“Confronting Coercion: Building Worker Power in the 21st Century”

Confronting Coercion: Building Worker Power in the 21st Century
Thursday, September 21, 2017, 5:00 to 7:00pm, Luce Hall Auditorium

Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition,

which is supported by the MacMillan Center at Yale University

Co-Sponsors

The Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM), Yale University

The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights, Yale Law School

Panelists:

Gerardo Reyes Chávez, Coalición de Trabajadores de Immokalee/ Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)
Fausto Garcia and Daniel Castellanos, National Guestworker Alliance
John Jairio Lugo, Unidad Latina en Acción
Moderators:

Gunther Peck (Historian, Duke Univ.; GLC Postdoctoral Fellow 2017-2018)
JJ Rosenbaum (Independent consultant on labor and migration; Legal Advisor for the National Guestworker Alliance)
Introductions: David Blight (GLC Director and Historian, Yale University)

Simultaneous translation (English-Spanish) will be available as needed.

This public panel features members of worker-led groups who are fighting against multiple forms of exploitation, including human trafficking and forced labor. Members of the Coalición de Trabajadores de Immokalee/Coalition of Immokalee Workers (Florida), the National Guestworker Alliance (New Orleans), and Unidad Latina en Acción (New Haven) will present their experiences, strategies, and goals for empowering themselves and their fellow workers in the agricultural, seafood, and service industries, all of which rely extensively on transnational labor forces. The moderators, both of whom are members of the Gilder Lehrman Center’s Modern Slavery Working Group, will focus the conversation on how academics, policy-makers, and activists can help to re-center workers’ rights and agency in the struggle against contemporary coerced labor.