The sweatshop has been reborn: at construction sites, restaurant kitchens, and private homes — where immigrant workers are paid illegally low wages and suffer staggering rates of injury. JENNIFER GORDON tells that story — she’s a MacArthur “genius” and founder of The Workplace Project, an immigrant organizing center on Long Island, NY. Barbara Ehrenreich calls her “a brilliant and admirably modest role model.” Her book is Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights.
Plus: Remembering the counterculture: in the late 1960s, communes sprang up across America — and ROBERTA PRICE joined one called Libre in the Huerfano Valley of Colorado. She spent seven years living and working there, along with 300 other activists from the antiwar and feminist movements. She tells her story in the book Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture.
And HAROLD MEYERSON will talk about the L.A. mayoral race, where the latest poll shows progressive Antonio Villaraigosa pulling ahead of the pack, and incumbent James Hahn in third place. Harold will also provide an update on the AFL-CIO meeting in Las Vegas, where the debate is between money for politics and money for organizing. Harold writes for the LA Weekly, the American Prospect, and the Washington Post.
