Labor

of

Change

We are a collective of young people fighting for a just economy through creative innovation.

Group of people standing in a room, some posing playfully, with decorations hanging in the foreground.

Painting of farm workers harvesting flowers in a field

Diagram from Benjamin Franklin High School showing the role in a community housing program. Includes flowchart with committees like racial cooperation, health, leadership, and housing. Lists activities such as housing exhibits, rallies, and building projects for East Harlem. Prepared by School-Community Research Bureau.

Artwork depicting two figures in hooded clothing painted on stacked cardboard boxes, with colorful fruits painted at the bottom.

Basement Workshop document, 1971-1986, black and white photo of group with names listed, New York locations, design credits.

Labor of Change (LoC)’s vision is to build a youth-led movement to leverage public education, labor organizing, policy advocacy, and democratic innovation to advance economic progress. We look to the strategies, tactics, and policies modern institutions in academia, government, art, technology, and grassroots organizing have used to build a more inclusive and just economy.

We chose to focus on economic justice because we’ve seen how institutions, elections, campaigns, and conflict have been predicated on the economic question: the dance between who benefits from economic progress and who is left in the margins. The labor of economic progress, though, has already been done by many; in that way, it transcends elections and administrations. Attention to them offers a locus for how we can push the world to a place we prefer it to be.

As we approach new administrations, we can not continue to falsely believe that change “just happens” – if people simply continue to hope and dare. In the name itself, Labor of Change acknowledges the labor of love, commitment, and care that change needs.