Miami Workers Center: Circle of Consciousness Coverage
Worker Power and Oraganization
by Anthony David Vernon
Historical consciousness may not be the most readily understood form of consciousness, but it is of massive importance. The Miami Workers Center’s consciousness nights provide quality historical education on the history of labor movements. In a strong sense, the Miami Workers Center works well as an education center. There are a good number of books in-house on labor history, and the consciousness nights mainly engage attendees with activities on labor history.
The first activity was a historical timeline where attendees could place moments in labor movement history or their personal experience from 1800 to 2025. I picked up much from this timeline, such as learning that the first Haitian flag was sewn in 1803 and the Justice for Janitors movement in 1993. Attendees could also volunteer to speak about the items they placed on the timeline.
The second activity placed people into groups to act out a reading to explain it. My group’s reading was about a coalition between the United Farm Workers and the Black Panther Party. How our group acted out our reading was via a scripted game of Jeopardy, with me as the host.
These activities were an act of multimodal education in the best way, and something educators could pull from. One of the ideas that stuck out to me was the idea that slave rebellions are part of the history of labor movement struggles. This would make an event like Haitian Independence sparked by a labor strike, in a sense. This would also mean that Haiti is in a continuing labor under neo-colonization.
The event was quite inclusive, important the event was tri-lingual, being held in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, the main tongues of South Florida. Simultaneous translation equipment was provided to everyone so everyone could understand what everyone was speaking. The attendees were also diverse in their ages, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, and so on.
Now, Miami Workers Center is not just an educational center, they also operate as a mutual aid network and as a space for various organizations to jointly organize. The group in their ideology may be too socialist for some progressive and social democrats and expressly so, saying multiple times the famous Marxist pronouncement “we have nothing to lose but our chains.” But they are a truly inclusive space, including ideological inclusiveness.
Still, this event is great for education, organizational networking, and learning about upcoming political events in South Florida. If you are driving to the Miami Workers Center, you must be warned that the parking situation is nightmarish! Still, the Miami Workers Center knows what they are doing as one of the oldest progressive organizations in South Florida, having been founded in 1999. And it is important to be conscious of the history if you choose to make contact with the Miami Workers Center.
https://miamiworkerscenter.org