Panel Discussion: Confronting Coercion: Building Worker Power in the 21st Century

Reception: Luce Common Room, 7:00—8:00pm

Introductions: David Blight (GLC Director and Historian, Yale University)

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)

Panelists:

Gerardo Reyes Chávez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)
Fausto Garcia and Daniel Castellanos, National Guestworker Alliance
John Jairo Lugo, Unidad Latina en Acción

Co-Sponsors
The Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM), Yale University and The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights, Yale Law School

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.