About this Event
Do you like weekends? Only having to work 8 hours in a day? Compensation if you get hurt on the job?
There is a long and rich history of people fighting for workers's rights and as the economy changes and capitalism continues to impact our lives, that fight continues.
Chris Smalls, the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union, made national headlines when he took on one of the biggest companies in the world to fight for his fellow laborers and now he tells his story with his debut book.
Joining Chris will be joined by organizer and activist, Gabe Bryant for an amazing discussion about perseverance, courage and why it's so important that we continue to fight for labor rights.
Q&A to follow the discussion.
All copies of When The Revolution Comes, will be signed.
Don't miss this amazing event!
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About the author:
Chris Smalls is the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union. Under his leadership, the ALU successfully unionized an Amazon warehouse: a historic victory for workers’ rights in America. A Fortune “40 Under 40” honoree, he was named to the Time 100 list of the most influential people of 2022, alongside his fellow union organizer Derrick Palmer. When the Revolution Comes is his first book.
About the moderator:
Gabe Bryant is a Philly-based organizer and behavioral health professional, whose work centers the cultivation of community-based leadership, dismantling the Pr*son industrial complex, and bolstering art as a tool for liberation. With over 25 years of experience founding and sustaining organizations serving the masses, he continues to elevate the work required to uplift freedom dreams, and mobilize communities toward self-actualization and self-determination.
About the book:
From one of the most electric and consequential figures to emerge from the contemporary American labor movement, the remarkable story of his battle to create the first Amazon union in the U.S. and a powerful call to arms on behalf of the working class
“With candor and fierce moral clarity, Chris Smalls takes readers behind the scenes of the most consequential labor uprising in modern history—and it’s one hell of a ride.” —Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, warehouse worker Chris Smalls and his colleagues continued showing up as the rest of the world was shutting down. A dedicated and experienced Amazon employee, increasingly frustrated by the inner workings of the retail giant, Smalls had already felt himself reaching a breaking point. So when coworkers around him began falling ill, and with no transparency or assurances of safety coming from those in charge, he made the only choice left available to him. He staged a walkout with friend Derrick Palmer, eventually finding himself on the picket line without a job. But what began as a demand to keep essential employees safe in a crisis would grow into a movement devoted to achieving dignity and security for the American wageworker, sparking a groundswell of organizers at the most notable companies across the nation—including Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, and Apple—and leading to lasting change for labor.
When the Revolution Comes is the riveting inside story of how a young Black man from Hackensack, New Jersey with few to no resources, led a scrappy band of Staten Island warehouse workers in an improbable fight against Amazon, the second largest private employer in the United States, and won. This epic David and Goliath tale follows Smalls from a childhood spent navigating his dad’s stints in and out of Pr*son, to his years of sacrifice and economic uncertainty as a father of three, to his ascension as the leader of a new generation’s labor movement.
A deeply personal and eye-opening account of the creation of the Amazon Labor Union, When the Revolution Comes offers both a searing exposé of what it’s like to be working class in America and inspiring evidence of what is possible when the overworked, underpaid, and disempowered join together, a movement born in community.
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Doors open at 7:00pm.
Street parking available. Wheelchair accessible entrance available.
All ticket sales are final and non-refundable.
Bags larger than a handbag will not be permitted
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Greene Street Friends School, 20 W. Armat St, Philadelphia, United States
USD 9.30 to USD 34.91
