Metro DC Represents at "Next Up" Young Worker Summit

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Over 800 young workers from around the world, including several from the metro DC area, gathered in Minnesota this past week for the AFL-CIO’s second Next Up Young Worker Summit.  Attendees exchanged ideas about building a strong labor movement for the millennial generation, participated in workshops such as leadership development, creating successful young worker groups, creating a cross-generational labor movement, and learned about the AFL-CIO's new America Wants to Work campaign.  Attendees also participated in community service projects to help local Minneapolis youth, attended two separate CWA leafleting actions, and a powerful jobs rally.  “Each of us needs to provide leadership—forceful, ground-level leadership,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at the conclusion of the Summit. “We need to challenge ourselves and push each other to take risks, and that means to risk failure. We need to create strategic plans, put them into action and hold ourselves and each other accountable, so we actually carry through, and build our plans to the next level….Together we are the most powerful progressive force on the face of the earth.” Click here for a more in depth look at the Summit.
- report/photos by Jessica Ingerick; at left: Maryland and Virginia conference attendees