Can the lessons of history help save City College? Take a labor history class

• Tuesday evenings, 6:30 – 9:15 pm, Starts August 20
• Room 229, Mission Campus, City College, 1125 Valencia Street, Instructor: Fred Glass
• 3 units college credit, CSU-transferable, scholarships available
• For questions about the course content and requirements call 510-579-3343

History’s lessons might help save City College

As faculty, students and staff discuss and debate the various options available to reverse the shocking and unjust decision of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges to revoke CCSF’s accreditation, one of the most important resources is the rich and deep, but mostly unknown, history of the California labor movement.

In “California Labor History,” a three unit CCSF course offered at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday evenings at Mission Campus, Room 229, 1125 Valencia Street, beginning August 20, AFT 2121 members can learn in detail about the fight for a more equitable society that stretches back past the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, and before the Gold Rush. You will also find this history has quite a bit to say about what’s going on now.

The fall semester course is taught by longtime labor educator and California Federation of Teachers communications director Fred Glass. It places contemporary unions, including faculty unions, within the broader stream of labor history, and showcases struggles by California’s working people for dignity, economic security, and civil rights, from the Mission era right up through the successful labor-led effort to tax the rich for schools and services, Prop 30.

Union members who have taken the course have noted that it provides a space tucked away from the rest of their often hectic lives to reflect on their workplace and their activism. In the context of the struggle to save City College, all tactics and strategies must now be considered; you will find them on full display in California labor history.

The course is built around the ten-part public television documentary series Golden Lands, Working Hands. AFT 2121 members who complete the course will receive reimbursement for course fees from the union. For more information or to register call Bill Shields at the CCSF Labor and Community Studies Department, 415-550-4472, or register online at www.ccsf.edu. For info about the course content, call Fred Glass at 510-579-3343.