VEENA HAMPAPUR: Hi, everyone. Veena here. It’s back to school season and we’re sharing a recording of Labor Studies 101 from our archives at the IRLE, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Labor Studies 101 is the intro course for the labor studies major at UCLA, and it’s a class I wish I could have taken back in college. In this episode our IRLE director, Toby Higbie, interviews Kent Wong, our previous longtime director of the Labor Center. Toby and Kent talk about the history of the LA labor movement and what makes it so unique, Kent’s personal background, and what brought him to activism. The connections between the labor movement and non-violent philosophy, hopes for the future, and so much more. The class was recorded in the spring of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, so there are layers of history baked into this episode. Thanks for listening.
TOBY HIGBIE: Welcome everybody to Labor Studies 101. We have a special guest today, Kent Wong, the director of the UCLA Labor Center, a long time activist and leader on labor issues in LA, in the nation, and really internationally. I’m going to introduce Kent, just say a few words about his career, ad then we’re going to go into a kind of a Q&A sort of thing and interview style approach, and hopefully that will work out well. First of all, let me say welcome, Kent. It’s great to see you here. How is your microphone working? Let’s get that tested.
KENT WONG: I did a sound check before I got on, so I hope it’s working well. Great to see you, Toby.
TOBY HIGBIE: That sounds great. Okay. Excellent. Well, so everybody, Kent Wong has been the director of the UCLA Labor Center since the early 1990s, I believe. 1992 perhaps?
KENT WONG: Right.
TOBY HIGBIE: And under his direction the center has become a leading – I would say the leading university based research and community engagement program for labor issues in the United States. He has been a driving force in the old labor and workplace studies undergraduate concentration and minor, which was recently created – upgraded into a major. The first major – labor studies major in the UC system. And for all the – There’s a number of different things. I won’t go into all the many great awesome things that Kent has done in his career, but I just want to flag a few things that would be of interest I think to students. He’s long been an advocate for undocumented students at UCLA and beyond. He helped – He created a class on immigrants rights and access to higher education. He was a driving force behind a series of books on undocumented students, Underground Undergraduates – or Underground Undergrads and Undocumented and Unafraid. And before his time with UCLA, so going way back, Professor Wong was a lawyer who worked for the Service Employees International Union. And he was a founding – or is a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and the United Association for Labor Education. So with that, you’re all muted, so you can’t clap and cheer, but remember that there’s a little reaction emoji, so everybody give claps and thumbs up and those sorts of things for our good – our fine guest, Professor Wong. Thanks for coming, Kent.
KENT WONG: Great to be here, Toby, and thanks for that very gracious introduction.
TOBY HIGBIE: Great. Well, so – And I’m going to ask you to maybe speak up a little bit more as you speak. So I thought probably the easiest way to begin this process, you know, Labor Studies 101 is the introductory course for our Labor Studies major. Actually, a lot of the students here are familiar with you and the work of the Labor Center. They’ve been taking Labor Studies courses for a while, but others not so. So I thought I would just ask you to describe the work of the UCLA Labor Center, you know, to someone who might be unfamiliar with it. Is it a think tank, is it a research laboratory, a community center? How would you describe that center to the uninitiated?
KENT WONG: So the UCLA Labor Center has more than a 50 year history. We were established back in 1964, and we are a research unit within the University of California, but we are deeply engaged with the link between theory and practice. So we are engaged in research. We are engaged in teaching, and not only teaching to students but also worker education. We are involved in policy and in leadership development.
TOBY HIGBIE: And so students are involved in these programs, isn’t that right?
KENT WONG: What’s very exciting is that all of the activities that we do for the UCLA Labor Center involve our students, and UCLA students are extraordinary. They are talented. They are brilliant. Many come from working class backgrounds. Many come from immigrant families. And we find that many of those students who are first generation college students, who have a lived experience that addresses working class issues are drawn to the Labor Studies program because it speaks to their experience. It speaks to their reality. And one of the reasons they’re motivated to come to the university and to seek a college education is to evaluate what is going on and what are some of the disparities that exist within our society and what can we do to create positive social change.
TOBY HIGBIE: So when you’re talking about the sort of intersection of theory and practice, you know, that you’re engaged with the community and things like that, can you think of like one recent program or something that sort of highlights that sort of aspect of the Labor Center’s work?
KENT WONG: Sure, so we have two offices. We have one on the UCLA campus. I hope many of you have come to visit us at the UCLA Downtown Labor Center, which is right across from MacArthur Park, but that is in the largest Central American neighborhood in the country. It’s part of a vibrant Latina/Latino working class community, and we are always engaged in very creative projects that actively partner with our labor and community allies in Los Angeles. So what’s exciting about being able to take classes at UCLA through Labor Studies and through the Labor Center is that you have direct application to connect with some of the most dynamic labor and community organizations and can actually put your studies directly into practice and that many of our students find career paths through the research, through the internships and through the service learning activities that we generate on a daily basis.
TOBY HIGBIE: And we’re going to talk later about – I mean, the COVID-19 situation and the Safe At Home orders obviously are almost always in the front of people’s minds today, because we’re doing this session over Zoom because we can’t be together. But so later on I’ll sort of ask how you think your work is being change and how the work of organizations are being changed by the contemporary situation. But before we do that, I wanted to try to – you know, being the historian – move you back into the terrain of memory a little bit, because this week we – the students read Ruth Milkman’s article, Introduction To the Working for Justice Volume, and they read a chapter from Karen Brodkin’s book, Making Democracy Matter, and you know, so we’re – I’m sort of also interested in your experience over the years and how you think about and contextualize what those scholars are writing about. But just thinking about Ruth Milkman, who of course you worked with for many years – she was the director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and a UCLA professor – she writes about the LA model of social justice organizing and advocacy, and I’m just, you know, — The students have read it, so they know what Ruth Milkman’s ideas are, but I’m just kind of curious what you think makes Los Angeles special in terms of these social movements and, you know, what is it about Los Angeles that’s special? And a related kind of thing is are there similar things going on in other cities?
KENT WONG: Well, that’s great, number one, that you’re having your students read writings by both Ruth Milkman and Karen Brodkin. They’re good friends of mine, and they also have been very active in capturing the dynamics of change, especially here in Los Angeles. So in many ways we at the Labor Center and we at UCLA generally are very privileged to be in Los Angeles, in such a dynamic hub that has emerged as a center for the new American labor movement. And this transformation has taken place over the last 30 years or so, and it has emerged in large part because of the new working class of Los Angeles, that you have a situation where Los Angeles is a world city. We have people in the city drawn from all over the world, and you have increasingly large numbers of immigrant workers who are an indispensable part of the Los Angeles working class. And so much of the organizing, much of the dynamic union growth and activism has been grounded in the immigrant workforce of Los Angeles.
TOBY HIGBIE: And so what – I mean, would you say that Los Angeles is unique in this regard or different than other – I mean, you must be familiar with other large cities in your work and communications with other, you know, leaders of labor, education, and research.
KENT WONG: I do think that Los Angeles is unique in many ways. I do think that there are other cities that have emerged as promising locations of union revitalization and union activism, but I do think that there’s a particular convergence of forces here in Los Angeles that has made it such a central place. Number one, we are the center of the immigrant workers movement. There’s more organizing going on among immigrant workers here in Los Angeles than anywhere in the country. You mentioned that I served previously as staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union. And while I was a union attorney there were two major organizing campaigns that represented national breakthroughs. The first was the Justice for Janitors campaign, which successfully reorganized the janitorial industry here in Los Angeles, grounded in the dedication, courage, and heroism of Latina and Latino immigrant workers. And there was also the homecare organizing victory, which one, a little over 20 years ago, that brought 74,000 homecare workers into the Service Employees International Union, led by African-American women. And now there are over 300,000 homecare workers under union contract in the state of California. And this represents the single largest union organizing victory in the country in decades. So those are examples of what we see here in Los Angeles, but Los Angeles has become the center, as I said, of the immigrant workers movement. It’s become the center of the immigrant youth movement. It’s become the home of the worker center movement, which are forms of new organizing that are taking place outside of the traditional labor movement, but they’re increasingly developing strong alliances with the labor movement itself. And so the huge breakthrough on the fight for the $15 minimum wage, which was won here in Los Angeles City, Los Angeles County, and then spread to the state of California was due to a creative alliance between the traditional labor movement, worker centers, community organizations, faith groups, and the immigrant rights community.
TOBY HIGBIE: Fascinating. So, you know, thinking about that distinction between that distinction between the traditional labor movement and these other insurgent organizations, you know, how it is these days, membership in labor unions is quite low by historic measures, so – although some of our students might be familiar with the unions and things like that, others not so much, and I wonder when you say traditional unions, cast your memory back to what it was like in say the ‘80s or before, before these newer innovative organizing campaigns came together. What was the attitude of labor unions towards immigrants and more broadly just kind of the stance of the union movement vis à vis other sorts of social movements of the day?
KENT WONG: Well, US labor movement has a long and complex history, as you know, as one of our leading labor historians here at UCLA, and its relationship with communities of color, its relationship with immigrants has been quite uneven. And unfortunately there was a very conservative, old guard leadership which developed in some of the labor unions in the United States that privileged White men, that actively discouraged the inclusion of workers of color, of women workers, of immigrant workers, and saw the new working class as a threat to their power and their role. And in particular, many of the conservative union leaders saw that immigrant workers were a threat. They blamed immigrant workers for lowering wages, working conditions. They thought that immigrant workers could not be organized because of – because many were undocumented, the rationale was that they would be too fearful of their immigration status, to take the risk in forming and joining unions. And if anything, the opposite has been true, that immigrant workers have been among the most courageous to step forward and to put their lives on the line to fight for and to demand unions. And those unions that they fought for and built are among the most vibrant and dynamic unions in the country today. So Los Angeles, unlike other cities in the country, has one of the most diverse memberships and the vast majority of union members in Los Angeles are workers of color. We have huge numbers of immigrants in our unions. But also increasingly the leadership of unions in Los Angeles has reflected that, and with the election of great leaders like Maria Elena Durazo, who was the first woman and first person of color – woman of color to lead the LA labor movement, the emergence of people like Miguel Contreras, who was also the first person of color to lead the LA County Federation of Labor. Mike Garcia, who ran the Justice for Janitors Union for more than 20 years. It is the result of these types of talented, dynamic leaders that led the change in the Los Angeles labor scene.
TOBY HIGBIE: And I’m just curious, Kent, you know, on a personal level, what was it like to be a young lawyer, say, you know, in and around this time when the Justice for Janitors was kicking off or when Maria Elena Durazo was running her insurgent campaign and the hotel workers? What – Could you give us a flavor of what it was like to be working at that time on a daily basis or just if you remember anything like that?
KENT WONG: Yeah, I remember those things.
TOBY HIGBIE: (laughs)
KENT WONG: I’m not that old.
TOBY HIGBIE: No, no –
KENT WONG: I still have –
TOBY HIGBIE: Or if you care to share, I guess is really more the –
KENT WONG: I still remember those things. So actually for a group of us it was a very deliberate and conscious decision to get jobs within the labor movement, specifically to lead a process of union transformation. So just wasn’t by chance that many of us chose to get jobs in the labor movement. And I actually went to law school with Maria Elena Durazo. I went to law school with Antonio Villaraigosa, who went on to become the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in 130 years. I went to law school with Gilbert Sevilla [sp? 19:06], who became head of the Service Employees International Union representing the Los Angeles County workers. Maria Elena was the president of the hotel workers before she became leader of the LA County Federation of Labor. So all of us deliberately and consciously got jobs in the labor movement in order to lead this change. And so from the time that I joined the Service Employees International Union there was a whole group of us that saw that unions represented the best hope for the future in organizing workers, in fighting for social justice, in challenging corporate domination within our society that are so pervasive in every aspect of our lives. And I know that you’ll be asking me about the COVID-19 crisis, but in many ways it has really laid to bare the fundamental contradiction within our society that have been the consequence of rampant corporate domination in all spheres of our lives. And so it is shameful that in the wealthiest country in the world we do not have healthcare for all, and that of all the industrialized nations in the world who embrace the common sense principle that we need to address the healthcare needs of all of the people within our society that we have leadership in US Congress who for three years have nonstop been fighting ever step of the way to eliminate and strip healthcare coverage for millions and millions of Americans. And we see how stupid and how narrow minded that position is, as if germs and disease will only impact certain neighborhoods, certain communities, and when we see the crisis of COVID-19 where everybody is at risk, and the fact that we don’t have universal healthcare is a disgrace. The fact that we don’t have paid sick leave, workers even to this day who have COVID-19 have to make a decision of whether they’re going to go to work and feed their families and possibly risk coworkers and others on the job or whether they’re going to stay at home and not be able to put food on the table and face eviction come the first of the month. These are the challenges that working people all across this country are facing. And the absolute deplorable lack of a social safety net within our society that there is no alternative for workers who are on hard times or having difficulty or were laid off from their jobs, there was no place for them to go. And for the outrageous racist scapegoating of immigrant workers and to strip 11M immigrant workers and their families from any relief based on the $2T bailout that was passed by Congress and signed by the president, not a dime for 11M undocumented immigrants, for 5M US citizens who have parents who are undocumented. So that is a direct consequence of corporate domination in every sphere of our lives and deeply seated racist ideology that is represented by the racist demagogue who inhabits the White House today.
TOBY HIGBIE: Yeah, well said. And I think, you know, obviously the idea that the undocumented people aren’t going to have access to healthcare as if that was going to protect those who are documented. Obviously that’s not the case on a scientific level. So it speaks to some of the thinking of the policy makers unfortunately. And obviously that’s a struggle that carries on as we go into the future. So I will – I do want to come back to that, but we have an – I’m going to keep asking you about the past. I know I’m a relentless historian and it’s to a fault, but I was super curious, you know, you were talking about how you came into the movement with a group of friends and colleagues or cohort, and also that is something that Karen Brodkin talks about in her article. So a later cohort, I think. She’s speaking of this group of young people who were students in the 1990s, many of them at UCLA, and that they were drawn into the labor action and the living wage campaigns and the immigrant rights campaigns of the 1990s. So I imagine in some ways you had that experience too, but perhaps a half a generation earlier or so. But I’m just curious, did your family have a history of activism or what brought you to this? Was this something that came out of your college experience or how did you come to activism?
KENT WONG: My family were always very socially engaged and very much involved in the Chinese-American community. My favorite, Delbert Wong, was the very first Chinese-American judge in the country. And he had to withstand a lot of racial discrimination in a lot of areas. He was a World War II veteran. He graduated from Stanford University. After graduating from Stanford law school no one would hire him, because no private law firm would trust a Chinese-American attorney. And so he got a job in the state Attorney General’s office under then Attorney General Pat Brown and he was nominated by Pat Brown and became the first Chinese-American judge when Pat Brown became governor of the state of California. In spite of that, (laughs) in the 1950s when he was working for the state Attorney General’s office here in Los Angeles he had to challenge racially restrictive policies to allow our family to purchase a home in Silverlake, because although he was a decorated World War II veteran, although he’d graduated from Stanford Law School, and although he was a practicing attorney in the state Attorney General’s office, there were racially restrictive covenants [? 26:03] that blocked Chinese, other Asians, Latinos, African-Americans, Jews, from purchasing homes in certain parts of the city. So he always instilled in us a sense that we need to give back to our community. My mom was a social worker. She was one of the few women of color who graduated from Smith in the social work school, and she was always very active as a volunteer within the Chinese-American community. So that was my upbringing. But my introduction to the labor movement came when I was in high school and in college, and I worked as a volunteer boycott organizer for the United Farm Workers of America under the leadership of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. And so that was my first exposure to union organizing, to the role of a union, but it was also my first exposure to the philosophy of non-violence. And in the, you know, decade of the 1960s, with the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Reverend James Lawson, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, what held them all together is that they all studied and practiced the philosophy of non-violence and saw that as a viable way of promoting social change and social justice. And so, you know, that was my early beginnings. I got a job as the first staff attorney in Asian-Americans Advancing Justice, which is now the largest Asian-American civil rights organization in the country. And then from there I got a job with the Service Employees International Union as a staff attorney in a time of tremendous change in the Los Angeles labor scene, led largely by key friends of mine like Antonio Villaraigosa who is over at the United Teachers of Los Angeles, like Gilbert Sevilla, who was working with me at SEIU, like Maria Elena Durazo, who was working as an organizer at the Hotel Workers before she ran for and became the president of that union.
TOBY HIGBIE: That’s a great – It’s great to hear that history, to link activism across so many generations and to lay it out for the students like that. I really appreciate that story. And I wonder if you briefly, because I do want to also now also ask you about people like Miguel Contreras and the development of the County Federation of Labor, but could you say just real briefly what is it about the – in your mind, the connection between the labor movement – What makes the labor movement a non-violent movement? Is it always a non-violent movement or is this – what’s the connection for you?
KENT WONG: Whenever you become an activist, and whenever you fight for social change, you are always searching for what is most effective to generate that change and to make things happen. And in the 1960s there were a lot of different trends of thought that emerged, and some thought that revolutionary violence was the way to go. That we needed to overthrow the US government, that we needed to arm people and that we needed to call for a violent insurrection. There were many people that were drawn to various Third World liberation movements that did just that. And there were others however, like Reverend James Lawson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta who understood that you cannot fight violence with violence. You cannot fight hate with hate, and that the philosophy of non-violence is the most powerful weapon to challenge those in power and to build grassroots democratic movements that will envision a better society and a better day. So I think that time has shown that non-violent philosophy has been by far the most effective grounding of building social change movements.
TOBY HIGBIE: Thanks for that. That’s really well put. So from that sort of more theoretical level, maybe looking to the question of the County Federation of Labor under Miguel Contreras, a period that you’re very familiar with and that you witnessed firsthand. So you know, County Federation of Labor is a kind of aggregating entity that brings together all the unions in Los Angeles County, but traditionally it didn’t have the same role that it does today. And tell us a little bit about Miguel Contreras and his – the way he changed the County Federation of Labor and what it meant for Los Angeles.
KENT WONG: Sure. So the two major breakthrough unions that led the charge to change the LA labor movement were the hotel workers – and after my good friend, Maria Elena Durazo, was elected president, she recruited Reverend James Lawson to help her to change the culture of her union and how to use the philosophy of non-violence in mobilizing, activating and energizing the largely Latina/Latino working class base for unions. And the things that she did at the Hotel Workers and the things that were done at the justice for Janitors Union completely changed the culture of the LA labor movement. And largely it was grounded in the philosophy of non-violence, that having civil disobedience actions, having hunger strikes, having – you know, building – you know, takeovers and having water ins where hotel workers would fill up a restaurant during the noon time lunch hour and only order water so that they would take up every seat in the restaurant and only order water. And so the restaurant would make no money during their busiest lunch hour. Doing civil disobedience actions in the streets of downtown Los Angeles in rush hour traffic and blocking out the busiest intersections that would cause a traffic jam for hours. These were all things that were the result of the application of non-violence in practice. And so those were the two major unions that led the change, the Justice for Janitors and the Hotel Workers, and they successfully reorganized the janitorial industry and they successfully reorganized the hotel industry in Los Angeles. Miguel Contreras was actually brought in as a trustee for the Hotel Workers Union and later became the political director of the LA County Federation of Labor. And he in 1996 became the first person of color to ever lead the LA labor movement. Change does not happen easily, and even when he was elected head of the LA County Federation of Labor there was a lot of resistance, because a lot of the old guard leaders said we don’t want Miguel Contreras (laughs) as our leader. The former old guard leaders said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times Miguel Contreras is unqualified to be head of the LA labor movement, period. That was the (laughs) attack on Miguel in the LA Times. And yet, through the mobilization of the more progressive unions Miguel was brought in. And I worked very closely with Miguel from the time that he was elected. He called me in to assist him with running the strategic planning process for the LA labor movement. We convened the executive council. We convened as staff. We had retreats. And he was very clear in challenging the leaders of the labor movement by saying we have to look beyond the individual interests of your own members. We have to look at the interests of the labor movement as a whole. And unless we grow the labor movement, none of your individual unions are going to succeed. And unless we build political power, none of us are going to be able to withstand the attacks we are experiencing by corporate America. And so Miguel’s brilliance was his ability to combine the successful organizing strategies that have been tested and won through the Justice for Janitors campaign and the Hotel Workers campaign with a political mobilization strategy that fundamentally shaped the political direction of the city of Los Angeles and the state of California. And so to this day, Miguel Contreras is really underappreciated for his visionary brilliance in changing politics in the state of California. It was not an accident. You know, California used to be a purple state. It would flip back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. Back in the 1990s we passe the racist Proposition 187. We gutted affirmative action in the state of California. We gutted bilingual education in the state of California. We led with the, you know, horrible passage of Proposition 13 to gut public education in the state of California. There were a lot of right wing things that the California electorate was doing back in the 1980s and 1990s. Miguel Contreras understood that the very finest union organizers could also be the finest political mobilizers. And so he arranged to bring out the best hotel worker organizers or the best janitors who were organizers and had them work on political campaigns. And Miguel Contreras said that corporations outspend unions ten to one every single election. We get outspent ten to one. But what we can do that they can’t do is that we have a base. We have a membership. We have workers who we always outnumber the corporate elite. They don’t call them the 1% for nothing, because that’s where they are. They represent the interests of the ruling class elites in this country. But unions represent the vast majority. They represent workers, and so to be able to turn out the best organizers to do political mobilization was decisive in flipping Los Angeles City, flipping Los Angeles County, flipping the state of California. And so it’s no accident that every single statewide office in the state of California is held by a Democrat. There are supermajorities in the state assembly, Democrat supermajorities in the state senate. We have a supermajority of Democrats on the County Board of Supervisors on the LA City Council and some of the most progressive elected leaders in the country come from California. So the fact that Maria Elena Durazo, who used to be the head of the LA County Federation of Labor is now in the state senate is no accident. The fact that Lorena Gonzalez, who used to be head of the San Diego Labor Council is now a leading member of the California state legislature is no accident. And so if you look at the whole history of progressive, pro-labor candidates getting elected, that began with the work of Miguel Contreras when he became head of the LA County Fed back in 1996.
TOBY HIGBIE: That’s fascinating history, and you know, I think we’re going to explore that more of course as the quarter goes on, but most – many people, you know, aren’t really aware of how these political shifts take place. They think that they happen through demographics and that it’s just sort of a natural development, but in fact, as you outlined, it’s a careful and long term conscious campaign. I’m mindful of your time. We still have about 15 minutes before you have to go, and so I want to shift to talk about the more contemporary issues. But, well, before I ask the question I’m just going to say to students if you’re thinking you have a question you could – you can chat it to Lena, our TA, or you can put it in the general chat and depending on how much time we have at the end. Professor Wong has to leave at 1:30 to be able to ask a couple of student questions, and if not, maybe we’ll have those questions afterwards. But so Kent, you know, thinking about today reflecting on the history that you’ve just been talking about so richly, what do you think the biggest challenges are facing working people in terms of the economy and the structure of work, of politics, and what is this COVID-19 crisis doing to the labor movement. We know that it’s creating mass unemployment, but what do you think it’s going to do to social movements, if you could look into your crystal ball and give us a little prediction or perhaps based on what you’re seeing out there in the streets? So the biggest challenges maybe that existed before this crisis and how this crisis is going to change them.
KENT WONG: The biggest crisis facing the country is horrendous economic inequality and horrendous racial injustice, that there are – there’s a huge economic divide between the haves and the have nots. The ruling class in the United States has amassed more wealth and more power than at any time in US history, but – at any time in world history – and it is obscene how we have a handful of individuals how own as much wealth as 50% of the people of the world. I mean, it’s outrageous the huge economic imbalance that exists between a handful of wealthy elite who have amassed tremendous wealth and power and where there are so many people in this country who are living paycheck to paycheck or not even able to get a full-time job that can support themselves and their families. It doesn’t have to be like that. And there’s also a huge racial divide that accompanies that where inevitably workers of color, immigrant workers are inevitably at the bottom rung of the employment ladder and are in those jobs that are the most dangerous, are the most difficult and have no opportunities for advancement. So you know, my origins in the labor movement were with United Farm Workers, and how could it be in the wealthiest country in the world that workers who plant and pick their fruits and vegetables that each of us eat every day of our lives, how could be that they’re still paid poverty wages, are poisoned by pesticides in the fields, are forced to live in substandard housing and how could it be that so many parts of our economy – this growing gig economy, this growing service sector, the areas of employment growth are concentrated in low wage jobs with very little future. So fast foods, restaurants, in the gig economy, in the service economy, in warehouses, there are so – there’s such a domination of low wage dead end jobs, and there are so few jobs that can actually sustain workers and their families. So that’s the big challenge that we’re facing and the COVID-19 crisis (laughs) has laid bare all of those contradictions and the complete failures on the part of this corporate elite in addressing the needs of our society at large. And so the things that the labor movement had been fighting for for years and years and years, for a living wage, for healthcare for all, for a safety net, for, you know, public education, (laughs) for things that will enrich the quality of life for everyone, you know, this is the wealthiest country on the face of the Earth. This is the wealthiest country in human history. And yet we can’t feed our people? We can’t house our people? We can’t provide healthcare for our people? We absolutely can, and yet when you have people like Donald Trump running the country, who is lying every day to the American people, who has deceived the people about the danger of COVID-19, who still is talking about wanting to get people back to work by Easter and, you know, wanting to – because he’s more concerned about his profits and the profits of those who put him in power than the safety of working people within the society, that is something that exposes the deep and fundamental flaws within our society is not advanced just by Donald Trump and the Republican party but corporate Democrats as well. So this is a bipartisan failure and a bipartisan neoliberal policy that has been embraced by the ruling class in this country. And so I think that (laughs) the hope for the future lies in our students here at UCLA. The hope for the future lies in the next generation and young people today who are entering the workforce at a very dangerous time, at a very difficult time when there are very few good jobs. There are very few jobs that will sustain a middle class standard of living, and I see the change that is occurring and the organizing and the activism among the generation of young people today that understand that they have to fight for a better future, and they have to get rid of the Donald Trumps and the corporate elite that are polluting the Earth, that are driving economic inequality even deeper and deeper than it ever has been, that are advancing policies of mass incarceration, of racial injustice and racial discrimination, that are caging children at the US-Mexico border, that are dividing families and splitting up families and blaming immigrants (laughs) and people of color and poor people for the problems that they have created. So my hope is in our students at UCLA, the young people throughout the country today who are going to demand the change that we need.
TOBY HIGBIE: And do you think there are – I mean, a question is, you know, what – How does the labor movement or how does the movement to address all of these interlocking problems, how does it grow?
KENT WONG: I think that what we’re seeing here in Los Angeles is a reflection of what needs to be replicated in many parts of the country. The fact that we fought for and won the $15 minimum wage here in Los Angeles, no one thought that could be done, and we did that. And the fact that we have completely altered the, you know, political landscape in Los Angeles and the state of California, that is a direct consequence of the labor movement and the fact that there is more organizing that’s taking place right here in Los Angeles. The fact that UCLA students themselves helped us to expose the horrendous conditions of the car wash industry and UCLA grads went on to lead the organizing campaign that successfully organized over 30 car washes right here in Los Angeles, the first in the country. And now there are car wash organizing campaigns in Chicago and New York based on what occurred right here in Los Angeles. The fact that we launched the first Black Worker Center right here in Los Angeles that is now a model for Black Worker Centers in other parts of the country. The fact that gig workers who, you know, drive Uber or Lyft are organizing, the fact that warehouse workers are organizing, the fact that cannabis workers are organizing here in Los Angeles is a sign of hope for the future. And the fact that COVID-19 has exposed the horrendous injustice and the lies and the bankrupt policies that have been leading the nation, both Republicans and Democrats have been embracing a neoliberal agenda that benefits the wealthy at the hands of the rest of us.
TOBY HIGBIE: Thanks, Kent. Lena, are there any questions came to you through the chat?
LENA: Yes. I got a few questions. I’m going to post it right now.
TOBY HIGBIE: Yeah, we have just five minutes before Kent has to go, so see what we –
LENA: Oh, okay.
TOBY HIGBIE: Maybe you want to pick one that seems like the most exciting or generative? I trust you.
LENA: Can I choose two? (laughs)
TOBY HIGBIE: Sure, sure.
LENA: Yeah. So Ernesto asked how does Professor Kent Wong feel about Bernie Sanders and his campaign suspension.
TOBY HIGBIE: Yeah. (laughs)
LENA: Which just happened like an hour ago. And Christopher has a question about how can we continue to trust the Democratic party and how should we even – should the labor movement start its own union or –
TOBY HIGBIE: Own political party maybe.
LENA: Yeah.
TOBY HIGBIE: So what – Yeah, Bernie Sanders dropped out. I don’t know if you noticed – saw that.
KENT WONG: I head that, yes.
TOBY HIGBIE: Go ahead.
KENT WONG: No, I do think that it’s unfortunate I think that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren collectively really represented a message of economic justice and social change, which is badly needed in this country, and yet it was very obvious to me that the corporate Democrats closed ranks and decided that Biden was the person that would best represent the corporate wing of the Democratic party, and so they fought and succeeded in having him be the nominee for the Democratic party. So I’m not happy with that decision, however, I think that there is no choice between a pro-corporate neoliberal Joe Biden and a man who is risking bringing this country to the brink of fascism. And I think that Donald Trump has displayed his narcissism, his incompetence, his complete disregard for the health and well-being of millions and millions of people in this country, and that he has to go. And so I do think that although I’m not thrilled or excited about the Joe Biden campaign that the prospects of having four more years of Donald Trump is unimaginable. And I think that the challenge that we face as activists is to make sure that we can support institutional change wherever we can make that change, whether it’s within a union, within a community based organization, whether it’s in a student organization, whatever we can do to create and sustain change, that is the best strategy for pushing Joe Biden to a direction where he needs to go, which is off his neoliberal policies and to something that is more aligned with the interests of the vast majority of people in this country and to advance policy change that will push for universal healthcare, that will push for living wage, that will push for an end to mass incarceration and things that potentially we could fight for and win if we are well organized.
TOBY HIGBIE: So to paraphrase I think what the second question is, so you don’t think we need a separate party or should there be a separate party for labor unions I think was the –
KENT WONG: I’m not interested in building a separate labor party. I think that the electoral system in this country as a carry over from slavery is so inherently undemocratic, where Donald Trump can lose by 3M popular votes and still become the president, I mean, where does that make sense? (laughs) And so I think that to try to engage in that arena would be not a good use of our time and resources. And I think to build democratic institutions like labor unions, to build worker centers, to build community organizations that fight for social justice and social change, that’s where our power lies.
TOBY HIGBIE: Well, that sounds like a very good note to finish our interview on, Kent, and it is 1:29, and I know you have to move on to your next meeting. Everybody give a clap or a thumbs up in your reaction emoji. Very good. Thank you so much.
KENT WONG: Great to see all of you and hang in there. We are all going to get through this together, and thanks Toby for having me today.