The livestream below will begin at the time of the event.

The labor movement in the United States has gained international attention over the past several months as workers nationwide engaged in powerful collective action, and women have been leading much of the current surge. Thousands of workers across the country haven’t hesitated to take action—whether it was leaving jobs in the Great Resignation, organizing, or going on strike. What role have women played in sparking and energizing the current labor activism? And is U.S. women’s labor leadership at a new peak? 

Join us on Wednesday May 4, from 2:00 to 3:15 pm ET as we discuss the work of women labor activists over the past year and lift up the invaluable contributions of these organizers and communities. 

Please register to obtain the Zoom link.

Featuring:

  • Facilitator: MaryGrace Menner, Congressional labor law fellow, WILL Empower—Office of Representative Andy Levin
  • Moderator: Michelle Chen, labor reporter, The Nation and Dissent; co-producer, Belabored podcast
  • Jennifer Bates, worker organizer and leader of the BAmazonUnion (RWDSU) organizing effort
  • Nozlee Samadzadeh, New York Times software engineer and New York Times Tech Guild organizing committee member
  • Maddie VanHook, Starbucks shift supervisor and leader with Starbucks Workers United 

Requests related to accommodations for disability should be made to [email protected] by May 2. A good faith effort will be made to fulfill requests made after this date. 

Presented by The Century Foundation and WILL Empower.

Speaker Bios

Michelle Chen is a contributing writer for The Nation and In These Times, a contributing editor at Dissent Magazine, and a co-producer of Asia Pacific Forum podcast and Dissent’s Belabored podcast. She studied history at the City University of New York Graduate Center and, starting in the fall, will be a fellow in labor history at Cornell University.

Nozlee Samadzadeh is a senior software engineer at the New York Times working on editorial tools and, along with about 600 other worker-colleagues, a member of the newly recognized New York Times Tech Guild.

Maddie VanHook (she/they) is a shift supervisor at Starbucks in Cleveland, Ohio. She’s a Pisces, a proud member of the queer community, a cat mom, and an aggressively mediocre gamer. She also plays D&D and watches lots of NBC in her free time. They’re relatively new to Starbucks, Cleveland, and the union movement, but have been so lucky to find passion and community in all three! Super excited to be here—solidarity always!