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North Coast Action invites the public to a free Brown Bag Lunch on Friday, May 1, from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Astoria Public Library Flag Room. The event, titled Strike! Astoria's Labor Legacy and What ComesNext, is part of North Coast Action's Community Resilience Day.
The afternoon begins with a 20-minute presentation by localauthor and historian Deb Vanasse on Astoria's extraordinary history of labor organizing, from the salmon cannery strikes of the nineteenth century through the pivotal West Coast waterfront strike of 1934 and the ILWU's landmark 2008 anti-war work stoppage.
Washington DC Bureau Chief of The Nation magazineChris Lehmann will then offer a 20-minute discussion of how labor organizing has worked historically, the challenges facing the movement today, and what strikes, including general strikes, look like in the current political andeconomic climate. The program concludes with open Q&A and discussion on what it would take for communities to be strike-ready given our current economic and political conditions.
Vanasse, who also writes under the pen name Vanessa Lind, isthe author of multiple works of historical fiction as well as the narrative nonfiction Roar of the Sea, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. After36 years in Alaska, where she also wrote about history, she has lived on the Oregon Coast for a decade. She serves on the board of the Writers' Guild of Astoria.
"Astoria's workers built something remarkable here," Vanasse said. "They organized across language barriers and ethnic lines, created their own cooperative cannery when the bosses cheated them, and laid the groundwork for the ILWU, one of the most powerful and progressive unions in the country. That history belongs to everyone in this community, and it couldn't be more relevant to what we're facing right now."
Lehmann is the DC Bureau Chief of The Nation,America's oldest continuously published weekly magazine. He is also a contributing editor at The Baffler and the author of The Money Cult:Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream. Hepreviously served as editor of both The Baffler and The New Republic,and he has written on politics and political economy for a wide range of publications including the Washington Post, New York magazine, and Newsday. That he is also Vanasse's brother makes his visit toAstoria for this event something of a homecoming.
The event is free and open to all. Attendees are welcome tobring their own lunch. No registration is required.
Strike! is part of Community Resilience Day, North Coast Action's May 1 celebration of mutual aid, civic engagement, and collective power. For a full schedule of the day's events, visit northcoastaction.com/mayday.
About North Coast Action North Coast Action is a mutual aid and civic engagement organization based in Astoria, Oregon, dedicated to building community resilience on the North Coast. Learn more at northcoastaction.com.
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