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Joan Suarez: Building a New Left Popular Culture

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How can arts programs build, inform, and inspire social movements? Longtime union organizer, Joan Suarez, founded Bread & Roses Missouri and spoke about its Workers Theater and Youth Initiative with Frontline Dispatches host Jennifer Disla on Wednesday, September 15, 2021.

Guests

Joan Suarez

Joan Suarez is a life-long activist and organizer. She was Founding Executive Director of Bread and Roses Missouri. Following her March 2021 retirement, she now serves as Director Emeritus, Co-Chair of the Bread and Roses Missouri Advisory Council and Executive Producer of Mrs. Palmer’s Honey, our latest original play. Joan began working as an Education Director for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers in 1962, and later an International Vice-President of Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union. As a leader in Missouri JWJ, she helped to form the Bread and Roses project and lead its establishment as an independent non-profit in 2015. Joan is also Founding Chair (now Emeritus) of the Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates (MIRA), a post she held for 15 years.

Tagged

Arts and Culture
Movement Building

About the Host

Photo of Jennifer Disla
Jennifer Disla
Jennifer Disla

Jennifer Disla currently serves as co-executive director of Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice, a new initiative of the City University of New York. A Center for Community Change GenChange alumna, Jen started organizing in 2008 with the Healthcare for America Now Campaign in Missouri. She went on to work as a labor organizer with SEIU Local 1, where she worked on contract campaigns in Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, and Indiana, and as co-executive director of Detroit Action. She is a member of Organization for Black Struggle, Missouri Jobs with Justice and Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates.