LeopoldLes, director of the Labor Institute, is the curriculum and training director of the OCAW's worker-to-worker training programs.
2.
The notion of an emergent, oppositional culture is borrowed from Raymond Williams, the English socialist, cultural critic, and adult educator, whose work deserves to be as well known among educational organizers and activists as Paolo Friere's and Myles Horton's, albeit for different reasons. Williams is often credited, together with Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and Stuart Hall, with launching the “cultural studies” movement, and in that respect he has become one of the most influential English-speaking intellectuals in the 20th Century. For more on emergent and oppositional cultures, see “Base and Superstructure” in his Problems in Materialism and Culture (London, 1980). For more on Williams' life and work, especially as it applies to participatory education and the labor movement, see McIlroyJohn, “Border Country: Raymond Williams in Adult Education,”Studies in the Education of Adults, Part I: 22: 2 (October 1990), 129–166; and Part II: 23: 1 (April 1991), 1–23. Also consult MorganJohn W. and PrestonPeter, eds., Raymond Williams: Politics, Education, Letters(New York, 1993).
3.
For more background, see MerrillMichael, “Trust in Training: The OCAW International Union Worker-to-Worker Training Program,” in Occupational Medicine: State of the Art Reviews9: 2 (April–June 1994), 341–355.
4.
The first annual meeting of the OCAW worker trainers at Asilimar in Monterey, California, in October 1988.
