NYC to NOLA - Bridges Connecting Workers
Thursday July 13 / 7pm-8:30pm
Human and civil rights violations pre-date Katrina. The poverty rate in New Orleans pre-Katrina was the second highest of any urban area in the U.S., reaching an astounding thirty-seven percent. Poverty wages in New Orleans bolstered many other injustices, such as institutional racism, rampant illiteracy, and a segregated and dysfunctional school system. Today, it could not be clearer that there is an urgent need for mediating institutions that can make powerful strategic interventions to improve the conditions of workers, to fight their exploitation and to ensure their inclusion in the future of New Orleans. Powerful institutional actors are at work to create the conditions for worker exploitation. Government and private industry have, through policy and practices, created a structure in which workers have no protections against mistreatment and no ability to hold institutions accountable.
The New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition (NOWJC) has prioritized the establishment of the Louisiana Workers' Center to adequately address the long-term impact of this human and civil rights crisis voiced by the workers. The Louisiana Workers Center will be an independent, but
collaborative, community-based organization advocating for and organizing workers in post-Katrina New Orleans in a multi-racial, multi-industry context. Join us for a night of building bridges between post-Katrina Gulf Coast and New York City workers. Meet organizers for New Orleans-based Louisiana Workers Center, which has emerged in post-Katrina New Orleans as a vehicle of worker justice and solidarity. Highlights include recent video & slideshow from New Orleans, as well as New York City based worker empowerment efforts.
7pm-8:30pm, Thursday July 13
Cornell University-ILR School
16 East 34th Street, 6th floor
Manhattan (located between Fifth and Madison Avenues one block east of the Empire State Building
Donations will be requested on a sliding scale.