Forging Solidarity is a new and collaborative project dedicated to exploring Buffalo's labor and working-class history. Through exhibits, articles, events, arts, research, multimedia, oral history, music, theatre, and more, this project honors the long, deep history of this city’s working people and the movements for justice they created.

This project will document Buffalo’s rich labor history and tell the stories of people who forged it through their solidarity and resistance to oppression and exploitation at work and beyond — a history that stretches from roots in Indigenous societies to abolitionist and suffragist movements, and from working peoples’ modern struggles for human and civil rights to workers unifying for power to secure dignity and rights at work and create more caring communities, a more equal economy, and a more democratic society.

Working with unions, community members, scholars, and others, Forging Solidarity will preserve and popularize the history of Buffalo's working people as a central pillar of our city's story, with an eye toward harnessing its lessons — and learning from past challenges — to create a just future.

In the coming months, Forging Solidarity will bring this history to life through:

• A new project website containing historical resources, news about project activities, writings and interviews, and more.
• A historical timeline documenting Buffalo’s labor and working-class history accompanied by photographs and maps.
• A Fall 2027 exhibit at the Buffalo History Museum accompanied by art exhibits at the Birchfield Penney Art Center and at union halls and other local venues.
• Public events of educational and cultural value, such as roundtables, film showings, and commemorations of historic anniversaries locally and nationally.
• Oral histories and interviews that document and preserve firsthand accounts of Buffalo’s labor, working-class, and social movement history.
• Collaborations with educators to promote curricula and resources for teaching Buffalo’s history of labor and work in schools.
• Organizing music and performance arts events related to project themes.
• A day-long Buffalo labor history tour for students, unions, and community members.