My Favorite Aspect Of The Labor And Workplace Studies Minor

What does March 7th mean to you? On this significant day, hundreds descended to Selma, Alabama in a bid to secure voting rights for African Americans. These African Americans only ever asked for the simple right to vote and to be treated with equality compared to whites, but all they ever got in return, was disrespect. Blacks wanted to be treated like citizens, similar to anyone else with the opposite skin color. Because of this, in 1965, blacks who were not guaranteed voting rights marched and tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to stand up and even demand for what they believed in. Although their efforts were great, local and state police stopped them before their march got too far. A few attempts later, the demonstrators made their way across the bridge. Blacks had to stop marching after 10 miles each day because they had 54 miles to go to complete their walk. This march for equal rights was such a huge issue that there was a total of 600 participants when they finally completed the walk! In fact, this didn’t just affect a few people, it affected any black woman, man, or even children too. For example, eleven year old Desiree Robertson carried an American Flag helping lead the group of marches down a rolling stretch of a highway. These people walked for their freedom and never gave up for what they believed in.

One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was written, African Americans were still fighting for equal rights in every day life. The first real success of this movement did not come until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 which was followed by many boycotts and protests. The largest of these protests, the March on Washington, was held on August 28, 1963 “for jobs and freedom” (March on Washington 11). An incredible amount of preparation went into the event to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people attending from around the nation and to deal with any potential incidents.

Workers rights is not a usual topic in this day and age. Many people say that we have crossed that hump and it is not worry because of all of the progress that we have made. This is not true, many are denied these rights. A factory in Juarez fired 90 workers who were trying to form a union to get better rights(Document F). It is not a privilege to be able to form a union, it is a right of any worker to be able to form one. The are on the forefront of achieving change in the lives of people who don’t have a voice. It is crucial for them to have one to combat factories, a factory worker described her factory as, “the factory culture oppressive and demoralizing” (Document D). This is not far for the workers who work day in and day out on a wage

The message read by millions of people back in the 1960’s was plenty enough to get more people to join the cause. In the March on Washington, of the quarter-million people who marched, a third of them were white, an estimate of 83,300 people. During the march, one New Yorker made 80,000 cheese sandwiches to distribute to the crowd, and one man, Ledger Smithe, roller skated 700 miles from Chicago to join in the

In the mid-1960s thousands of Chicanos, people of Mexican descent, walked off the California grape fields in which they worked in protest of exploitation and poor working conditions. They wanted fair wages, better working conditions, and education for their children. They wanted all the opportunities that were extended to other Americans. Among the disgruntled employees was the soft-spoken César Chávez, who believed that his people’s plight could be resolved through the mechanism of non-violent protests. Chief among these mechanisms were his firm belief in fasting and non-violent strikes. These beliefs were the combined result of his childhood experiences, significant

In the first presentation, I noticed an event called the Greensboro Sit-ins. This was a single event that sparked a nationwide movement and flood of support for the civil rights movement and the issue of business owners withholding service from those who were not white. On February 1st, 1960, 4 students of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a whites-only lunch table, requested service, and were then denied and asked to leave. When they left, they went to tell campus leaders what had happened and as a result gained people that wanted to participate in the sit-in. It is said that “the next morning twenty-nine neatly dressed male and female [NCATSU] students sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter,” the same counter where those first four students sat (NorthCarolinaHistory.org). After this happened, protests occurred each week and hundreds of students were showing up at Woolworth’s. Following this, more and more students from around the US were staging sit ins at segregated lunch counters as a form of non-violent protest against discrimination.

In light of the recent presidential election, many people fear for their freedom as restrictions on immigration, religion, and abortion rights have been proposed. As a result of this, on January 20th, countless citizens banded together across America in “Women’s Marches”, the largest of about 400,000 people at Washington, D.C. (10 Actions). At these protests, advocating for people of all genders, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations, zero arrests were made. These peaceful gatherings gained the attention and unification of many people across the country and motivated citizens to continue to organize events. At the Women’s March on San Francisco, it was said by a speaker that we are “on the right side of history”. As people continue to vocalize their disagreements with the government, change will always be made, though it may be

With over five million women, men and children united in all seven continents, the Women’s March was by far the largest and most peaceful protest in history. Washington, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Sydney and Paris are only a few out of the many cities world-wide that all groups of ages, genders, races and religions merged together on January 21st, 2017 to send a clear message to the brand-new government of the United States. Accumulating no arrest, the protesters conveyed that all rights are women’s rights, making the demonstration a successful act of civil disobedience. Although the Women’s March has yet to force the Congress to reform civil policy, the protest, along with all peaceful resistances, continue to positively impact free societies.

“While a myriad of laws exist at the state and federal level to protect undocumented workers from exploitation, discrimination and abuse, enforcement is often lax and many in the legal community have turned a blind eye, or worse, have watched undisturbed while their clients commit crimes against humanity” (Lazar). The problem does not reside in the lack of laws that protect undocumented workers, but the lack of willingness from the government to enforce these policies in the everyday workplace. “The current movement of non-profit worker centers across the country—empowering immigrant workers to defend their employment rights and recover their dignity in the workplace—is a vital sign of progress. But it must be complemented with a real commitment from the public and private sector to protect the rights of all workers” (Workplace Fairness). Workers from the Tracy, California factory decided to take things in their own hands, they organized multiple protests against Taylor Farms, they set up a Teamsters accounts, and have also created an Appeal for Justice to inform the CEO of Taylor Farms, Bruce Church Taylor, of the unjust conditions that the workers suffer

Throughout the book of March the people of color are continuously fighting for equal rights. Even when they are faced with countless acts of violence they continue to fight back but in non-violent ways such as Marches. Even when there seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel John Lewis along with many of his peers also known as the SNCC(Student Nonviolent Reconciliation Commitee) begin to see results. Slowly but surely it all pays off in the end when people start to realize the segregation between races is not only morally wrong but also against the law. There are many different marches/ sit-ins throughout the book but the most important ones begin on...

It is also a “boundary spanning” activity in that it requires active involvement from people both within and outside of the classroom context, often resulting in participant contributors who represent a variety of generations, ethnicities, social groups, and experience levels (Billig and Furco, 2002, p.vii). Service-learning is designed to reduce the boundaries between an institutional campus environment and the community around it. It is designed to connect learning to real experience through service and reflection (Ball and Schilling, 2006; Becker, 2000). As a baseline to facilitate this development, service-learning is distinct from other types of community service and civic engagement experiences in that the service-learning experience must not only have a service and reflective component but also be clearly tied to the curriculum through learning objectives and theoretical underpinnings (Bloomquist, 2015; Pritchard, 2001). As Barbara Holland, former Director of the U.S. National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, shared, “Service-learning is all in the hyphen. It is the enrichment of specific learning goals through structured community service opportunities that respond to community-identified needs and opportunities.” (Kenworthy-U’Ren, Taylor, and Petri, 2006: 121).

On Saturday, January 21, 2017 history was made in the United States for having the biggest inaugural protest ever. There were an abundance of Women’s March all over the country but the one on Washington being the main one. However, with any big move of progress there is always two different opinions, one agreeing and the other one disagreeing; so one could look at this as a glass half full or empty situation, except that it is not. In addition, intellectual people know that the Women’s March was nowhere near being an act of civil disobedience but instead, a peaceful protest.

Uprisings against police crimes, protests on Israeli occupation, lobbying for gay rights, striking for a higher minimum wage, etc. are all fought with the same fist and same power: that of the people. Just in recent months, black activists in Chicago have traveled with student groups to Palestine in opposition of apartheid, and Palestinians marched beside the black community during the Black Lives Matter movement. Political prisoner Angela Davis lead the community hand-in-hand with Rasmea Odeh, a contemporary victim of political repression. The same can be said about so many other organizations and communities here in Chicago. The struggles of so many across the globe are unified here in Chicago by the thread of tyranny and injustice. This unifying thread only serves to symbolize how struggles belong to no single body or group of people, but are obstacles that must be overcome by the global

Many people did not agree with the marches, “Florida quoted a white man who worked as an interpreter “The feeling was that we serve them here without reservation, and give them the utmost care they deserve as humans,” he said. The marches were both important to immigrants and what they believe in, “They represented a long-overdue pushback against the vilification and violence that drives so many undergoing…”. After all the marches and protests, in 2006 their was a bill trying to be passed that was similar to the McCain-Kennedy bill, but did not pass nor did the Sensenbrenner

According to Kathleen Flecky and Lynn Gitlow, service-learning is defined as, “learning that occurs in experiences, reflection, and civic engagement” (Flecky & Gitlow, 2011). In recent years more universities are implementing service learning into their curriculum. A key concept of service learning is civic responsibility. Civic responsibility can simply be defined as your responsibilities as a citizen. As will be shown later in this paper, service learning can have many benefits not only to a student, but also to the community members