From Ian Gavigan, HELU Executive Director and Levin Kim, Chair of HELU and member of UAW 4121
On July 17 and 18, Levin Kim and Executive Director Ian Gavigan traveled to Chicago for the second national May Day Strong convening hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).
HELU’s delegation to the first May Day Strong meeting back in March helped to lead conversations about sectoral strategies for higher education. Those meetings informed the days of action in April and May that saw tens of thousands of higher ed workers and supporters take to the streets to fight for a better future for higher education—to defend academic freedom and freedom of speech, protect NIH & NSF funding, fight for immigrant & non-citizen rights, and more.
At this meeting, more than 200 PreK-12 teachers from across the US energized conversations on building powerful labor-community coalitions at the local, state, and national levels to fight together for a positive vision for our future that puts “workers over billionaires”. Numerous NEA, AFT, UE, CWA, and SEIU members constituted an impressive contingent of labor union organizers and activists.
The Chicago meeting encourages us to consider how we might use the opportunity presented by the federal crisis to push for more progressive revenue systems at the state and local levels, rather than to accept the austerity that we predict policymakers in both major parties are planning to bring down upon us in the coming months. As a wall-to-wall and coast-to-coast coalition of higher ed labor unions, HELU and our member unions have a unique opportunity to build a movement to fight back—and win.
Whatever is next, the Chicago meeting demonstrated yet again that a fighting labor movement committed to organizing is key to building the kind of power we need to not just beat back the worst of what threatens us, but also to win a world that we truly want to live in. Our task is to ground ourselves in an ambitious vision to meet this moment, deepen our organizing and power across our sector, and support our siblings across the labor movement to do the same.