This event was recorded live. As some feminist epistemologists (Gilligan, Belenky et al.) have taught us, seeing and seeking connections seems to be women’s ways of knowing. Our economics is lived in real complex communities. Our goal is to model how women can talk together and learn together about traditionally male territory still new to most women. Together we can construct a fuller knowledge and set of values now omitted from the mainstream “free market.” To that end, we're making the webinar—and will make all of them moving forward—available here for viewing forevermore.
Click here to access the event curriculum for further learning.
We ended 2022 with a Zoom of Our Own focused on the growing phenomenon of labor organizing, including at big multinational companies like Starbuck's and Amazon—and importantly a change toward more inclusive union leadership by women and people of color.
We've noticed that women, beginning with Rose Schneiderman and her famous bread & roses, tend to widen labor issues beyond worker wages and benefits to issues that involve the whole community.
What are the obstacles we women face in the educational realm, the health care and public service realm—and in the wider union organizing realm? And what new hopeful approaches do women leaders see? We put together a great panel of labor activists to answer these questions.
Meet the Speakers
Theresa Mitchell Dudley has evolved from being a substitute teacher, to an elementary classroom teacher, eventually landing as a middle school teacher. Her union activism includes service as a building representative, Membership Committee, and PGCEA board member, vice president and president. Theresa now serves as MSEA board member and represents MSEA as an NEA Board of Directors Member. She is the mother of Joyce and Alfred Dudley.
Afifa Khaliq is Director of Programs at SEIU Florida Public Services Union. She has been a part of a creative core team that is setting new trends and redefining labor, politics, economy, and social justice. Afifa is an unapologetic and proud Muslim. She is a founding member and secretary of the South Florida Muslim Federation. She is also the Chair of Emgage Florida, a Muslim civic engagement organization.
Patti Maciesz is a parent, artist, and organizer based in Oakland, California. Her work with Bill the Patriarchy and The Invisible Labor Union evolved during the Pandemic to working with Hand in Hand, a network of domestic employers. Recognizing their relative privilege, they work closely with the National Domestic Workers Alliance to value the care work done in the nation's homes, whether by hiring with fair pay and benefits or by calling attention to the discount that all care work is given in society at large. Maciesz resists the invisibility that envelopes mothers and the essential work of making a home.
Rickey Gard Diamond—author of Screwnomics: How Our Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change and the “Women Unscrewing Screwnomics” column at Ms. magazine, and founder of AEOO—moderated the conversation.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Our Zoom of Own Series brings women (and men!) together to construct a fuller knowledge and set of values now omitted from the mainstream “free market.” Together, we're flipping the script on a racist, sexist economy. Our economics is lived in real complex communities. Our goal is to model how women can talk together and learn together about traditionally male territory still new to most women.