Leaving Summer School Empowered and Inspired

By Natalie Hofmeister

I had planned to write this blog on the racism woven into Right-to-Work laws. After Labor History Night, I’m finding it hard to focus on the past, and others have written and spoken brilliantly on racism and right-to-work. I want to look towards the future.

I am new to the labor movement. I came to Summer School hoping to learn as much as I could. I wish I could rewind these last five days to go back and wring out even more knowledge from all the conversations I had.

It’s taken me years as a member of unions to grasp how essential it is to organize. I grew up in a middle-class family, knowing next to nothing about “Labor,” and joined my union as a Master’s student at Columbia University as their fight to unionize gained momentum. Today, I’m a graduate worker and student at Cornell, where I teach and research evolution.

Graduate students are a growing segment of the labor movement. Since many jobs require higher degrees, we seek out Master’s, professional, and doctoral degrees to do the work we’re passionate about. Degrees of any kind are expensive. Many people cannot afford to go to college, let alone to spend another five, six, even ten years to get a Ph.D. It’s easy to spend a decade getting your degree if you’re asked to take on unpaid labor serving the university or taking on additional, uncompensated tasks in the classes you teach. Graduate workers share many of the same struggles.

Because going to graduate school is a privilege, I felt incredibly apprehensive about claiming space for myself and my peers in the labor movement. To every single sister in the UALE Summer School: thank you. You made me feel so welcome and empowered.

I’m leaving our school with twenty pages of notes, quotes, and ideas to improve working conditions for my fellow graduate workers, who often work twice their allotted hours, who go without pay for months at a time, and who berate themselves for wanting a more just workplace. (That last one is me.) After I shared our struggle with you all in the General Session, I was amazed by how many sisters suggested strategies and voiced their support for Cornell Graduate Students United!

I’m soaking up the energy each sister shared, and taking it back to my sisters at Cornell. Today, I am not afraid, thanks to you.

P.S. No example from this work illustrated the intimacy between social justice and labor struggles as well as this video on the racism in the “right to work.” I strongly recommend it!