Two leaders of UA-Fayetteville Education Association / Local 965 were invited to deliver lectures at the Arkansas Education Association’s 2024 Summer Leadership Conference. It was held on Zoom on Friday, June 14.
Local 965 Executive Board member Michael Pierce gave a two-hour lecture on “The Rise and Fall of Labor Liberalism in Arkansas,” then 965 Vice President Ben Pollock presented an hour on “Media Strategy: Today’s Best Tools.”
AEA allowed qualified participants on the call live to receive professional Continuing Education Units on these talks. CEUs won’t be granted to people viewing these recordings. Nonetheless, these are interesting and helpful!
Michael C. Pierce, Ph.D., traces the role of organized labor in Arkansas’s political arena from the start of World War II through Bill Clinton’s election to the presidency more than 50 years later. He argues that a coalition of trade unionists, civil rights activists and urban liberals remade the state in the 1950s and 1960s by opening up the state’s political system to working class voters. These voters, in turn, ushered in the most progressive era of reform in the state’s history — protecting consumers, empowering African Americans, making the wealthy pay their fare share of taxes, enacting a minimum wage, increasing government transparency and protecting worker safety. This brief period of reform came to an end by the late 1970s as the men whom the labor-black-liberal coalition put into office cozied up to the state’s economic elite. (Note: This recording begins a few minutes into the lecture.) Michael Pierce is associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas. He received his A.B. from Kenyon College and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He is author of “Striking with the Ballot: Ohio Labor and the Populist Party” and co-editor of two volumes, the most recent being “Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta: Essays to Mark the Centennial of the Elaine Massacre.” His essays have appeared in “Journal of Southern History,” “Labor History,” “Agricultural History” and several edited volumes. Pierce has won multiple teaching awards, including the John E. King Award for Outstanding Service, Outstanding Faculty Member Award, Fulbright College Justice and Ecology Award, Connor Endowed Faculty Fellowship, Fulbright College Master Teacher and the OMNI Center for Peace Fulbright Justice and Ecology Award. He serves on the Executive Board of UA-Fayetteville Education Association / Local 965
In lots of ways, we’ve had digital media at our full disposal for a good 3 decades. But we’ve gotten smarter as have the apps – they’re easier and even cheaper, too. Ben Pollock takes a 2024 look at websites, social media, mass emails and engaging local news media through the lens of how the University of Arkansas AEA chapter organized opposition earlier this year to an administration plan to privatize some 200 custodial and groundskeeping employees. These employees got to keep their seniority and benefits. Ben Pollock, a former career journalist, has been website manager since 2016 for the University of Arkansas College of Education and Health Professions. He is vice president of UA-Fayetteville Education Association/Local 965. A graduate of Stanford University and a native of Fort Smith, Ben has a 2003 master’s in Journalism from the UA. He was the 2010-2012 president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and remains an officer of its Education Foundation. Ben lives in Fayetteville.
