Harry Bridges Institute - About Our Organization

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The Past -
The HBI Read about our history ... how the Institute has grown into a positive, growing force in the Labor Community by clicking HERE.

\The Present -
Reaching more people than ever before, find out how the Institute's current projects are making a strong statement for progressive unionism and social justice by clicking HERE.

Solidarity. Equality. The Right to Organize.
More About the Harry Bridges Institute

The Future
Understanding our history is key. With that understanding we now must combine our current positive relationship with the ILWU with the independence that was achieved over the last five or six years, reaching it's summation in the Centennial Celebration.

The Centennial Celebration confirmed that the Harry Bridges Institute is an entity that has survived and will continue to grow.

What have all of these experiences shown us?

Our educational program, particularly the boat tours, is a big success. It must be consolidated and expanded.
The space that Local 63 has made available to us can become a community center, a video library, and/or an interactive labor center that could become something truly significant in the future. (Find out more about the Harry Bridges Labor Center HERE.)
We are succeeding at outreach to the community around us, going beyond trade union issues, raising social issues, and even reaching out to the art community.
We can see that there is an opportunity to develop a product line (memorabilia and other items) that will enable us to create a financial base that can fund our other work.

Our history demonstrates that our base of support has always been very broad: the ILWU rank and file, the pensioners, the progressive movement, community members and their organizations, and the labor movement itself. We are swimming within a very big pool!

Our future opportunities are great. We could choose to work with youth, with the organized labor movement, the cultural community, the progressive community (including celebrities), and the unorganized section of the labor movement. We need to examine very closely who it is we are reaching out to and where our money is going to come from to finance this outreach. For every specific activity we plan, we must seek a base and the wherewithal to finance that activity.

What do we need to achieve our future goals?

A coast wide leadership structure.
A local structure consistent with the successes we have achieved.
A functioning office center (clearly our greatest weakness was not having an administrative secretary that was on top of everything).
A fundraising plan based on membership contributions through credit union deductions.
A public relations department including Internet access.

More about the HBI: Past | Present | Future