Conor Casey, Candidate for Council

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Conor Casey

Head of Labor Archives of Washington

he/him

 

Equity and justice are central frames that should inform future work. My activities in four terms as co-chair of the Labor Archives Section reveal the value I place on such goals in my own leadership/service practice. As a council member, I would draw on this experience and service.

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BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

I’ve been working in archives since 2000, starting as archival assistant at the Labor Archives & Research Center at San Francisco State University and becoming an archivist and curator (2001–2008). I hold BAs in anthropology and history, an MA in US history, a MLIS in archives and reference, and I am a certified archivist. My research interests include social, labor, immigration, and ethnic history; oral history research and curation; and EDI-centered archival administration. I worked as an archivist at Pixar Animation Studios (2008–2010) before moving to founding archivist of the Labor Archives of Washington (LAW) at the University of Washington, where I curate collections and direct activities (2010–present). Here, I developed a holistic, EDI-centered, collaborative community documentation and archival administration strategy called “corrective collecting.” I developed and taught a for-credit class “Lessons in Leadership and Courage: Labor, Social Justice, and Civil Rights Activist History through the Lens of Primary Sources.” I had the great honor of attending the Archives Leadership Institute in 2014 and attended DigCCurr in 2015.

Between 2012-2021, I served several terms as co-chair of the Society of American Archivists’ Labor Archives Section (LAS), vice president of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association (2017–2020), and president of the Northwest Historians Guild (2014–2016).

As LAS co-chair, I led the adoption of new bylaws and enhanced access to our labor repository directory by migrating it online. A regular column in the Labor Online e-newsletter of the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) enhanced our profile. I organized section sessions at LAWCHA’s conferences in 2014, 2017, and 2020. Three LAS sessions made it onto the main SAA conference program; LAS submitted section proposals every year. As chair of those sessions, I sought to draw in many LAS members to showcase the diverse work of our members and broaden participation. Those themes were almost always EDI-centered. With my co-chairs I helped coordinate section business meetings at SAA, recruiting speakers.

DIVERSITY STATEMENT

Each candidate prepared a diversity statement according to SAA guidelines.

In my practice of diversity, I seek to go beyond awareness of the systemic nature of inherent bias, structural racism, and the virtues of diversity, advancing a proactive praxis to counter white supremacy, sexism, and classism. In seeking to counter my own privileges and biases, I hope to center and elevate the voices of historically marginalized and minoritized communities and steep myself in a framework of antiracism and cultural humility. Allyship is a verb rather than a noun, and a title bestowed rather than a mantle claimed.

I present as a white cisgender male and work as an archivist, curator, and supervisor in special collections at a university. This mirrors the predominant racial composition of the archives profession, and it affords me myriad privileges in society and has greatly aided my career. I’ve worked as the director of a community labor and social justice archives in direct service to a diverse labor movement since 2010, I worked in the labor movement since 2001, and I have been a member of the working class since birth.

I sought to serve the labor movement because of its role in promoting economic, social, gender, and racial justice. I believe unionizing archives and library professionals is one mechanism to increase diversity in our profession and democratize the workplace by creating a pipeline for new professionals from communities of color and working-class communities. To that end, during 2019–2023 I helped unionize my workplace, serving on the organizing, contract bargaining, contract action, communications, and research committees. I believe unionizing and paying interns are mechanisms to increase diversity in our profession and democratize the workplace. These strategies align with the values in SAA’s Work Plan on DEIA.

Nonnormative aspects of identity incline me toward sensitivity on EDI issues: I identify as nonbinary, queer, and working class; I experience lifelong invisible disabilities; and I see whiteness as a toxic social construct created to ensnare European immigrants into the project of a racialized Anglo settler state. My family was a polyglot European non-Anglo immigrants, US natives, and people of different races. I attended public schools and lived in neighborhoods in South San Francisco: a diverse, majority non-white, working-to-middle class city. This gave me an intersectional view of gender, race, and class before I knew the word. I pursued degrees in anthropology and history partly to understand the creation and operation of systems of oppression and defy and dismantle them. Through my work in labor archives and librarianship, I seek to use my privilege to serve activists and members of historically marginalized communities to empower themselves.

QUESTION POSED BY NOMINATING COMMITTEE

As you look at the SAA Strategic Plan, Work Plan on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA), and the A*CENSUS II report, how do you envision the future of SAA, keeping in mind some of the challenges and/or opportunities the Society should prepare for?

CANDIDATE'S RESPONSE 

I appreciate the emphasis I see in the SAA Strategic Plan of advocating for the values of archives in society, providing opportunities for professional growth, helping to advance the field, and meeting member needs. I also appreciate how the Strategic Plan incorporates the goals and deliverables on the Work Plan for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. I believe equity and justice are central frames that should inform future work. My activities in four terms as co-chair of SAA’s Labor Archives Section reveal the value I place on such goals in my own leadership/service practice. As co-chair, I forged partnerships with stakeholder organizations, expanded our participation with stakeholder and professional communities, reframed our sections’ messaging and branding to clarify the broad scope of labor and labor-related collections and make clearer how they align with community, social justice, activist, and immigration history. As co-chair, I advanced internal and external outreach and sought to expand the opportunities for participation and leadership for section members, especially those newer to our section or profession. Partly as a result of these efforts, and partly from great fortune, the LAS has a new cohort of active new members and leaders engaged in ongoing projects and a new leadership group that is actively leading the section as part of their own professional development and service. As a council member, I would draw on eleven years of this experience and service.

It is crucial that SAA focus on advancing efforts already underway to diversify the archival profession and to create pathways to leadership for members from historically marginalized communities. We must continue to recruit new members, furthering and expanding upon SAA’s efforts to make membership more affordable to students and new professionals to ensure a pipeline into the profession. I think we also have great opportunities to consult experts in our profession who are already undertaking such equity-based efforts with critical archival frames such as the Archives For Black Lives. Partnerships with organizations such as these have enriched SAA professional development opportunities and conferences since the last wave of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and I think it is crucial that we continue to provide space, priority, and dedicated resources to such efforts, making programmatic efforts to counter the inherent biases and structural imbalances of our profession and our society.

Another aspect of social justice that SAA has been discussing in recent years is the labor issues in our profession. Put plainly, we need to advocate for paying our interns and support labor organizing efforts by our profession, members and nonmembers alike. I believe that these are central mechanisms to improving our bargaining position and comparable worth argument in relation to other skilled professions requiring advanced degrees. It is also a mechanism of making archival jobs more sustainable and more appealing to new groups of workers, including workers of color and those unprivileged by generational wealth. In this way, SAA can help expand the scope of our profession and ensure it better reflects the diversity of society as a whole and reflects the communities we serve.

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