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WSLC secretary-treasurer Sharika Carter urges 'active hope' and urgent organizing
Summary
Sharika Carter told delegates that 'hope is a discipline,' framed organizing wins and historic campaigns as examples to emulate, and called for rapid organizing of new sectors (tech, care, green energy) and political engagement ahead of upcoming elections.
Sharika Carter, the Washington State Labor Council's secretary-treasurer, opened a major address to delegates by linking personal organizing history to the convention's priorities and urging active, strategic hope.
"Hope to me is choosing to build something better even when the odds are long," Carter said, framing hope as a practiced decision rather than passive optimism. She cited recent local contract wins and national organizing efforts — from machinists to healthcare workers — as evidence that workers are "organizing, striding, striking, voting, and winning." Carter urged unions to organize new sectors including tech, care and green-energy workers, press for protections around artificial intelligence, and to translate street power into electoral outcomes ahead of November's ballot fights.
Carter also emphasized multiracial leadership and representation: she noted that, together with April Sims, she is part of the first Black leadership team to lead an AFL-CIO state federation in its 70-year history, a point she used to argue for both symbolic and substantive change inside the labor movement. She closed by insisting organizers keep building capacity and joy as strategy: "Let's organize like our future depends on it because it does."
