Dear Union Brothers and Sisters:
I want to continue helping you build a stronger, more inclusive labor movement in the coming months and years and build momentum to win the critical 2018 and 2020 elections. Since 2011, I have given 366 speeches, interactive workshops and trainings in 18 states across the country. I have spoken to national, regional, state, and local conventions and meetings of 27 international Unions and their affiliates, state federations, local labor and building trades councils, and apprenticeship programs. I will go anywhere in the country to help you move our fight forward toward a better future.
My seven workshops listed below can be presented in an interactive format or as a stand-alone speech. They can be tailored to your needs.
- “Fighting for Our Unions, Our Democracy and Our Future in the Age of Trump” draws powerful connections between the “divide and conquer” strategies used by Corporate America and its allies 100 years ago and their use again today. What can be learn from our ancestors’ successes and failures that will make us more effective in building a powerful labor and people’s movement to take our country back.
- “Making the American Dream Real for Everyone” focuses on the rise and fall of unions and our allies over the past 125 years in our fight to share fairly in the wealth we produce and build a more just and equitable country, and how we can rebuild our power.
- “Winning Big in Hard Times” explores the rise and fall of unions and our allies in strengthening our democracy and how we can reclaim our democracy.
- “Which Side of History Are You On?” centers on Corporate America’s counterattack against our movement and our allies over the past 40 years and how disunity between labor and our potential community allies and movements weakened us. Most importantly we learn about major successes that new labor/communities alliances are winning.
- “Speaking from the Heart to Win Community Allies” encourages participants to speak from their hearts and use better messaging techniques as they reach out to non-union workers and current and potential community allies.
- “Reaching Out to Young Workers and Young People” explores the generation gaps of the 1960s and today and stimulates discussions about better ways to encourage our very progressive youth to greater activism in our unions and communities.
- “Train the Trainer” teaches participants a range of skills needed to run workshops of different contents and varying lengths. These skills can be used to run workshops that are content-focused like the “American Dream” workshop as well as a communications or messaging workshop like the “Speaking from the Heart.”
My work combines personal and family stories and experiences, finding our common ground of economic hard times and our concerns about the future for ourselves and our young people and our shared American Dream. We explore critical lessons about how we move forward to change the direction of our labor movement and country. The work also highlights significant victories that labor and our allies are winning across the country which are largely hidden from us.
I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead. Please feel free to contact me.
In closing, I want you to know I donate all of my speaking fees to progressive pro-labor organizations and candidates and people in need. This is my way of paying forward the great blessings that my family has received from the decades-long fights of organized labor.
Mark M. McDermott