jonathan's blog

This op-ed appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 10, 2011

"We need you to win in Vermont," emphasized a healthcare provider from California at the Workers' Center's well-attended workshop at the US Social Forum this morning. Organized together with the International Worker Justice Campaign, our workshop explored the nuts and bolts of "Human Rights Campaigns to Build Power at the State Level: Healthcare and Workers' Rights."

On Tuesday morning, the five of us who got to Detroit early met with members of the Chinese Progressive Association from San Francisco, for the first-ever VWC/CPA exchange.

For the past two years, most of the energy of the Vermont Workers' Center has been dedicated to the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign. Together with thousands of Vermonters, we have talked with our neighbors, shared our stories, educated our legislators, marched, rallied and sung, and we have done what few thought possible — moved Vermont to make a commitment to fundamental reform of our healthcare system, to reform that recognizes and respects the human right to health of each and every Vermonter.

At the end of March, we kicked off the "Road to Detroit" with two great musical events at the Workers' Center. On Sunday, March 21, Paul Baker Hernandez, a Carthusian hermit-turned-protest singer from Managua, Nicaragua, played movement music from all over the world, including several examples of the beautiful, passionate music of Víctor Jara, Chilean activist and musician tortured and murdered in the 1973 Kissinger/Pinochet coup.

Welcome to the Vermont Workers' Center's "Road to Detroit" blog as we prepare for (and attend) the US Social Forum in Detroit in June. The US Social Forum, which is expected to draw upwards of 20,000 folks from social movements throughout the country and internationally, is the next important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multisectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country, and changes history.