Connecting the Movement: Isaiah Toney
Leading up to the National Student Labor Pre-Conference and Jobs with Justice Conference this summer in Washington, D.C. from August 4-7th, SLAP will be interviewing students within our network to see what they’ve been up to and what they’re looking forward to at this years national conference!
To kick off our “Connecting the Movement” series, we interview Isaiah Toney! Isaiah is a student at George Washington University and has been active with SLAP for over the past year. Check out the interview below!
Q: How’d you get involved with SLAP?
A: In January of 2009, I was recruited to help mobilize students at The George Washington University to pressure our administration to tell a subcontractor working on our property to stop violating their workers’ rights and start providing safety training and equipment. The student that recruited me student -my predecessor as DC Jobs with Justice’s Student Labor Action Project Coordinator- was from Georgetown University, and he introduced me to some student activists there. That was when I realized that there was more than just my campus to the world of (college) student organizing, and that I could be a part of it.
Q: What are the biggest problem facing workers in the country?
A: I think that workers in the United States face two main problems. The first is that they are becoming more and more the targets of a more and more powerful political infrastructure that, among other things, is anti-worker. Politicians have somehow changed phrases like “I support every worker’s right to the American Dream” from being pro-union and therefore pro-worker, to being anti-union and anti-worker. The second is the loss of the political infrastructure that once heralded unions as a critical element of the American Dream. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have lost those parts which once acknowledged the value of collective bargaining as the middle class’ strongest weapon.
Q: What is the importance of having students in the fight for workers rights?
A: Students are important to have in the fight for workers rights for a number of good reasons. Students often are workers, for one. My school sent a lobbyist to ask our City Council to exempt student employees of universities from sick day legislation, meaning that students who get sick and can prove it don’t get paid. I can’t imagine the vulnerability of being a college student denied income security because of such an exemption.
Q: What campaigns have you and your group been working on this year?
A: My group, The George Washington University Progressive Student Union, has spent the past year building relationships with campus workers through our weekly Student/Worker Breakfast so that we can better assist unions who enter into contract negotiations on our campus. We’ve also engaged students on our campus in various educational events including a teach-in on the assault on working families in Wisconsin and protesting against the International Monetary Fund General Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn at a speech delivered on our campus for the IMF’s un-admitted policy of crippling the economies of third world nations.
Q: What are you most excited for at the Jobs with Justice national conference?
A: I am most excited to meet, talk with, and learn from the students and organizers from all over the country who have been involved and engaged in the same work as folks in Washington, D.C. And I say ‘work’ specifically because I know that while we all may be fighting for workers rights, we won’t all be running the exact same campaigns. Sharing my campaigns and stories and hearing the same from others will be a valuable, educational, and movement-building experience. I see The Jobs with Justice National Conference as an opportunity to again fully realize just how big our movement, our work, and our struggle really is.
