Dana Frank, “The Labor Struggles Behind the Caravans: Labor Activism, State Repression, and Poverty Creation in Honduras since the 2009 Coup”

Place: Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., Chicago 60660

Time: 7 – 8:30pm

Public transportation: 2 blocks east of CTA Red Line Bryn Mawr stop

Parking: St. Andrew Greek Orthodox Church, 5649 N Sheridan Rd, Chicago, IL 60660. **You must write a note, “At Presbyterian Church,” and place it on your dashboard, or your car will be towed!

Dana Frank will discuss the role of the labor movement and labor politics in Honduras in the long aftermath of the 2009 military coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras. Honduran labor activists have been the backbone of the popular resistance that has been fighting the repressive coup regime ever since, especially agricultural workers, government employees, bottling-plant workers, and health care workers.   They are struggling to retain basic labor rights that are rarely enforced, while joining the broad coalitions protesting the US-back post-coup regime and claiming labor rights guaranteed under the Central American Free Trade Agreement. This talk will explore labor activism in Honduras–while also analyzing the Honduran government’s destruction of the economy and livelihoods since the coup—that are helping produce the exodus of Honduran refugees at the US border.

Dana Frank is Professor of History Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught US labor history and other topics for 30 years. She most recently published The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup. Her previous books include Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, which focuses on Honduras; Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism; and, with Howard Zinn and Robin D.G. Kelly, Strikes:  Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century. Her writings on human rights and U.S. policy in post-coup Honduras have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Houston Chronicle, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Politico Magazine,  and many other publications, and she has been interviewed by the Washington Post, New Yorker, New York Times, National Public Radio, Univision, Latino USA, regularly on Democracy Now!, and on other outlets.  Professor Frank has testified about Honduras before the US House of Representatives, the California Assembly, and the Canadian Parliament. She has worked closely with banana workers’ unions in Honduras for almost twenty years.

Co-sponsored by CRLN and La Voz de los de Abajo