Laborfest: Labor & Foreign Policy

The Council on Foreign Relations, Our Unions and Foreign Policy
Book reading: Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014 by Larry Shoup
Larry Shoup, author of Rulers & Rebels: A People’s History of Early California, 1769-1901, has now written an important new book Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014. In this reading, Shoup will look at the history of the AFL-CIO in relationship to the CFI and how this has affected US labor’s foreign policy.
The CFI was set up by the biggest capitalists and ideologues to develop the imperial economic interests of US multi-nationals, and Shoup will examine how the AFL-CIO has been involved in this organization and what it has meant concretely for workers in the US and around the world.
The AFL-CIO has taken tens of millions of dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US government for international labor work around the world. It was also been involved in supporting a military coup in Venezuela and other countries. The government funded AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center,” and its predecessor organizations, African-American Labor Center (AALC), American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), and Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI), were involved in setting up and supporting pro-corporate trade unions that supported privatization, deregulation and “free trade,” which was being pushed by the US government and US multi-nationals.
While the unions here are fighting NAFTA, CAFTA, and TPP, the Democrats, Republicans and US government are pushing deregulation, privatization and “free trade zones” around the world.
Shoup will look at the ideology of the CFR and how this continues to intersect the agenda of the AFL-CIO’s international perspective.
See also:
http://www.thegreenarcade.com/
http://www.laborfest.net/2016/2016schedule.htm