Citlalli Chávez-Nava and Lesly Ayala | June 24, 2024 

The spirit of celebration and remembrance was in the air at the 2024 Labor Studies Commencement ceremony. The event brought together a class of students that withstood a global pandemic and saw them witness mass social uprisings and unrest amid a series of domestic and global challenges. 

On Saturday, June 15, labor studies faculty and staff honored this unique class, inviting them to join the ranks of change-makers across the nation. 

“You, graduates of 2024, are also a new generation of leaders,” said Tobias Higbie, director at the UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE). “We make the road by walking together across generations, and today you walk across this stage into a world that needs your skills, ideas and energy like never before.”

Gathered among an audience of over 250 attendees, students wore neatly-pressed graduation regalia paired with blue and gold sashes, a diverse array of decorative leis and carefully-embellished mortarboards displaying students’ “first-generation Latina” pride, among others. 

In his opening remarks, Higbie acknowledged civil rights champion and labor studies faculty member the Rev. James Lawson Jr., who passed away days before the commencement ceremony. Named “the leading strategist of nonviolence in the world” by his close friend Dr. Martin Luther King, the labor and civil rights leader co-taught the program’s “Nonviolence and Social Movements” course for over two decades with Kent Wong, UCLA Labor Center director for labor and community partnerships. 

“The Rev. James Lawson, Jr.’s prophetic voice for social justice and sharp analytical mind inspired all of us to rise to the challenges we face through strategic and disciplined nonviolence. We will miss his wise counsel,” said Higbie. 

Wong spoke of Lawson’s immense impact on the civil rights movement and the labor studies community, before introducing a commemorative video that featured a 2021 speech by Rev. Lawson at the naming ceremony of the UCLA Labor Center’s historic downtown Los Angeles building in Lawson’s honor. 

Fittingly, keynote speaker Cecily Myart-Cruz, a teacher, activist, and the first woman of color to serve as United Teachers Los Angeles’ (UTLA) president, delivered a memorable, passionate address that resembled a civil-rights era sermon. 

“I am honored to stand before you today, as you prepare to live out the embodiment of our ancestors’ wildest dreams. I don’t have to know you personally to know that the road to today was not an easy one. Many folks in this room cared for siblings, parents, grandparents and had to work and help out to pay the bills and make do,” she said. 

“We were surrounded by loss and grief so profound that it moved like the ebb and flow of the waves. And yet — We survived. You survived,” she declared.

Myart-Cruz also spoke about the harsh injustices the pandemic laid bare, and how they served as a historic galvanizing force to bring people together.

“George Floyd. The pandemic gave everyone a chance to peer into the belly of the beast to see what Black, brown and Indigenous folks knew existed just beyond the shadows. There was anger, fear, resentment and disbelief. A moment that became a movement, a rallying cry for justice, action and hope,” she said. “We could no longer sit idly by waiting for change, because we must be those change makers. That’s a testament of who is sitting in this room before us today.”

The labor leader welcomed the class of 2024 into a movement that is embracing vibrant, militant approaches to organizing that “can be full of joy in the struggle.”

“Graduates: the movement is now placed at your feet,” she said. “I welcome you to stand alongside us, and stand alongside our family … This is the time. This is the moment. We will fight. We will win.”

The ceremony’s student speakers reminded their classmates of the responsibility bestowed upon them through their newly-minted degrees. 

Sherrod Session, deeply interested in history, politics and organized labor, discussed the resurgence of organized labor during a time of disproportionate inequality and corporate greed. He urged his peers to continue to fight for a better future, and he hopes to rectify the struggles facing working families as a future law student. 

“I am full of pride, faith and grace to stand alongside the most passionate and unflinching group of students that this country has seen, [we witnessed] the insatiable appetite for taking on the campus administration, and the contemporary geopolitical developments —an appetite that will continue to grow in proportion to this dreadful cost of living and to the lives being sacrificed at the altar of capital,” he said.  

Micaela Aragon, born and raised in Lima, Peru, conducted community-engaged labor research and taught their own class for the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In their speech, Aragon reflected on how their family persevered through hardship when they immigrated to the U.S. and the responsibility to use one’s platform to speak out against injustice.

“When I talk of responsibility, it is a responsibility to use our platforms, whenever they are given to us. A responsibility to stand up for what we believe in and speak up against power — no matter how scary, no matter how much your voice shakes, by any means necessary. It is a deep responsibility to fight to build a world we want to inhabit,” they said. 

Saba Waheed, UCLA Labor Center director, delivered the closing remarks reminding students to continue fighting for justice as they move on to the next stage of their careers. 

“Graduates, you have a path before you that has been paved by visionaries like Rev. Lawson. Let’s continue his fight for justice with fearless courage — with our life force, and as he would call it, our ‘soul force,” she said. “We hope that we have taught you well, in and outside of the classroom, and that you will now guide us into a better future. You are now our teachers. You are the architects of the future we want to see. May your journey be one of purpose, passion and profound impact.”

In total, the interdepartmental program conferred 58 bachelor’s degrees and 52 academic minors upon the labor studies class of 2024. 

The ceremony was also attended by faculty members: Caroline Luce, Chris Newman, Gilda Haas, Victor Narro and Trevor Griffey. UCLA Labor Center Project Directors and labor studies lecturers, Janna Shadduck-Hérnandez and Gaspar Rívera-Salgado led the certificate presentation. 

UCLA Labor Studies is the first major of its kind at the University of California. Renowned for its commitment to engaged student learning in community worker settings, rigorous hands-on research and courses that explore some of the most pressing labor and social justice issues, the program became a major in 2019 after being established as a minor in 2014.

View our Labor Studies Commencement 2024 photo album here.