URI Professor Scott Molloy comes to Portsmouth on April 14 to speak about labor unions and labor relations in the first installment of a new "Democracy Talks" lecture series on civics and government sponsored by the Portsmouth Democratic Town Committee.

Free and open to the public, the lecture will be held on Thursday, April 14, 7 p.m. at the Portsmouth Middle School auditorium on Jepson Lane.

“With so many workforce issues being faced in Rhode Island and nationwide, we thought people might want to hear an expert’s ‘big picture’ understanding of labor relations today, and tomorrow. We are thrilled to have Dr. Molloy, a nationally known scholar and lively speaker, inaugurate our lecture series,” said Town Committee Chair Leonard Katzman.

Molloy is nationally recognized for his expertise on American labor, labor history and Irish American history. He is the author of Trolley Wars: Streetcar workers on the Line, (2007) that looks at workers during the Rhode Island Transit Strike of 1902 and Irish Titan, Irish Toilers: Joseph Banigan and Nineteenth-Century New England Labor (2008). He is also known regionally as president and founder of the R.I. Labor History Society and for his role in helping to build the Irish Famine Memorial in Providence in 2007.

Full disclosure: Written substantially from a press release by the Democratic Town Committee, of which I am an officer.