The next generation of union organizers and activists take to the streets this week as some 45 AFL-CIO Union Summer 2011 interns begin a 10-week educational internship. The interns spent one week at the AFL-CIO for orientation before fanning out to work with local central labor councils and local unions in eight cities on organizing, research and community outreach projects.
They soon found out this is not your routine internship. For example, Sarah Mandel and the other interns in New Orleans will be working with public school teachers who were kicked out when the state took over the schools after Hurricane Katrina. They also will be involved in planning actions to save the Avondale shipyard and the thousands of jobs at stake there.
For Mandel, a student at Tulane University, Union Summer is an opportunity to help the people of her adopted city of New Orleans. The Connecticut resident says while everybody paid attention to New Orleans after Katrina, it often is overlooked today by the public and the media.
I just want to effect some change so we can do some good from the bottom up, help empower people who are often ignored and who need the most help.
When Lolita Lincoln returns to Portland State University in Oregon in the fall, the aspiring teacher will have learned real life lessons that she hopes she can pass on to her students. The Seattle native will work in Portland helping three local unions in organizing drives. Lincoln says the controversies across the nation over education and teachers’ rights like the battle in Wisconsin caused her to want to find out more about how the union movement affects people’s daily lives.
In her week at the AFL-CIO, she said she gained a greater appreciation of what it means to work collectively.
No matter if you’re a nurse or a doctor or a teacher, no matter whoever you are, we’re all just one community and it’s important for me to be part of a movement that empowers people.
Terrae McMiller from Winston-Salem, N.C., will spend her summer in community outreach in Charlotte, N.C., as activists prepare for the 2012 Democratic Convention in that city. A student at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, she says she is learning about the importance of the labor movement through Union Summer.
You never really see anybody talking about labor unions even on TV and the news. But everybody who works here is really passionate about what they do.
This year’s class of Union Summer interns is the most diverse ever. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of the interns are female and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) are people of color. The other cities where interns will work this summer include Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. The internships run from June 13 to Aug. 19.