NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | April 21, 2017 | PAGE 5
CULTURE
Troublemakers take over Local 290 hall
Over 200 rank-and-file union
activists were welcomed to
United Association of
Plumbers and Steamfitters Lo-
cal 290 training center April 8
for Portland’s third biennial
“Troublemakers School.”
The spirited gathering was a
day of networking and panel
presentations organized by the
magazine Labor Notes to — as
the publication’s masthead puts
it — “put the movement back
in the labor movement.”
“As a worker, the second
you ask about your rights, they
call you a troublemaker,” ex-
plained Labor Notes director
Mark Brenner. “That’s why we
call ourselves troublemakers.”
Occupy Public Office
The day’s keynote speaker was
rank-and-file AFSCME mem-
ber Jovanka Beckles, who is
vice mayor of Richmond, Cal-
ifornia, thanks to a union-
backed coalition known as the
Richmond Progressive Al-
liance. Richmond is a racially
diverse blue collar city of
100,000, best known in the
Bay Area as the location of a
Chevron refinery. Over the last
“We need a revitalized labor movement that has the confidence of its members. Members are the union.” Jo-
vanka Beckles, vice-mayor of Richmond, California — and a rank-and-file AFSCME member.
decade, the Richmond Pro-
gressive Alliance has success-
fully challenged the city’s tra-
ditional power structure,
electing slates of City Council
candidates who refused corpo-
rate money, winning a rent
control ballot measure, increas-
ing taxes on Chevron, and ex-
perimenting with the power of
eminent domain to rescue
homeowners from underwater
mortgages. All that came about
because residents, with union
support, got organized.
“Isn’t doing something bet-
ter than sitting around watch-
ing cable news?” Beckles said.
—Don McIntosh
AT THE LABOR NOTES SCHOOL
“Union is my life. I’m
third generation.
We’ve been raised a
union family. I can’t
imagine what other
people go through
where they don’t have
their union backing
them.”
— Brenda Bridger,
ILWU Local 4
“Union means work-
ers being able to de-
fend themselves, by
organizing collec-
tively. Because there’s
a power differential
between an individual
worker and a boss.…
Unless we are organ-
ized together, we are
screwed.”
— Hyung Nam,
Portland Association of Teachers
“ I am grateful that my
predecessors before
me organized the
United Association,
grateful that I have the
ability to make a living
wage, that I am a
member of an organi-
zation that shares
pride in what they do,
and grateful that I have
chance to be involved in my local union and
make a change for the better.”
— Craig Spjut, UA Local 290
820 SW Second Ave., Suite 200, Portland, OR 97204
www.tcnf.legal
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