Colloquium
Thursday, March 5, 2008
4:00 pm
1420 Law Building
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Workers as Parents: Unions, Low-Wage Workers, and Educational EqualityPresented by Gary Blasi and John Rogers, UCLA |
This talk explores the potential role of low-wage service sector unions in promoting equity-focused school reform, and the role of union involvement in such non-workplace issues in building support from both members and the public. The members of many service-sector unions in greater Los Angeles are parents of children attending poorly resourced public schools. In seeking to address the interests of their members, labor unions potentially can draw upon resources, organizing strategies, and political relationships to contribute to grassroots campaigns for educational equity. At the same time, quality education is a top priority for both members and the general public. Other research shows that both public and member support for unions increases as they are seen to be working on issues beyond perceived narrow self interest. Our talk considers this potential in light of our experience working with SEIU 1877 (the Justice for Janitors union) and several other union locals in the past few years.
About the Speakers
Gary Blasi
Gary Blasi joined the UCLA faculty with a distinguished 20-year record of public interest practice. He teaches clinical and public interest lawyering courses, including Fact Investigation in Complex Matters and Clinical Seminar in Public Policy Advocacy. He is one of the founding and core faculty of the law school's unique David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. He practices, teaches, conducts research and writes about advocacy on behalf of children in substandard schools, homeless families and individuals, low income tenants, low wage workers, and victims of discrimination. He has received numerous awards for distinction in the field of public interest law and for providing legal services to the poor. In 2007, he was named one of the top 100 lawyers in California, cited as the "go-to lawyer for community groups in need of advice."
Professor Blasi's research draws on cognitive science and social psychology to better understand how lawyers acquire expertise, how people understand the causes of problems like homelessness or poverty, how advocates can best deal with the consequences of racial and other stereotypes, and how large bureaucracies can better respond to the needs of poor people and people living with disabilities. He has also served as Director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, which supports research and education on issues critical to working people, taught at Stanford and lectured at universities in England, Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong and China.
Professor Blasi became a lawyer without attending law school. After graduate study at Harvard, where he was a Graduate Prize Fellow and Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Professor Blasi served as a legal apprentice in a community law office in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where he also began his practice. In 1978, he joined the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, where he coordinated advocacy including complex litigation in the areas of housing, welfare, homelessness, and redevelopment.
John Rogers
John Rogers, associate professor of education and director of the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA) at UCLA, specializes in issues related to equal access to education, parental and community involvement in schools, urban education, and the role of race in education.
He is a regularly cited expert on school integration, education achievement gaps, student-to-teacher ratios, high school exit examinations, state aptitude tests and various equity issues facing school districts in Los Angeles and around the nation. Rogers is also faculty director of the Principal Leadership Institute at the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, which recruits, trains and supports individuals committed to academic excellence, equity and integrity as a way to maximize achievement and opportunity for students in urban schools.
His research centers on the democratization of knowledge and power as a means for creating socially just conditions in urban schools and urban communities. Rogers writes about the role of parents and organized community groups in school improvement and about strategies for engaging youth as researchers in equity-based educational reform. He is the author (with Jeannie Oakes) of Learning Power: Organizing for Education and Justice (2006).
This event is co-sponsored with the Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy and the Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access.
