OUR Walmart member Colby Harris
addresses a crowd of community supporters at the launch of the Summer for Respect program in New York City.
Building upon last year’s success, the Making Change at Walmart Summer for Respect program is continuing to grow. To mark the anniversary of Freedom Summer, UFCW and OUR Walmart are teaming up with Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) to run an intensive summer of organizing and oral history documentation.
As part of the program, training will be provided in worker communication, leadership development and direct action. A key component of the program will include online meetings and social media that will connect people across the country.
The goal of the program is to equip local unions, schools and organizations with the tools necessary to lead actions and campaigns. The program will also build volunteer support teams that will be available to assist MCAW and OUR Walmart, as well as other labor and social justice initiatives, in future actions. Participants, allies and local unions will host the “Income Inequality Tour,” which will focus on the role that Walmart and the Walton family play in leading income inequality.
Walmart strikers, fired worker leaders, union members and retirees, students, community activists and others will join together for this historic summer. Students, children of union members, community supporters and current or former Walmart workers are invited to apply. The program will run June 15 – Sept. 1 in Calif., and July 17– Sept. 30 elsewhere throughout the nation. 