This public panel discussion will feature a conversation on the critical role of the labor movement in rebalancing power and achieving economic justice. The current political climate highlights the iterative and inseparable relationship between politics, economics and identity – revealing threats to and opportunities for increased solidarity within and among justice movements.
Dorian Warren, Co-President of Community Change, will offer framing remarks, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Alicia Garza, Author of The Purpose of Power. Panelists include April Verrett, President of SEIU, Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, and Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School and Chief Economist of the AFL-CIO. Fred Redmond, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, will offer closing remarks.
This event is part of the 2025 Henry Cohen Lecture Series, which will bring leading thinkers, changemakers, policymakers, journalists, and activists to the New School to present their perspectives and explore the intersections of race, social stratification and political economy that inspire economic and racial justice.
Presented by the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy and the Milano Schools of Public Engagement.
Dorian Warren is co-president of Community Change and Community Change Action, and co-founder of the Economic Security Project. Warren taught for over a decade at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He's the co-author of The Hidden Rules of Race, co-editor of Race and American Political Development, and has penned numerous academic articles.
Darrick Hamilton is a university professor, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, and founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Darrick examines social stratification and political economy in order to move policy and practice in fundamentally new directions that promote economic inclusion, social equity, and civic engagement.
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A progressive scholar, organizer and media personality, Dorian Warren has worked to advance racial, economic and social justice for more than two decades. Like the organizations he leads, Warren is driven by the innate conviction that only social movements – led by the people most affected by racial, economic, gender and social injustice – can change their communities and public policies for the better.
Dorian is co-president of Community Change – an organization founded in 1968 by civil rights, labor and community leaders to honor the memory of Robert F. Kennedy's fight to end poverty in America – and Community Change Action, its political arm. He is also the co-founder of the Economic Security Project, an innovative social impact organization that has already shifted the national conversation around cash, economic power and economic security.
Warren taught for over a decade at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, where he was co-director of the Columbia University Program on Labor Law and Policy. He's the co-author of The Hidden Rules of Race, co-editor of Race and American Political Development, and has penned numerous academic articles. He also worked at MSNBC, where he was a Contributor, fill-in host for "Melissa Harris-Perry" and "Now with Alex Wagner" as well as the Host and Co-Executive Producer of “Nerding Out” on MSNBC’s digital platform (now Peacock). Dorian also co-hosted the Deep Dive podcast on The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry. He was previously a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and serves on the boards of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Education Fund, Working Partnerships USA, and The Nation Magazine Editorial Board, among others. He is also co-chair of the Ad Council’s Advisory Committee on Public Issues.
As a commentator on public affairs, Warren has appeared regularly on television and radio including NBC Nightly News, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, BET, BBC, NPR, Bloomberg, & NY1, among other outlets. He has also written for The Nation, Huffington Post, Newsweek, Salon, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Medium, Ebony.com, and Boston Review.
Sara Nelson has served as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 2014, representing 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines. She has been a union Flight Attendant since 1996 when she started flying at United Airlines. Sara designed the successful payroll support program that was an historic Worker’s First relief program that kept aviation workers connected to their paychecks, healthcare, and other benefits for 16 months during the COVID pandemic, while banning stock buybacks and dividends across the industry and capping executive compensation for two years after the relief period ended making aviation the only industry not to grow in inequality during the pandemic. Sara believes labor should set the agenda every time.
The New York Times called her "America's most powerful flight attendant" for her role in helping to end the 35-day Government Shutdown, InStyle Magazine placed her on their Top 50 Badass Women list, the New Yorker did a major profile in 2022, and Fast Company made her one of their Top Ten Innovators of the last ten years. She was elected chair of the International Transport Workers’ Federation Civil Aviation Section, representing nearly 5 million aviation workers around the world. Sara often says corporations have money and control but workers have the power. She encourages women everywhere to join unions and run unions.
SEIU President April Verrett is a fighter for working people and a visionary leader at the forefront of building a modern-day labor movement that is multi-racial, multi generational, and anti-racist.
Verrett has dedicated her career to helping workers build power together in unions to not only win better wages, benefits and working conditions, but also help eradicate generational poverty, dismantle structural racism, and strengthen our democracy.
Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Verrett was raised by her grandmother, an SEIU union steward who taught her the values of perseverance, collective action, and community.
Elected as SEIU President in May 2024, Verrett has also served as Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU, President of SEIU Local 2015, California’s largest local union and the nation’s largest long-term care union, and as Executive Vice President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana (HCII).
Darrick Hamilton, University Professor: Darrick Hamilton is a university professor, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, and founding director of the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School; and recently appointed as the chief economist of the AFL-CIO Considered one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals, Professor Hamilton redefines how an economy should work, identifies powerful opportunities for investment in human capacity, and propells collaboration alongside field leaders to advance the realization of economic inclusion, social equity and civic engagement for all people in the US and across the globe. One of the pioneers of the identity group stratification economic field, he has been profiled in the New York Times, Mother Jones, Bloomberg’s Business Week and the Wall Street Journal. He advises local, national and global leaders on economic policy, and has developed and collaborated on transformative policy proposals that have shifted billions of dollars into the hands of people, inspiring legislative proposals at the federal, state, and local levels, including baby bonds, guaranteed income, and a federal job guarantee. Professor Hamilton was named an inaugural Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Born and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, he is a graduate of Oberlin College and received a PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina.
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Fredrick D. Redmond is the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. On June 13, 2022, he was unanimously elected to the position as the highest ranking African American officer in the history of America’s labor movement.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond was first elected to this position by the AFL-CIO Executive Council on Aug. 20, 2021. He filled the vacancy of the executive vice president position from March to June 2022. He had previously served on the federation’s Executive Council since 2008.
Redmond’s path to the federation’s second-highest office began in 1973, when he went to work at Reynolds Metals Co. in Chicago and became a member of the United Steelworkers (USW). He was active in his local union almost immediately, serving as shop steward and eventually vice president. He served three terms as local president.
In 1996, Redmond joined the USW staff, working with local unions in the Chicago area before accepting a position at the international union’s headquarters in Pittsburgh in 1998. For decades, Redmond served the USW in various staff and leadership roles, assisting local unions, developing and conducting training programs, and bargaining contracts.
As international vice president for human affairs, a position to which he was first elected to in 2006, Redmond oversaw the union’s Civil and Human Rights Department and worked with USW allies across the country in responding to attacks on voting rights and in combating economic inequality.
Redmond has spent his entire life fighting for racial justice in the workplace and throughout our communities. In 2016, he was appointed to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s Advisory Commission on African American Affairs, and in 2020, Redmond was tapped to chair the AFL-CIO Task Force on Racial Justice, a body focused on taking concrete action to address America’s long history of racism and police violence against Black people.
Redmond has served on the board of directors of Working America, the TransAfrica Forum, the Workers Defense League, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Interfaith Worker Justice and, since 2007, has served as chair of the board of directors of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. In 2021, Redmond was elected president of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas, a prestigious international post.
Alicia believes that Black communities deserve what all communities deserve -- to be powerful in every aspect of their lives. An author, political strategist, organizer, and cheeseburger enthusiast, Alicia founded the Black Futures Lab in 2018 to make Black communities powerful in politics. In 2023, the Black Futures Lab conducted the Black Census Project -- the largest survey of Black communities in US history. Alicia is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, an international organizing project to end state violence and oppression against Black people. The Black Lives Matter Global Network now has 40 chapters in four countries.
Alicia has become a powerful voice in the media, contributing expert commentary on politics, race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. Her work has been featured in Time, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She has received numerous accolades and recognitions, including being on the cover of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World issue (September 2020), named to TIME’s 100 Women of the Year list (March 2020), and is a 3x recipient of The Root’s list of 100 African American achievers and influencers. Alicia has received the Sydney Peace Prize, Adweek Beacon Award, Glamour’s Women of the Year Award, Marie Claire’s New Guard Award, and was honored as a Community Change Agent at BET’s Black Girls Rock Awards.
Alicia’s first book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, was released October 20, 2020 with One World (Penguin Random House.) She shares her thoughts on politics and pop culture on her podcast, Lady Don't Take No. Alicia warns you -- hashtags don’t start movements. People do.