"Collision Course" PATCO Book Launches Tonight

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Labor historian Joe McCartin launches his new book, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America tonight at Georgetown University with a discussion followed by a book signing and reception. “The signal event in the evisceration of the American middle class was Ronald Reagan’s breaking the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981,” says Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. “In Collision Course, Joe McCartin brilliantly and compellingly tells this tragic tale, and situates it in the broader narrative of middle-class America’s long and sickening decline.” Thirty years later, the influence of the PATCO strike still looms large. “For the past thirty years workers have seen their power to act collectively to improve their lives continually eroded,” McCartin tells Union City. “Understanding how this happened is crucial if we hope to reverse this dangerous trend.  Collision Course is not only about the confrontation that happened between Reagan and the air traffic controllers, it is about how we got to where we are today." Joining McCartin at the launch will be a number of people he interviewed for the book, including the former chairman of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Kenneth Moffett, who unsuccessfully mediated the talks between the PATCO and the administration, as well as former officials of PATCO, retired air traffic controllers, and critics of PATCO.  The event starts at 5:30p tonight; FREE but please RSVP to kilwp@georgetown.edu so organizers have an accurate expectation of likely attendance.