UCEN Conference Center
University of California at Santa Barbara
May 5-May 7, 2005

THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL SOUTHWEST LABOR STUDIES ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
Co-sponsored by the Labor and Working Class History Association and the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara

Conference Coordinator: Zaragosa Vargas, History Department, UC Santa Barbara
Assisting local arrangements: Nelson Lichtenstein

Conference Program Committee
Co-Chairs: Don Watson, SWLSA and Nancy Gabin, LAWCHA
Committee members: Myrna Donahoe (SWLSA), Dianne Layden (SWLSA), and Laurie Mercier (LAWCHA)
Theme consultant: Kerry Taylor, University of North Carolina

Southwest Labor Studies Association Officers
President: Nancy Quam-Wickham, CSU Long Beach
Vice-President: Albert Lannon, Tucson
Secretary: Wythe Holt, University of Alabama Law School
Treasurer: Mary Tyler, Ret. Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research

Labor and Working Class History Association Officers
President: James Green, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Vice President: Alice Kessler-Harris, Columbia University
Secretary: Cecelia Bucki, Fairfield University
Treasurer: Thomas Klug, Marygrove College
Executive Secretary: Mary Nash, Carnegie Mellon University

THURSDAY MAY 5
9:00 AM–4:00 PM, UCEN
REGISTRATION

11:00 am–1:00 pm, Lobero Room
ROUNDTABLE: IN DUBIOUS BATTLE AGAIN: THE BRACERO PROGRAM REVISITED
Moderator: Henry Anderson, Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, 1959-1961
Roundtable: Henry Anderson
Tony Platt, California State University, Sacramento
Manuel Peña, California State University, Fresno
Gilbert Gonzalez, University of California, Irvine
Don Watson, Bay Area Labor History Workshop
Comment: the audience

11:00 am – 1:00 pm, State Street Room
CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL FILM SHOWING—Where Do You Stand: Stories from an American Mill
(on union organizing at Cannon Mills)
Moderator: Wythe Holt, University of Alabama School of Law
Comment: the audience

11:00 am – 1:00 pm, Harbor Room
PRESENTATION WITH READINGS AND SLIDES ON Emancipation Betrayed:
The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920
Moderator: Paul Ortiz, author, University of California, Santa Cruz
Comment: the audience

2:30 pm – 4:30 pm, Lobero Room
THE SPIRIT OF MEMPHIS AND THE LEGACY OF THE SIXTIES: RECONSIDERING THE 1968 SANITATION WORKERS STRIKE
Chair: Lola Smallwood Cuevas, UCLS Labor Center
Presenter: Mike Honey, University of Washington, Tacoma
“Martin Luther King, Black Workers, and the Memphis Sanitation Strike”
Presenter: Will Jones, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
“From Birmingham to Memphis: Southern Sanitation Workers and the Transformation of Postwar Politics”
Presenter: James Lawson, Pastor Emeritus, Holman Methodist Church, Los Angeles, and past president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
“Reflections on the Memphis Strike and Its Legacy Today”
Comment: the audience

2:30 pm – 4:30 pm, State Street Room
ROUNDTABLE: IT TAKES A UNION TO BUILD A VILLAGE: THE UFW AND CABRILLO VILLAGE
Moderator: Don Villarejo, California Institute for Rural Studies
Roundtable:
Barbara Macri-Ortiz, Attorney, former United Farm Workers staff
Hector Martinez, Former attorney California Rural Legal Assistance
W. H. Segur, University of Redlands
Comment: the audience

2:30 pm – 4:30 pm, Harbor Room
IWW MEMORIALS AND PUBLIC MEMORY—FILM: Lewis County: Hope and Struggle
(a film work-in-progress)
Moderator: Anne Fischel, film maker, Evergreen State College
This 90 minute work in progress documents the 1997 production of a mural in Centralia, Lewis County, Washington that commemorates the Centralia Tragedy of 1919. The film recounts the history of the 1919 struggle through the accounts of community residents.

5:30 pm – 8:30 pm
PLENARY AND DINNER
Faculty Club
Introductions by Nancy Quam-Wickham, SWLSA, and Jim Green, LAWCHA
Speaker: Bill Fletcher, TransAfrica Forum
“Rising to the Challenge: The Interconnections of the Black Freedom Movement and Organized Labor”
SWLSA awards presented to Sarah Cooper and Walter Johnson
Dinner is $35
Reservations are recommended (see registration page)

FRIDAY, MAY 6

9:00 am – 11:00 am, Lobero Room
THE USWA DISTRICT 31 WOMEN’S CAUCUS: SIXTIES MOVEMENTS SPARK A RANK & FILE WOMEN’S REVOLT
Chair: Ruth Needleman, Indiana University, Gary
Presenter: Ola Kennedy, founder District 31 Women’s Caucus
“Building Power & Unity in the Union: From Black Power to Women’s Rights”
Presenter: Dorreen Carey, former editor District 31 Women’sCaucus
“Workplace Issues Forged the Movement for Equality”
Presenter: Mary Elgin, former officer District 31 Women’s Caucus
“Transforming Ourselves into Leaders”
Presenter: Roberta Wood, founder District 31 Women’s Caucus
“Historical Roots & Political Lessons”
Comment: Ruth Needleman

9:00 am – 11:00 am, State Street Room
TEXAS AND MEXICAN FARM LABORERS
Chair: Zaragosa Vargas, University of California, Santa Barbara
Presenter: Jose Pastrano, University of California, Santa Barbara
“The Seasonal Farm Labor Question on the Eve of the Great Depression, 1928-1932”
Presenter: Emilio Zamora, University of Texas
“Elevating the Mexican Cause to a Hemispheric Level: The Fair Employment Practice Committee and the Mexican Worker in Texas”
Presenter: Marc Rodriguez, University of Notre Dame
“Building a Movement Together: The New Left and the Farm Labor Movement in Wisconsin”
Comment: Zaragosa Vargas

9:00 am – 11:00 am, Harbor Room
POLITICS OF CLASS AND GENDER
Chair: Nancy Gabin, Purdue University
Presenter: Emily LaBarbera Twarog, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Out of the Strike Kitchen: Labor, Feminism, and the UAW Women’s Auxiliaries Cost of Living Campaigns
Presenter: Jeanie Welch, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
“Before Norma Rae: The Harriet-Henderson Mills Strike, 1958-1961”
Presenter: Gregory M. Miller, University of Toledo
“... Gonna Vent Our Frustrations: Youth Culture and Labor Relations at GM’s Lordstown Plant, 1966–1976”
Comment: Laurie Mercier, Washington State University, Vancouver

9:00 am – 11:00 am, Mission Room
THE WORKINGS OF YOUTH: A CALIFORNIA CENTRAL VALLEY WORKING-CLASS COMMUNITY IN THE 1960S AND TODAY
Chair: Keith Gallagher
Panelists: Yosemite High School students from Merced, California
Comment: the audience

11:15 am–1:30 pm, Lobero Room
SWLSA annual business meeting

11:15 am–1:30 pm, Faculty Club
LAWCHA executive board meeting

11:45 am–1:30 pm, State Street Room
SLIDE PRESENTATION: MINERS’ STRUGGLES AND GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSION IN THE SOUTHWEST, 1894-1985
Presenter: Irwin Nack, William Patterson College
Comment: the audience

1:45 pm–3:45 pm, Lobero Room
ROUNDTABLE: THE FIRE LAST TIME: LESSONS FROM LABOR’S LAST INSURGENCY
Moderator: Aaron Brenner, The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History
Roundtable:
Heather Thompson, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Ken Paff, Teamsters for a Democratic Union
Steve Early, Communication Workers of America
Aaron Brenner
Comment: the audience

1:45 pm–3:45 pm, State Street Room
POLITICS OF CLASS AND PLACE
Chair: Francille Rusan Wilson, University of Maryland
Presenter: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Opening the Gates: Class Tensions, Suburban Scientists, and the Revolt against the New Deal”
Presenter: Erik Gellman, Northwestern University
“‘Burn Baby Burn to Build Baby Build’: The Coalition for United Community Action, Construction Work, and Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966-1973”
Presenter: John Weber, College of William and Mary
“HemisFair ’68: When San Antonio Fiddled as the Rest of the World Burned”
Comment: Paul Ortiz, University of California, Santa Cruz

1:45 pm–3:45 pm, Harbor Room
EXPANDING LABOR’S BOUNDARIES: WOMEN AND NEW FORMS OF LABOR ORGANIZING
Chair: Dorothy Sue Cobble, Rutgers University
Presenter: Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Jennifer Klein, Yale University
“Home Care Workers and Unions”
Presenter: Maria Ontiveros, University of San Francisco
“Female Immigrant Workers and the Law”
Presenter: Katie Quan, University of California, Berkeley
“Labor Women Crossing Borders”
Comment: Dorothy Sue Cobble

1:45 pm–3:45 pm, Mission Room
THE ROLE OF 1970S RADICAL WORKERS IN THE UNION MOVEMENT: TWO ILWU LOCALS
Chair: Harvey Schwartz, ILWU Oral Historian, Author of “The March Inland”
Presenter: Kerry Taylor, University of North Carolina
“Fighting for Justice from Alaska to Manila: 1970s Radicals and Cannery Workers in ILWU Local 37”
Presenter: Albert Lannon, Former president, ILWU Local 6, San Francisco
“Infantile Disorders: the New Left and the New Old Left Come To Lead the Workers of ILWU Local 6”
Reply presentation by Tom Edminster, Former member Local 6
“Local 6: Turbulent Times through Other Eyes”
Comment: Harvey Schwartz

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
PLENARY
Corwin Pavilion
Plenary speaker: Mike Davis, UC Riverside
“Riot Nights on Sunset Strip”
RECEPTION
Lagoon Plaza
(adjacent to Corwin Pavilion)

SATURDAY, MAY 7

9:00 am– 11:00 am, Lobero Room
AMERICAN INDIAN WORKERS, UNIONS AND SOVEREIGNTY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Chair: Eric Meeks, Northern Arizona University
Presenter: Colleen O’Neill, Utah State University
“Making a Navajo Labor Movement: Red Power and the Transformation of Organized Labor on the Navajo Reservation, 1970-2004”
Presenter: David Kamper, University of Texas
“Navajo Healthcare Workers, Workplace Activism, and Tribal Sovereignty”
Presenter: William Bauer, University of Wyoming
“‘Everybody Worked Back Then’: Oral History, Memory and Indian Labor in Northern California”
Comment: Eric Meeks

9:00 am– 11:00 am, State Street Room
TRANSNATIONAL WORKING-CLASS PROTEST
Chair: Enrique Ochoa, California State University, Los Angeles
Presenter: Evan Daniel, New School for Social Research, and Malini Cadambi, New School for Social Research
“(Re)Examining Class: Transnational Workers and Nationalist Struggles in the late 19th Century United States”
Presenter: Theresa Case, University of Houston–Downtown
“Blaming Martin Irons: Leadership and Popular Protest in the 1886 Southwest Strike”
Presenter: Devra Weber, University of California, Riverside
“The Grassroots of the Partido Liberal Mexicano and the IWW in the U. S. and Mexico”
Comment: Gunther Peck, Duke University

9:00 am– 11:00 am, Mission Room
PANEL: DOCUMENTING MIGRANT LABOR THROUGH THE ARTS
Catherine Trujillo, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, will moderate discussion among producers of documentaries, exhibitions, archival collections, and works of art that examine migrant labor issues.

12:00 pm–2:00pm, Lobero Room
ROUNDTABLE: REVOLUTION IN THE AIR: SIXTIES RADICALS TURN TO THE FACTORIES, STEEL MILLS, AND AUTO PLANTS
Moderator: Kerry Taylor, University of North Carolina
Roundtable:
Max Elbaum, author of “Revolution in the Air” and founder/editor of CrossRoads
Steven Pitts, UC Berkeley Labor Center, former Houston steel worker
Mark Masaoka, Community Activist, former GM Van Nuys worker
Myrna Donahoe, SWLSA, former Progressive Labor Party member
Paul Krehbiel, SEIU Local 660, Los Angeles, former Buffalo radical
Comment: the audience

12:00 pm–2:00pm, State Street Room
BRINGING THE STATE IN: THE POLITICS OF LABOR LAW
Chair: Anne Loftis, author of “Witnesses to the Struggle”
Presenter: Jon Huibregtse, Framingham State College
“Railroad Labor and Its Contributions to the New Deal”
Presenter: Alicia Rivera, California State University, Fresno
“Criminal Syndicalism Law in California and the San Joaquin Cotton Strike of 1933”
Presenter: Lizzie Lamoree, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Lemonade Out of Lemons: Growers’ Defeat of California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act”
Comment: Melvyn Dubofsky, SUNY, Binghamton

12:00 pm–2:00pm, Mission Room
THE RIGHT RESPONSE: CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION TO LABOR AND IDENTITY MOVEMENTS
Chair: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, University of California, Santa Barbara
Presenter: Joong-Jae Lee, University of Wisconsin, Platteville
“The Global Vision of the White Working-Class Backlash”
Presenter: Oliver Rosales, California State University, Bakersfield
“Patty Newman, Deconstruction, and New Right Intellectualism”
Comment: Dana Frank, University of California, Santa Cruz
Comment: Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval

The 2005 Elaine and Karl Yoneda Award goes to
WALTER JOHNSON
Labor Leader, Human Rights Activist
Walter Johnson has received many awards. This particular award is given because of his devotion to many of the goals of Elaine and Karl Yoneda. He began implementing these goals as president of the Department Store Employees Union, Local 1100 by forming an ad hoc labor committee to support various strikes in the city. As Secretary of the San Francisco Labor Council from 1985 to his retirement this year he has reached out to formerly forgotten people in the labor movement, including people of color and women. Walter has made himself available for endless picket lines in behalf of labor and social justice causes. He has been a symbol of the changing composition of the San Francisco labor movement, which has embraced the cause of lower-paid workers. He will long be known for his peculiar Scandinavian humor, which has helped to sustain the labor movement through tough times. Karl Yoneda founded the Elaine Black Yoneda Memorial Award in 1988 upon the death of Elaine, his companion of over 50 years. It memorialized her work in the fields of “labor, civil liberties, women, peace, and interracial understanding.” It has been given annually at conferences of the SWLSA, of which Elaine and Karl were members. Upon Karl’s death in 1999, his name was added to the award. He was noted for his devotion to Asian American studies.

The 2005 SWLSA Distinguished Service the to Labor Movement Award is Presented to
SARAH COOPER
Professional Librarian, Social Justice Activist
Sarah Cooper has recently retired as the Director of the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research in Los Angeles after twenty years of service. She has since
moved to Illinois. She came to Los Angeles in 1984, from the State Library at Madison, Wisconsin, three years after the death of the Library’s founder, Emil Freed. He had left a huge personal library of uncatalogued labor and social justice books and pamphlets. Cooper’s task was to create a library out of a place stuffed with boxes, dilapidated shelving, and filing cabinets. Cooper, in the past 20 years, has converted a “warehouse” into a “library.” She has brought the Library’s collections up to the standards of the archival and library world. Under her leadership SCL now houses 20,000 volumes plus numerous collections from unions, social groups and activists. The Library is now a fixture in the South Los Angeles community. She has successfully rallied support and money for the Library from the larger Los Angeles community. The list of supporters has swelled and the Library’s annual dinners are now an anticipated event. The Southern California Library staff has pledged to carry on Sarah Cooper’s legacy and standards. Thank you, Sarah, for your remarkable work.

TRAVEL, LODGING AND PARKING
By Air: Book to the Santa Barbara Airport (SBA) or to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and transfer to a Santa Barbara flight, or for a bus connection from LAX to Santa Barbara, contact Santa Barbara Airbus at 1-800-423-1618 or http://www.santabarbaraairbus.com .
If you rent a car at LAX, the drive to Santa Barbara is about 2 hours.

A block of forty (40) rooms @ $112 per room has been reserved for Thursday May 5 through Saturday May 7 at the Best Western South Coast Inn at 5620 Calle Real. This is a union hotel. It is near the campus and the airport (shuttle is available both ways). Call 1-800-350-3614. If driving from US 101, exit at Patterson Avenue; it is less than a mile. When registering, state you are with the “Labor Studies Conference.” This block of rooms is reserved until April 1. There are many other hotels if you wish to make your own arrangements.

On entering the campus at the East or West gate, purchase a parking permit and drive to Lot 23 (closer to the West gate) It is about a 7 minute walk to the University Center (UCEN). Disabled registrants can park at Lot 3, closer to the Center, if the parking office is informed in advance. Call 805-893-5389.

ADVANCE REGISTRATION WILL SAVE YOU TIME WHEN YOU ARRIVE

Name _____________________________________________________

Address ___________________________________________________

City/State/ZIP _______________________________________________

Email _____________________________________________________

Phone ____________________________________________________

Affiliation __________________________________________________

REGISTRATION
Make out separate checks for the following:
For conference registration: $35.00 payable to “UC Regents”
For Thursday dinner reservation: $35.00 payable to “Southwest Labor Studies Association”
For annual SWLSA membership dues: $20.00 (Students $7.50) payable to “Southwest Labor Studies Association.” This can be consolidated with the dinner reservation if so noted on the check.

Put all checks in a single envelope and mail to:
Zaragosa Vargas, Conference Coordinator
Department of History
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Preregistration must be postmarked by May 1.

For annual LAWCHA dues see the LABOR advertisement below and add $10 to the individual one-year subscription rate and $5 to the student one-year subscription rate. LABOR is LAWCHA’s official organ.

Advertisement
LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas
Editor
Leon Fink
Reviews Editor
Julie Greene
Editorial Committee
Dorothy Sue Cobble
Cindy Hahamovitch
Alice Kessler-Harris
Bruce Laurie
Dan Letwin
Nelson Lichtenstein
Subscriptions
Individual one-year subscription, $40
Student one-year subscription, $25
(photocopy of current ID required)
For more information, please visit our Web site at www.dukeupress.edu/labor, or call toll-free
888-651-0122 (in the U.S. and Canada) or 919-688-5134.