From Students to Labor Activists: Program Gives Interns Social Justice Experience

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At the end of a long table in a brightly lit meeting room in Chicago, Maureen Sullivan sits with a Latino worker and his family. Across from them two staffers from the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, a nationwide network seeking to organize the religious community around labor issues, question the man on difficulties he has been having with his employer. He is worried he might lose his job.

Sullivan, a 20-year-old American Studies major at Georgetown University in Washington, is interpreting. She has spent much of the last two months in meetings like this. Along with seven others from Catholic colleges and universities around the country, Sullivan spent her summer vacation this year participating in the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice Catholic Social Teaching Internship.

Now in its third year, the program places students with interfaith groups around the country where they work as advocates for low-wage workers.

The students, who receive college credit for participating in the eight-week program, begin their internships with a weeklong orientation in Chicago, home of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice national office. The …