The fourth annual Ethnic Studies Week at ASU runs from October 8-16, featuring “creative coalitions that are bringing labor unions, immigrant communities and communities of color together to achieve social change.” Kent Wong, noted labor attorney and Director of the UCLA Center for Labor and Education, will deliver the keynote address.
This year’s theme for ASU’s Ethnic Studies week is “What does it mean to be an ally? What does coalition-building look like?” According to the release from the University, “In his talk, Wong will address the new American labor movement and the exciting seeds of resistance that are bringing unions, immigrant communities and communities of color together to achieve social change.”
Professor Wong, who teaches courses at UCLA in labor studies and ethnic studies, is the founding president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (AFL-CIO) and Vice President of the California Federation of Teachers. Wong has written widely on the labor movement, union organizing, popular education, immigrant workers and undocumented students. An active supporter of the immigrant youth movement, he is the author of the books “Underground Undergrads” and “Undocumented and Unafraid.”
Wong will also lead an open student discussion the afternoon of October 8 about the immigrant youth movement and students as leaders for social transformation. Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to join the session from 3-4:30 p.m. in West Hall 135, ASU’s Tempe campus.
Beth Blue Swadener, Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry and Associate Director of the School of Social Transformation, will facilitate a discussion with activists including Tia Oso, Arizona organizer, Black Alliance for Just Immigration; Daniel Rodriguez, founder, Arizona Dream Act Coalition and Arizona Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project; Ileana Meary Salinas, Director of Operations, Arizona Worker Rights Center, and Caroline Picker, social justice worker, Showing Up for Racial Justice.
The official Ethnic Studies week events will close out October 16 with a conversation with Arlene Dávila, Professor of Anthropology and American studies at New York University, who will discuss “What is critical about ethnic studies?”
A wide range of affiliated events will be occurring at ASU and in the greater Phoenix community. A Comparative Border Studies Colloquium by professors Rudy Guevarra, Jr. and Lily Welty wull be delivered at ASU on October, and artist Wendy Maruyama will be at the ASU Art Museum and the Burton Barr Central Library on October 29 and 30.
Wong’s 5 p.m. lecture will be held in the Memorial Union, Cochise Room, on ASU’s Tempe campus.
Wong, attended the Los Angeles “People’s College of Law.” The school was founded in 1974 by the National Lawyers’ Guild, with the assistance of the Asian Law Collective, the La Raza National Lawyer’s Association, and the National Conference of Black Lawyers.
PCL’s website advises that they “only admit those students who, regardless of their quite varied political, spiritual, cultural or social backgrounds, have demonstrated a commitment to progressive social change, have an awareness of working class issues and will employ the skills gained at the school to further these goals in their own way. Our graduates work as lawyers, state and federal administrative judges and commissioners, activists and union organizers, labor and legislative leaders. All have shared the unique and glavanizing experience of graduating from the only non-competitive, cooperative, student and community-run,
progressive law school in the world!”