On Sunday, December 15th Black Cat Workers’ Collective (BCWC) and our partners in the Workers Solidarity Circle (WSC) coalition put on our first Workers’ Assembly. The WSC is made up of BCWC, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Labor Branch and Red Pine Revolutionary Collective (RPRC). 

On Saturday, November 2, a group of local workers and members of the labor movement participated in a peaceful march and rally in front of the Minneapolis home of Darryle Owens, a member of the Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees. The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank that has pushed anti-worker policies since the 1970s. Most recently, they authored Project 2025, a 900+ page wishlist of extreme right wing policies that will trample on the rights of all workers.

Union is an intimate documentary chronicling the inspiring unionization fight of workers at the  Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Filmmakers Steven Manning and Brett Story, along with several members of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), documented every step of this campaign through the perspective of an Amazon employee.

When I first got hired as a CNA in a nursing home, the other aides went out on a two-day wildcat strike my first week on the job. It was a small facility in Hopkins, Minnesota that had been devastated by COVID; on a good day, our staff-to-resident ratios were 1:12. That meant in the first hour and a half of the day, you were each expected to get 12 elderly people out of bed, cleaned, dressed, and ready for breakfast. You’d always have at least one person to run downstairs in time to get picked up for dialysis.

Stepping Up In the Union

I was lucky enough to be born in a family that knew unions. Hearing about unions and being active in a union are two different things.

My daughter is the oldest of my two children.  Before she went to kindergarten in 1986, I worked half-time during the swing shift from 4:30 to 11:30 PM, Monday to Friday, at a manufacturing plant in Eden Prairie. The plant was Birchwood Labs, and made medical products and produced other sizes of swabs, ultrasound gel, special medical dyes, medical sterile wipes, gun oil, and easter egg dye.