Labor Organizing at Sage Cafe
Cal Dooley | February 11, 2025
Panelists (From Left to Right) Goetz Wolf, former UCAFT-UCLA President, Jen Hampton, Galen Marshal-Clark, Miranda Escalante of AFBU and Michael Special of Teamsters Local 61.
Union organizers visited Sage Cafe at Warren Wilson College (WWC) on February 6 to speak on the importance, history and how-to of labor organizing. The presentation stressed the urgency of labor organizing as the Trump administration weakens labor protections, as well as the importance of organizing in the South where historical barriers to organizing are beginning to shift. Speakers shared detailed strategies for getting involved in organizing, from connecting with labor organizations to structuring conversations with coworkers. They also provided a resource list for students looking to get involved.
Organizers came representing Asheville Food and Beverage United (AFBU), the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizers (AFL-CIO) and the WNC Workers Assembly (WWA).
About 50 students and community members attended the presentation. Ilya Andreyev, a junior at WWC had a prior interest in unions and said they left better informed.
“I learned that union busting is illegal – I actually didn't know that,” Andreyev said. “I learned the steps to building a union, some very important ones, like inoculation and establishing a contract. I didn't really have a grasp on how important those steps are.”
Galen Marshall-Clark, an organizer with AFBU sees labor organizing as a critical avenue for making change both in the workplace and beyond.
“As we've seen in the world, capitalism is eating everything,” Marshall-Clark said. “Our government has literally been taken over by billionaire businessmen and our electoral politics are clearly failing at preventing that type of fascist oligarchic rise. Labor organizing gives us a new Battlefield.”