Massene Mboup, teacher and union activist at the Portland French School is interviewed by host Jamie Partridge.  Mboup, with a background of union leadership in his native Senegal, details management intimidation tactics, including deportation threats to this largely immigrant workforce.  Two of the Associated French School Employee leaders have been fired as the struggle heats up.

This month brought exciting news for New York State's 200,000 domestic workers: After years of struggle, they have passed a Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights through both houses of the state legislature.  For the first time ever in the United States, domestic workers will have the right to sick days, holidays, vacation, overtime, and notice of termination.  We spoke with Priscilla Gonzales, Director of Domestic Workers United and herself the proud daughter of a nanny and housekeeper, about the victory and about how domestic workers, abandoned by labor law, often working alone in private homes, have reached out to one another to organize.

Next, we turn our attention to the funding crisis in higher education.  Oregon university system administrators are proposing to save money by restructuring, but students, faculty and staff are concerned that could mean students pay more while faculty and staff get paid less. We spoke with Portland State University student Sami Alloy about the state of the funding crisis and how free speech is curtailed on campus in the name of risk management.

Gina Caro and Loli Urquia worked at Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex, two plants in Honduras that made sportswear for Nike. Then workers in the plants decided to unionize, and the plants abruptly shut down, robbing the workers of severance pay they were legally entitled to as well as their jobs. Gina and Loli talk about their struggle to hold Nike accountable. John Walsh and Peter Shapiro co-host.

 Tonight we spend the half-hour with renowned singer, songwriter and community organizer Si Kahn.  His new book, Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice, is full of amazing stories from his forty-five years in the struggle, working in the freedom movement with the SNCC, in the Brookside Strike in Harlan County with the United Mine Workers of America, in the textile mills of the South with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, and with Grassroots Leadership, the organization he founded, to abolish for-profit prisons and immigrant family detention.   Si Kahn is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 1000, and in addition to his new book he is releasing his fifteenth CD of original songs, Courage.  We play a couple of tracks off the new album, get Si to tell us a few stories, and ask him to share some of the insights into tactics and principles that he’s gleaned in nearly fifty years of organizing.