Bring your lunch and join us to hear LouAnn Wurst present:

 

 

Much of labor history/heritage is based on framing that normalizes the perspective of capital, leaving our perspectives of labor as already/only reactionary. Most labor history is based on unions, eliding contexts where labor was not organized, and the common rhetoric is about the success or failure of union strike activities. Asking questions about what we mean by ‘failure’ allows us to recast the framing from a simply dichotomous confrontation (analogous to a sporting event with a clear winner and looser) to a more relational perspective of ‘success’ as possibilities. I will use the case of the Coalwood lumber camp to argue for a more dialectical perspective of the relationship between capital and labor, and one based on the vantage point of the workers rather than capital.