This day of the convention had a lot of fireworks. It started at the first plenary. The topic was What Happened to the Working Class Consciousness: Reminding Us of the Relevance of Labor Unions in the 21st Century. Elise Bryant, Staff, National Labor College, Silver Spring, Maryland, started if off.
Elise was followed by Stewart Acuff, co-author of a new book entitled "Getting America Back to Work." He hammered home the point that America will not get out of its economic crisis until the working class begins working again.
Stewart was followed by Jaribu Hill, Director, Missisippi Workers' Center for Human Rights in Greenville, Mississippi. I thought, how is she possibly going to follow these two acts? But she did. In fact, she raised the bar pointing out specific instances where corporations were abusing workers, and where unions were needed to correct those abuses. In one example she mentioned, workers were required to wear disposable diapers so they wouldn't have to go to the bathroom.
After the plenary, the Guild staged a demonstration in front of Tony Moran's restaurant in the French Quarter. Tony apparently doesn't want to have to pay his workers. So we crowded into the restaurant, ordered nothing, left big tips for the workers, and demonstrated out in front.
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