Video-bits from the conference

You can find some impressions from the conference here: Check out LabourStart’s Youtube-Channel as well – there are some speeches from the conference as well as other videos listed there!

The final day of the LabourStart conference

Good morning to the hundreds of participants in the LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference in Berlin!

Today, Sunday, is the last day of our conference.  But it is in some ways the most important one.  After Saturday’s plenaries, workshops, demonstration and party, we now come to the point where we ask: what next?

Following workshops which begin at 09:30 (and not 09:00 as previously announced), we’ll have a final plenary session at 14:00 that focusses on LabourStart and the global labour movement.

If you are a LabourStart correspondent — meaning that your name appears here (http://www.labourstart.org/correspondents.shtml) you are also invited to join us for the correspondents’ meeting from 16:00 to 17:30.

Please also remember that today is the last day you can buy Dan Gallin’s new book, Solidarity, without having to pay postage.  Pick up your copies at the LabourStart table.

This has been an amazing and unique conference.  And when it ends late this afternoon, the real work begins …

Today is the day!

23More than two-and-a-half years after it was first announced, after months of planning and countless hours of work and preparation, hundreds of trade unionists from 75 countries have gathered in Berlin to participate in the LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference which opens this afternoon.

Some quick reminders of the schedule –

  • 08:45 Leafletting at the ITUC – come if you can!
  • 12:30 Final organizing committee meeting at ver.di
  • 15:00 Registration begins; Walking tours begin; If you can help us, come early — we need volunteers!
  • 18:00 Introduction to LabourStart
  • 19:00 Opening plenary session
  • 21:00  Informal drinks reception at ver.di

LabourStart correspondents meet when the conference ends

The last item on our agenda is not for everyone.  But if you’re a LabourStart correspondent and you care about the future of our project, please plan on sticking around another 90 minutes after the formal conference closes.  This is our usual post-conference correspondents’ meeting and this year, we even have a draft agenda.  Here it is:

  1. Campaigns – time for LS to take the initiative?
  2. Labour News Network – developing worker-correspondents to create alternatives to what’s in the media (e.g., reports from the frontlines, from picket lines, from jail cells, etc)
  3. LS Books – what next, who decides, how we decide, other languages, alternatives to CreateSpace (who are very bad about paying us, who deduct US income taxes etc)
  4. Next conference – Vancouver, date? Derek to report
  5. Technical support – sharing the burden of the LS to-do list
  6. Creating offline groups – e.g., Berlin.
  7. The future of UnionBook
  8. Recuiting correspondents, finding out what support they need
  9. Fundraising