Roundtable Discussion ⎮PICKIN’ FOR PROGRESS: Baldemar Velásquez, How Music Makes A Movement

Join us for a Roundtable discussion with Joe Troop (founder of Grammy-nominated Che Apalache), Emily Rhyne (director of Witness for Peace Southeast), and director Rode Díaz, on their new media project, Pickin’ for Progress: Baldemar Velásquez, How Music Makes a Movement.

“Pickin’ for Progress” is a multi-episode series of videos that feature Joe rambling across the state of North Carolina illuminating important progressive issues, sharing songs, and having conversations with labor unionists, environmental activists, migrant workers, indigenous organizers, and religious leaders.

The newest installment focues on the co-founder and president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Baldemar Velásquez, reflecting on his decades of work in the labor movement and how he has, like his longtime friend and collaborator Pete Seeger, used his music to inspire farmworkers to organize for their rights in North Carolina and throughout the world.

“Pickin’ for Progress: Baldemar Velásquez and the Music that has Fueled the Struggle” received support from the Humanities for the Public Good Initiative, an Andrew W. Mellon funded grant in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Institute for the Study of the Américas, and the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.