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The iconic leader of a small but powerful union, Harry Bridges was a highly controversial figure within the twentieth century labor movement. The result of more than 30 years of research, Robert Cherny’s new monumental biography of Bridges tells the life story of the person who built the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) into a labor powerhouse that now represents some 30,000 workers.

Join the University of Washington's Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies for an evening with author Robert Cherny, labor journalist E. Tammy Kim, and ILWU activist Zack Pattin, reflecting on Bridges's life and his legacy for the labor movement today.

Roberty W. Cherny is a professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University and the author of Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend. His many books include Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art (2017). The impact of his career on the field of labor history is honored by the The Robert W. Cherny Award, bestowed annually to the author of the best article in U.S. labor and political history by the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

E. Tammy Kim is a contributing writer at The New Yorker. She is also a co-host of the podcast “Time to Say Goodbye,” a contributing editor at Lux, the 2022-23 writer-in-residence at NYU's A/P/A Institute, and a Puffin writing fellow at Type Media Center. Her review of Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend recently appeared in The New York Review of Books.

Zack Pattin is a rank and file member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 23, in Tacoma, Washington, and was a co-founder of the Local 23 Young Workers Committee. He is also a member of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies Visiting Committee. His essay, "Radical Years Remade: Militant Traditions and the Hiring Hall, received the Bridges Center's Best Undergraduate Paper in Labor Studies in 2016-2017.

Founded in 1992 by rank and file members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies supports students and faculty at the University of Washington in the study of labor in all of its facets. Through research and education, our mission is to develop labor studies - broadly conceived to include working people everywhere - as a central concern in higher education.