ILR News Center

National event brings together noted advocates, academics and policy-makers

On September 27 and 28, downtown Buffalo will be the site for an innovative national conference entitled "The High Road Runs Through the City: Advocating for Economic Justice at the Local Level."

The conference is being presented by Cornell University's ILR School, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and the Coalition for Economic Justice. Lou Jean Fleron, director, Workforce, Industry and Economic Development, Cornell University, says the central question addressed by the conference is, how to do economic development in a way that benefits the whole community: creating living wage jobs, protecting the natural environment, reducing poverty and inequality, and making decisions openly and democratically, not behind closed doors.

"What better site for this conference than Buffalo, a city with huge, but still largely untapped, potential for revitalization, and a city with lively, ongoing debates about issues such as living wage policies, waterfront redevelopment, and the power of non-elected authorities over the local economy," Fleron says.

The keynote speaker for the conference is author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, author of classic books such as The End of Nature, one of the first books to address global warming, and, most recently, Deep Economy, in which he argues that buying, eating, and thinking locally will protect the environment and restore the bonds that make people happy with their lives.

Other national experts at the conference will include

• Greg LeRoy, author of The Great American Jobs Scam, the nation’s foremost expert on development subsidy reform;
• Patricia Smith, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor;
• Jen Kern, director of the ACORN Living Wage Resource Center, a founder of the nation’s living wage movement;
• Stewart Acuff, lead organizer for the AFL-CIO;
• J. Phillip Thompson III, author of Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy

Martha McCluskey, a professor at the University at Buffalo Law School who works frequently with conference sponsor the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, says that the conference will be unique in the way it brings together advocates, academics, and policy-makers. 

For example, a panel on the challenges of implementing and enforcing living wage policies will include, among others:

• New York State Senator Antoine Thompson
• Professor Stephanie Luce, author of two books on living wage issues; and
• Allison Duwe, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Justice.

"It's just this sort of exchange,"says McCluskey, "that often leads to innovations in public policy."

View the Workforce, Industry & Economic Development web site for more information and conference registration or call Cornell University ILR at (716) 852-4191.