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news
Progressives focus
on labor
By DaMonique Sampson
Special to the On-line Forty-Niner
In an effort to
address worker's rights issues, the Campus Progressives Collective,
a small student organization on campus, held the CSULB National
Student Labor Day of Action on Thursday at the Speaker's Platform.
Despite speaking about specific causes, they were all united
on the subject of labor. Their unity was especially important,
since the event was held on the 34th anniversary of the assassination
of Martin Luther King Jr.
He was assassinated in Tennessee while supporting a labor
campaign for a group of sanitation workers.
Reiland Rabaka, a black studies professor, educated the audience
about some of King's unspoken struggles.
"Toward the end of his life, Martin Luther King addressed
labor issues," Rabaka said. "But his life is not
talked about after 1964. There's a freeze frame. After 1964,
Martin Luther King talked about a radical redistribution of
political and economic power related to the world struggle
of human rights. People don't talk about King's critique on
capitalism or King's stand on militarism."
Ernesto Jesus Nevarez, a member of the Long Beach Trucker's
Union, emphasized the importance of truckers serving the Los
Angeles Harbor.
"The Los Angeles Harbor is the biggest and most radical
in the nation and it's the nerve center for capitalism,"
Nevarez said.
If truckers do not get the respect they deserve, there will
be a "worker's explosion and hell will break loose,"
Nevarez said.
David Campbell, secretary treasurer of PACE Union local 8-675
and vice president of the Los Angeles Federation AFL-CIO,
highlighted his work to connect labor with environmental issues.
Campbell has also gone global with his pro-labor union stance
to such places as Columbia, where 173 people were killed last
year for trying to organize trade unions.
Sophomore Connie Pham, double majoring in English and history,
is a member of the Campus Progressives Collective and helped
put the event together.
"Whatever we get from our college experience," Pham
said, "we should use it and apply it to our lives. Despite
the different lifestyles of the students, now is the time
to be involved and educated."
Fellow student, Matthew Bivens, a senior art education major,
agreed with Pham's sentiments.
"This event was very informative," Bivens states,
"and it relates to our locations [Long Beach] reality."
The Campus Progressives Collective's next event will be a
conference on April 16th called Globalizing Humanity.
Visit the group in USU-309 every Wednesday from 12:30 to 1:30
p.m.
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