Praise For CLU from Labor Leader Amy Dean

When In These Times magazine asked renowned labor leader and author Amy Dean what projects around the country were models for resuscitating the American labor movement, which one did she choose to highlight? Community Labor United and the Green Justice Coalition.

After decades at the forefront of children’s health and other campaigns with the AFL-CIO in California, Dean feels that one of the strategies labor needs to embrace is local coalition-building: “Labor should be as much a community-based organization as it is a workplace-based one. The business community certainly talks about a range of strategies it needs to engage to dominate market share. Labor should be woven into the civic fabric of local communities – as much as the local Chamber of Commerces are.”

Dean issues a series of recommendations in her book, “A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement,” which she says can help to anchor organizing in the current economic climate. She describes “three legs to the stool of regional power building: deep coalition building, policy and research, aggressive political action,” and praises CLU for being rooted in this model, which she credits for the success of the next generation of social change organizations.

Since the 1990’s, Dean says, labor and other allied groups have been developing a different way of working with political officials. This involves building strong coalitions across traditional turf and interest lines to develop policy recommendations based on solid research, and then getting commitments on this agenda from candidates before supporting their election. This means acting so that “as social change groups we’re not just simply responding, but we have real proposals to put forth.”