Caroline Propersi-Grossman is a labor activist and PhD candidate. Her dissertation-in-progress, The Creative Hands: Stagehands, Their Union, and the Backstage/Frontstage Divide, is a gendered labor history of New York City’s entertainment industry between 1945 and 1995. She has also done extensive work in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has appeared in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History and Labor Online. Dedicated to public scholarship, Caroline has worked in small archives and museums, collaborated on activist historical efforts, and co-hosts the podcast “Scholars Beyond The Tower: Conversations From Our Fields.” Caroline has previously served as Chief Steward of the Graduate Student Employees Union/CWA Local 1104. She is currently working as a labor organizer in the Northeastern United States.
Selected recent publications:
“NYC’s LGBTQIA Community Has Organized, Against Death, Again.” Labor Online, April 18, 2020.
Social distancing mandates have placed immense focus on individual/family responsibility and private property. Individuals and families who are financially able to have isolated themselves in their private homes, effectively removing themselves from the social fabric of daily life. These measures have undoubtedly slowed the spread of COVID-19 through communities. They have also left many people cut off from their routines and support networks. That’s where online communities like “The End is Queer” come in. “The End is Queer” operates on multiple platforms and actively works to build in access, including access for people new to online platforms like queer elders.
http://www.lawcha.org/2020/04/18/nycs-lgbtqia-community-has-organized-against-death-again/
“One Hundred Years of Equity Strikes and Labor Solidarity,” Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.
“One Hundred Years of Equity Strikes and Labor Solidarity”
In 2019, union membership is growing and workers are striking for better pay and safer working conditions. It is important to place Equity’s #NotALabRat strike and campaign for a living wage in the context of other 21st century labor movements. Like the #NotALabRat campaign, recent wellsprings of workers’ organizing in arts, service, and educational industries have focused on obtaining a living wage for workers because one job should be enough. Workers’ struggles across industries, especially ones that are considered vocational or talent-based like acting and teaching, are fundamentally changing the ways that Americans think of work, talent, and skill. Labor history is being made on stage and in the streets.
https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/one-hundred-years-of-equity-strikes-and-labor-solidarity
“Social Reproduction as a Category for Labor History #LAWCHA19” https://www.lawcha.org/2019/07/12/social-reproduction-as-a-category-for-labor-history-lawcha19/
Podcast apperances
“The Year Broadway Went on Strike” The Long Island History Project http://www.longislandhistoryproject.org/the-year-broadway-went-on-strike/
Interviews
” 100 YEARS SINCE EQUITY’S FIRST STRIKE: FIRST BOLD STEP INSPIRES A CENTURY” Equity News, Summer 2019.
“The 1919 strike set standards for the 20th century,” said Caroline Propersi-Grossman, a PhD candidate in history at State University of New York-Stony Brook who studies work and unions in New York City entertainment. She believes that the key to Equity’s 1919 victory was the solidarity among not just Equity members, but their allies all over the country as well. “It was only when the actors, the musicians, the stagehands and the billposters stood together in city after city that management came back to the table,” Propersi-Grossman said. “The 2019 strike for a fair wage in laboratory productions showed us that the standards set in 1919 like a fair wage and fair credit for artistic work are still relevant.”
“100 Years Since Equity’s First Strike: First Bold Step Inspires a Century,” Doug Strassler, Equity News, Summer 2019. https://www.actorsequity.org/news/EquityNews/Summer2019/EquityNews_Summer2019.pdf
Recorded Talks
Net-Works Mapping Labor in Theatre Conference, April 2020.
Other Apperances
“Already stretched grad students rebel against rising and often surreptitious fees” Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report https://hechingerreport.org/already-stretched-grad-students-rebel-against-rising-and-often-surreptitious-fees/
“May Day rally: Students and faculty protest wages for International Workers’ Day,” Tanveen Vohra, UB Spectrum. https://www.ubspectrum.com/article/2019/05/may-day-rally-students-and-faculty-protest-wages-for-international-workers-day
“Graduate and teaching assistants decry plan to increase fees at Stony Brook,” Jean-Paul Salamanca, Newsday. https://www.newsday.com/long-island/education/stony-brook-university-sbu-grad-students-fees-1.29462831