St. Petersburg        From almost the first conversations we had upon entering Russia, it seemed that everyone, whether labor or lawyer or civil society, would mention something about the excitement all over the progressive communities in the country at the strikes at the Ford production plant in St. Petersburg.    They would never say it quite …

St. Petersburg         The delegation from the Organizers’ Forum (www.organizersforum.org) shifted venue from Moscow to St. Petersburg, though I am still sorting through all of the meetings and information from those first days. We also seem to have moved in time from the combination of “soviet block” and historic construction around the Kremlin and …

Moscow        Many of us were perhaps a little the worst for wear, but Kirill Buketov, an organizer for the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) had also flown in the previous night from Seoul, so no one was likely to notice.  Kirill had begun his career on the shop floor in 1989 and was …