“Of Pirates, Witches, & Workers: 500-Years of Labor History” — Thursday Nov. 30th at USM

Join us for the inaugural “Conversations at the Scontras Center” with a talk by teaching fellow Kevin Van Meter titled “Of Pirates, Witches, & Workers: 500-Years of Labor History” at the University of Southern Maine in Portland on Thursday November 30, 6pm in Talbot Lecture Hall. “Conversations” is a series of public discussions where organizers, scholars, and workers talk about what they do all day, contemporary topics facing the labor movement, and the history of the labor movement in Maine and across the world. The event is free and open to the public.

Register to attend the talk here

For 500 years, “the cause of labor is the hope of the world.” The talk will begin in the conflict over the collection of firewood and then circulate through the witch-hunts, pirate utopias and slave resistance, corresponding societies and the communards of Paris, the 8-hour day movement and mine wars, great sit-down strikes and great migrations, wartime strikes and the Treaty of Detroit, neo-liberal responses to worker-student and civil rights movements, and the return of the labor movement today. These stories reverberate throughout labor history, across the planet, and in our working lives.  

Union organizer, labor educator, and author Kevin Van Meter, Ph.D. is a teaching fellow at the Scontras Center for Labor and Community Education at the University of Southern Maine.