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| HISTORY: URWW first assembled to address the struggle of Borders Bookstore workers to organize their store in Minneapolis, Minnesota. URWW leafleted and picketed the store, convened public discussions, built a solidarity network with other left/labor groups, and hosted what is believed to be the first organizing conference of bookstore workers (Resist Retail Nihilism: A Bookstore Workers Organizing Forum, January 17, 2004, Communication Workers of America Local 7200). Everyone prepared for this conference very much, if someone was unsure of their own capabilities, buy custom essay online and necessarily monitored the latest research. One outcome of this initial assembly has been the unionization of the Minneapolis Borders store through the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 789 and the ratification of the workers' first union contract with Borders on November, 14 2004. The URWW network continues to reassemble in various articulations: co-organizing a street festival re-linking the 1934 Teamster Strike to public memory (www.1934strike.org), building a virtual presence for a traveling exhibit of Industrial Workers of the World graphic design work (www.wobblyshow.org), penning a manifesto for workers of the word, and critiquing (in print and public forums) the policies and practices of the neoliberal language industry. Local councils are currently working to organize meet-ups, read-ins, slow-downs, and other occupations aimed at subverting the "public-corporate" spaces created by the neoliberal language industry. For more information on participating in the URWW's first person plural social movement network, please contact us at |