Labor Arts (5/7/08)

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
Images of Workers By Workers: Workers stooping to their tasks, showing off their tools, resting, smiling, digging, hauling, shaping, squatting, marching. "Labor Around the World: Images of Workers by Workers" will be on display at the AFL-CIO through Friday, May 9. The Solidarity Center gave cameras to workers around the world to record the daily lives of their workplaces, communities, and families and the results are remarkable, complex, moving, informative, colorful and fascinating. What the worker photographers lack in technical virtuosity they make up for in depth of understanding and ability to create interest. The images sing. "The images link the work of our brothers and sisters in other countries to our own work here at home and remind us that we are all part of the global economy," says Joan Welsh of the Solidarity Center. The show has been extended through Friday night; do your best to see it before it comes down. "Labor Around the World" is on display now in the AFL-CIO lobby, 815 16th St NW (1 block from the METRO McPherson Square Vermont Ave exit and 2 blocks from the Farragut North K Street exit).
- Mariya Strauss, International Labor Communications Association