Content:

Join us as we welcome Daniel Gross and Peter Cole to the store for a discussion of Gross's new book Unions of Our Own, an actionable, inviting, and confidence-boosting philosophy on how to tackle problems in your workplace and win.

Our workplaces urgently need to get better, but change can feel murky, daunting, or even impossible. We imagine a different world, too, but billionaries are doing their best to make things worse. In Unions of Our Own, veteran labor organizer and cofounder of the IWW Starbucks Workers Union Daniel Gross provides a radically new, step-by-step framework for workers who want to dramatically improve their jobs and dream of bigger changes too. It puts into readers' hands the eight fundamental building blocks of a union that meets your needs and values. Through proven tools, Gross's personal stories from campaigns, vivid history, and real-world examples, Unions of Our Own offers a practical, accessible, and empowering philosopgy on how to design your own union and win.

Daniel Gross has spent over twenty years building unions at his jobs and accompanying thousands of workers building unions at theirs. He co-founded the groundbreaking IWW Starbucks Workers Union in 2004, as well as Brandworkers, a deeply-rooted worker center for immigrant food manufacturing workers in metro New York. Daniel is the co-author with Staughton Lynd of Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law, a classic passed around by autonomy minded workers generation after generation, as well as of the graphic booklet Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks with Lynd and cartoonist Tom Keough. He has served on the board of the National Lawyers Guild, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, and was active with the Immigrant Worker Justice Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. Daniel is currently a member and a union-builder on staff at the Solidarity Union Network (SUN).

Peter Cole is a Professor of History and Distinguished University Professor at Western Illinois University and a Research Associate in the Society, Work and Politics Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He wrote Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (2018), winner of the Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize, and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (2007). He edited Ben Fletcher: The Life & Times of a Black Wobbly (revised 2nd edition, 2021) and co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (2017). He co-edited and brought the novel, Presente: A Dockworker Story (2024), written by the deceased Herb Mills, to publication. He founded and co-directs the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.