2012 Festival program
Photos are from previous festivals

Currently planned events and performers; subject to change.

Art Display:  Luis Pineda and the Transcultural Matrix Project; political posters from JustSeeds, Doug Minkler, and others, curated by Lincoln Cushing and Favianna Rodriguez; photographs of migrant workers by David Bacon.

Friday, January 13

6 pm   Registration opens

7-10 pm  Solidarity Circle

• Song, poetry, and story swap

Saturday, January 14

9-10 am  Muffins, juice, coffee available – donations please; informal song swap/arts exchange

10:00-noon Workshops

• “Displaying Union Power” and Occupy songs, with Bay Area Rockin‘ Solidarity Labor Heritage Chorus
• “Puppets for Social and Environmental Justice“ with David Solnit
• "Hillbilly Nationalists: Urban Race Rebels and Black Power" with James Tracey
• "IWW Organizng In New York City at Starbucks" with Daniel Gross

12:00 – 1:00 pm  Lunch – Sandwiches and salad available at a reasonable price

1:00 - 1:50 pm Featured Presentation: 
“Can Posters Build a Movement?” with Lincoln Cushing and  Favianna Rodriguez

2:00-3:15 pm  Workshops

• "Occupy Everything!  Songs from the New Deal to the No Deal" with Bobbie Rabinowitz
• “Speaking of Revolution“ with Chris Chandler
• “Reclaiming the Past, African Americans in California in the 19th century” with Joe and Shirley Moore sharing share the stories and songs they have collected

3:30-5:15 pm  Workshops

• "Choral Conversation" with the La Pena Community Chorus, Vukani Mawethu, Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Heritage Choir, and Solidarity Notes.
• “On The Ground: Underground Newspapers of the Sixties“ with editor Sean Stewart and Billy X. Jennings, Black Panther
• “Detourning: Morphing Corporate Logos" with Mike Konopacki

3:30 - 5:15:  FILM:  Harvest of Loneliness (about the Bracero program) with Vivian Price, filmmaker

5:30-7:00 pm  Dinner – Hot meal available at a reasonable price

7-10 pm  Arts Exchange

Sunday, January 15

9:00-10:00 am  Muffins, juice, coffee available – donations please; informal songswap/arts exchange

10:00-11:30  Workshops

• Music workshop with Avoctja
• “Wisconsin, a Year Later:  Report Back” with Kathy Wilkes and Mike Konopacki
• A song swap of Woody Guthrie songs

Noon – 1 pm  Lunch - Sandwiches and salad available at a reasonable price

1:30-2:30 pm 
Mid-Day Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

·    Jimmy Collier, civil rights songs

·    Elise Bryant as Sojourner Truth

3:00-4:45 pm  Practice for concert performance
Chorus group, directed by Lichi Fuentes

5-6 pm  Dinner – Hot meal available at reasonable price

Benefit concert
for workers in need
Sunday 1/15, 7-9 pm
Machinists Hall; $ 15-25 workingfolk, $10-15 seniors/students/unemployed. Wheelchair accessible.
Honoring Jon Fromer

Puppet Parade
Welcome by Larry Wing, President IAM Local 1781
Timon, Bach on the Steel Drum
MC: Andrea Joyce Turner
Vukani Mawethu
Labor Arts Award presentation:
Shelley Kessler & Elise Bryant

Jon Fromer
Worker-in-Need and Video
Elise Bryant
Festival Chorus
Francisco Herrera
Jimmy Collier
Closing song - Rockin’ Solidarity

photos from WWLHF 2011

Jimmy Collier


Vukani Mawethu


Elise Bryant and the DC Labor Chorus

Avotja and musical guests Modupue

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Graphic and photos by Lincoln Cushing.

Films shown during the festival:

Saturday 11-12
"Coolies, Sailors, Settlers:  Voyage to the New World," by Loni Ding.  62 min. 
The untold story of how Asians--Filipinos, Chinese, Asian Indians--first arrived in the Americas.  Crossing centuries and oceans, from the 16th century Manila-Acapulco Trade...to the Opium Wars...to 19th century plantation coolie labor in South America and the Caribbean.

Saturday 2-3
"Chinese in the Frontier West:  An American Story," by Loni Ding.  62 min. 
The arrival of Chinese in Gold Rush 1850's California and their ventures into the Frontier West from Oregon and Washington to Idaho and Montana, to Wyoming and South Dakota.  Laboring, reclaiming land, and community-building, while pursuing cases before the US courts for justice and equality, they set legal precedents and left a legacy of civil rights for all Americans.

Sunday 10-10:30
"Nashville - We Were Warriors."  32 mins. 
The genius and fearlessness of Rev. James Lawson and the young men and women who followed him are the touchstones of this pivotal chapter of the American civil rights struggle.  Inspired by his studies in India of Gandhi's work, as well as the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lawson begins in 1960 to train black and white college students in nonviolent methods to desegregate downtown Nashville, Tennessee.  The students stage a sit-in at segregated city lunch counters in February 1960.  (One of a six part series on the history of nonviolent direct action)

Links to other labor culture sites
Labor Culture Research Portal, UC Berkeley
Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters
Labor culture events (Labor Heritage Foundation)
David Winters sings class war testimony before AFL-CIO