Publications and Video

"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Social Justice": A Documentary by Sonya Pfeiffer

Disappointed and frustrated by what she perceived as law's rigidity and its emphasis on maintaining an analytical distance from the subjects of its attention, Sonya Pfeiffer--then a third year law student--created this video as testimony to the transformative power of creative lawyering. The execrable conditions suffered by the El Monte workers, while unconscionable, are not the true focus of this documentary. Instead, it powerfully conveys how the workers and their young attorney, Julie Su (among others), overcame language and cultural barriers, a lack of legal precedent and the stonewalling of the INS through imagination, rejection of a paternalistic model of attorney-client relationships and extensive community-building. Ultimately, it is the workers' participation in pressing their cause that leads to both their own success and larger changes in the garment industry.

View Sonya's eloquent documentary. (This file is large and may take a while to load. It currently plays in RealPlayer only.)

About the Producer: Sonya Pfeiffer produced "Life, Liberty and the Pusuit of Social Justice" during her third year at the University of North Carolina School of Law as an independent study project. The teaching and passion of Professor John O. Calmore, a distinguished professor and zealous advocate for social justice, were the inspiration behind the film. Sonya was a television news reporter and producer for twelve years before attending law school. She graduated in May 2007.

Other Resources:

As part of her independent study, Sonya Pfeiffer wrote a paper, in which she explains her motivation in making the documentary and provides additional background information on the El Monte sweatshop and the workers involved in that case.

Read Julie Su's article, "Making the Invisible Visible: The Garment Industry's Dirty Laundry," detailing her experiences with the El Monte case.

In "Asian American Garment Workers: Low Wages, Excessive Hours, and Crippling Injuries," part of a Ford Foundation report on Asian American women, Lora Jo Foo examines ways in which the garment industry relies on exploited sweatshop labor (generally performed by immigrant women) and explores the measures that can be taken to improve the working conditions for these workers. The full Ford Foundation report can be found at http://www.fordfound.org/elibrary/documents/5006/001.cfm.

Read an article about the organizing effort in Los Angeles uniting Asian and Latina sweatshop workers from the newsletter, "Sweatshop Watch."

The name of the El Monte case is Bureerong v. Uvawas. The citations are: 922 F. Supp. 1450 (1996) (motion for more definite statment; motions to dismiss; motion for summary judgment); 167 F.R.D. 83 (1996) (government's motion to intervene and to stay civil discovery); and 959 F. Supp. 1231(1997) (motion to dismiss complaint in part). The case eventually settled out of court for $4 million.

In 1998, the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. created "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," an exhibition on the history of sweatshops in America. While the museum curators tried to stave off controversy by working with industry representatives in designing the exhibit, the decision to include a section on the El Monte sweatshop brought the issue too much into the present for some apparel manufacturers. The exhibit opened only after it gained the support of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and a few key corporations. A virtual version of the exhibit is available at http://americanhistory.si.edu/sweatshops/index.htm.

Policy Brief Series - Original Research by UNC Faculty!

In the spring of 2006, the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity hosted a competitive process to support original research by UNC faculty members in the form of policy briefs. Each brief was authored by a UNC faculty member and was reviewed by two experts - an academic and a practitioner in the field that the brief addresses. The authors and reviewers are listed below.

The views expressed in each policy brief are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Center staff or the Center itself.

"A Portrait of Hunger, the Social Safety Net, and the Working Poor"
Maureen Berner, Sharon Paynter and Trina Ozer - School of Government
Reviewed by: Jane Mosley, Research Assistant Professor, University of Missouri
Jane Cox, Executive Director, North Carolina Food Bank

"Not All Boats: Disability and Well-Being Among Single Mothers"
Philip Cohen - Department of Sociology
Reviewed by: Michelle Budig, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Mass. - Amherst
Miriam Ruttenberg, Staff Attorney, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee

"Expanding the EITC for Workers Without Children"
Dan Gitterman and Lucy Gorham - Department of Public Policy and MDC, Inc.
Reviewed by: Peter Edelman, Professor of Law, Georgetown University
Barbara DelBene, Senior Training Specialist, Center for Economic Progress

"Individual Development Accounts: Participant and Program Characteristics Related to Savings Performance"
Michal Grinstein-Weiss and Kate Irish - School of Social Work
Reviewed by: Bill Rohe, Professor and Director, Center for Urban and Regional Studies, UNC-CH
Karen Edwards, Project Director, Center for Social Development, Washington Univ.

"The High Road for the Big Box: A New Community-Based Approach to Responsible Retail Development"
Brian Morton and Nichola Lowe - Center for Urban and Regional Studies
Reviewed by: Rachel Webber, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Madeline Janis-Aparicio, Executive Director, LA Alliance for a New Economy

"Poverty and Early Childhood Education Intervention"
Elizabeth Pungello and Frances Campbell - Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute
Reviewed by: Arthur Reynolds, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Karen Ponder, Executive Director, North Carolina Partnership for Children

"Income Poverty and Material Deprivation for U.S. Women with Disabilities"
Susan Parish - School of Social Work
Reviewed by: Glenn Fugiura, Associate Professor, University at Illinois at Chicago
Megan O'Neill, Program Manager, World Institute on Disability

"Keeping Good Job Opportunities in the Community: How and When to Use Public Training Resources to Revitalize Good Manufacturing Jobs in the United States"
Rachel Willis and Rachel Connelly, Economics and American Studies Departments and Bowdoin College
Reviewed by: Ronald Kalafsky, Assistant Professor, University of Tennessee
Larry Keen, Vice President for Economic and Workforce Development,
North Carolina Community College System

"The Promise of Mixed-Income Housing for Poverty Amelioration"
James Fraser - Department of Geography and Center for Urban and Regional Studies
Reviewed by: Spencer Cowan, Senior Research Associate, Center on Urban and Regional
Studies
Tom Davis, Senior Project Manager, The Community Builders, Inc.

The Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity's publication of its book, Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. poverty rate in 2005 was 12.6% or approximately 37 million people. While the percentage of people living in poverty has fluctuated since the Census Bureau started collecting this data, it has never dropped below 11.1%. Can we, the wealthiest nation in the world, do better? Morally, economically and socially can we afford not to?

Through thoughtful analysis and concrete policy suggestions from both liberal and conservative perspectives, the Poverty Center's new book tackles the seemingly intractable problem of poverty in the United States. Divided into five sections, each of which explores a facet of poverty, the book showcases contributions by some of the most distinguished academics and policymakers working in the field today. In addition, it features the advice and wisdom of dedicated community leaders, entrepreneurs and neighborhood organizers, creating a dialogue between anti-poverty theory and practice. Senator John Edwards' stirring conclusion summarizes the book's findings, issues a clarion call for public debate and suggests a bold new direction in combating poverty.

Contributing authors include Jacob Hacker, Secretary Jack Kemp, Katherine S. Newman, Michael Sherraden, David Shipler, Beth Shulman, Elizabeth Warren and William Julius Wilson. View the Table of Contents, including all authors and chapter titles.

Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream is edited by Senator John Edwards, former director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity; Marion Crain, current director and Paul Eaton Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law; and Arne L. Kalleberg, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Senior Associate Dean for Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity Advisory Board member.

Read the Publisher's Weekly review from April 9, 2007.

On Thursday, May 17, North Carolina Public Radio's live, call-in program, "The State of Things," featured an hour-long discussion based on Ending Poverty in America. Editors Marion Crain (the Center on Poverty's Director) and Arne Kalleberg, as well as contributors Anita Brown-Graham, Dennis Orthner and David Spickard appeared as guests to talk about the book, the nature of poverty and possible policy solutions. An archive of the show is available online at http://wunc.org/tsot/archive.

Announcement - Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity Summit published in Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal

The Center's Summit on Nov. 9, 2005 was a collection of leading scholars, policymakers, and advocates discussing solutions to poverty. In cooperation with the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to issues of work and employment, the full transcript from this important event has been published in Volume 10, Issue 1 of the Journal. An introduction and conclusion by Sen. Edwards, as well as an Afterword by Deputy Director Marion Crain, are included in this publication. To order a copy of the journal, please use the link below. All orders will be processed through the Chicago-Kent College of Law, and any questions should be addressed to this institution.

Read the agenda for the Summit. All sessions and speakers on the agenda are included in the journal publication.

To learn more about this collaborative effort with the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, please visit http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilw/erepj/PovertySummit.html.

Please use the following link to order your copy of the Journal: https://www.kentlaw.edu/ilw/v10i1.html.