacturing, and after the end of the Cold War in 1989 even more so, the labor movement grew most strongly in true peacetime pursuits like health care, the public and service sectors, and education. Why didn't this allow a return to the unity of Labor and Peace that preceded "the total war economy"? Harris Gruman of SEIU Massachusetts will discuss the enduring legacies of partisan politics and military Keynsianism and how that have kept the Labor movement away from issues of peace and foreign affairs -- even after a rapprochement between the Environmental movement and Labor has been gaining ground.
Harris Gruman is the Executive Director of the Service Employees International Union Massachusetts State Council. In that role he has helped lead campaigns to win union rights for child care providers and rideshare drivers. Since 2013 he has helped lead the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition of labor, community and faith organizations, which has nearly doubled the minimum wage to $15-per-hour, created the most extensive paid family and medical leave program in the U.S., and won a constitutional amendment to raise tax rates on the top One Percent. In 2024 Harris joined the board of directors of Mass. Peace Action and is active in their Ukraine: a Time for Peace working group.
Cosponsored by Massachusetts Nurses Association, Massachusetts Peace Action, and SEIU Local 509.