We look forward to coming together with academics, researchers, organizers, union partners, strategists, and movement leaders from across the country in Atlanta for this year’s Labor Research and Action Network National Conference. Co-hosted by the W.E.B. Du Bois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark Atlanta University, the LRAN conference will gather to hold space for a broad range of labor activists, practitioners, scholars, and others to connect, learn, and strategize together.
Over the past year, we have come face to face with remarkable vulnerabilities in the protective institutions of our society. The already fragile safeguards won to protect workers in the U.S. have been further eroded, manipulated, or erased, leaving an unrecognizable landscape for the labor. Workers are on the front lines in the battle against unrestricted capitalism and authoritarianism, from the shop floor to Capitol Hill. Bolstering collective community and worker power is critical if we are to revive our democracy.
This year LRAN will be held in conjunction with the Jobs With Justice National Conference. Jobs with Justice will convene a national gathering of workers, movement leaders, activists, funders, and strategists committed to strengthening universal understanding of collective bargaining as critical to democracy and testing creative approaches that actualize the practice in real life.
This convening is being held in Atlanta because the strategy to save and expand democracy rests with our ability to build the governing power of the majority in key industries and labor markets, many of which have strategic anchors in the US South. This year’s JWJ Conference is themed, “Workers Reviving Democracy.” The spirit of the convening will be more akin to a revival (in this case, a revival of democracy) than simply a conference—a festival to celebrate workers, with multiple stages for storytelling, performances, panels, workshops, trainings, and of course, action.
LRAN will host its own conference with Clark Atlanta University on May 14th, then LRAN sessions will be held throughout the Jobs With Justice conference on May 15th and 16th. LRAN invites participants from universities, unions, worker centers, policy organizations, and others involved in the work of labor justice to submit proposals(including trainings, workshops, roundtables) for 60-90 minute sessions that address one of the following themes:
- Labor Revival – Reimagining and building contractual, legal and legislative labor protections in the age of Trumpism and Project 2025
- Research and Labor – Data informed organizing, effective collaboration of research and organizing strategy
- AI and Labor – organizing and bargaining with consideration to the advances in technology and new organizing landscapes
- Better Together – Creating a space for mutual support and uplifting experiences that fuel organizers and worker-leaders alike, and how we defend, protect and organize workers and communities targeted by the administration
- Centering Southern Worker Identity - Highlighting worker innovations, particularly in campaigns that centered race and gender as a source of power that may have been the difference between winning and losing.
LRAN conferences have always included a range of workshops proposed and organized by attendees from labor, NGOs, and academia. We encourage all proposals to include intersections with environmental, racial, and gender justice issues. Proposals that include a range of participants from different fields or perspectives (i.e., academics and labor activists and organizers), and that clearly detail a focus on research-to-action case studies or new research skills will be prioritized. We encourage a wide range of formats that engage participants, including trainings, roundtable discussions, video/film screenings and panels.
Submit your proposal at the below link by COB Friday, February 6th 2026: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18kAP6dqiZM7PT4T9vITHOvUw6DD60DXHszSY1whbHSo/edit?pli=1
LRAN 2026 strives to be an accessible, multilingual conference. Interpretation and other supports for access needs are available upon request. Please denote which languages in your proposal and any additional access needs. This conference is in person only. More detailed information about the conference will be provided when registration opens in the spring. Please feel free to reach out to Jason Tomlinson (jason@jwj.org) or Erin Johansson (erin@jwj.org) with any further questions or if you have any specific needs that you feel need to be addressed.
