Abstract
The long and unwieldy title of this essay reflects the complex range of issues implicated in any project designed to promote the effective participation of labor/community coalitions in the process of progressive social transformation. The decision of the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law to organize a unique gathering of community leaders, activists, labor organizers, law professors, and social scientists provided a particularly valuable opportunity to advance this project because it focused attention on two specific case studies in which effective labor/community coalitions were indispensable to the success of union organizing and collective bargaining efforts. 1 The Greensboro case study recounts the struggles waged by warehouse workers and community leaders to combat the abusive employment practices of a Kmart distribution center in Greensboro, North Carolina, while the New Haven case study recounts a series of labor/community struggles over the anti-union practices of Yale University and of the OMNI at Yale. 2 My purpose in this essay is to contextualize these two case studies in a way that reflects some of the basic theoretical and political advances that currently are converging in the LatCrit movement. 3 Rather than forward a general or abstract description of LatCrit theory and its social justice agendas, my purpose is to suggest specific points of convergence between LatCrit theory and the effort to promote more effective labor/community coalitions by focusing specifically on the lessons these two case studies offer when examined through a LatCrit perspective. Like any complex socio-legal phenomenon, the ...