Seeking Spatial Justice in Los Angeles: The Resurgence of Labor-Community-University Coalitions
Edward J. Soja Paper Excerpt: The labor movement in Los Angeles, largely through coalition building between union locals and a wide range of community-based organizations (CBOs), has been experiencing an extraordinary resurgence in recent years. Innovative organizing strategies, especially with regard to immigrant workers, and a series of successful campaigns aimed at achieving greater social and economic justice for the nearly forty percent of the population described as the working poor, have transformed what was once considered an intensely anti-labor environment into what some national observers today see as the most vigorous and effective urban labor movement in the US. Similarly, what was once a relatively “placeless” urban world, where local communities rarely impinged on people’s lives, has now become a hive of community-based organizations and grass roots activism. These local and regional achievements are even more remarkable given the deteriorating economy, huge job losses, and declining union power that have characterized most of the rest of the country over the past thirty years. How did this remarkable transformation take place? Why did it happen in Los Angeles, of all places? What are the distinctive features of the new labor-community coalitions that have emerged? What has been the role of the university in these movements? What can be learned from the recent Los Angeles experience that can better inform public policy and labor-community coalitions in other areas of the country? What follows is an attempt to provide at least some preliminary answers to these questions. |