2020-05
2020-05
Monday May 18, 2020
Monday May 18, 2020
Labor historian, activist and writer Toni Gilpin, author of the new book “The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland.” This rich history details the bitter, deep-rooted conflict between industrial behemoth International Harvester and the uniquely radical Farm Equipment Workers union. The Long Deep Grudge makes clear that class warfare has been, and remains, integral to the American experience, providing up-close-and-personal and long-view perspectives from both sides of the battle lines. PLUS: David Fernandez-Barrial, Saul Schniderman and Hazel Dickens on the Matewan Massacre.Produced by Chris Garlock and Patrick Dixon; to contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Sunday May 10, 2020
“Strike for Your Life!”; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis
Sunday May 10, 2020
Sunday May 10, 2020
Jeremy Brecher's “Strike for Your Life!”; Peter Rachleff and labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis; plus a preview of Debs In Canton. “The current situation has led us to reconsider the Minneapolis teamster strikes of 1934; their dramatic story shows that the labor movement is strongest when unions boldly organized workers on the job and in the community around a shared vision of fairness and justice.” Peter Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, on how “Lessons from labor history can inform our labor movement during the COVID-19 crisis.” “As a labor historian, the closest thing I can think of to the spread of coronavirus strikes is the epidemic of sitdown strikes to spread across the country in the mid-1930s.” Historian and writer Jeremy Brecher, from “Strike for Your Life!” Also this week, we preview Debs In Canton, a new audio/radio drama from the filmmakers of American Socialist: The Life And Times Of Eugene Victor Debs. Produced by Chris Garlock; to contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
Sunday May 03, 2020
Sunday May 03, 2020
Jack Kelly, author of "The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America,” and Part 2 of our interview with Oscar-winning director Julia Reichert.
I'll tell you what I was thinking about when we wrote it; I was thinking about the Wobblies. Director Julia Reichert's call at the Oscars earlier this year for “workers of the world to unite” went viral; she and Steven Bognar won for their film American Factory, and we’ve got the second part of her interview with 9 to 5 founder Karen Nussbaum.
The Pullman strike was a solidarity strike. they were striking in sympathy with the Pullman workers and that idea of people pulling together I think you're seeing now. At the peak of the Gilded Age a conflict in one of America’s largest factories exploded into the most extensive and threatening labor uprising in American history. Jack Kelly's "The Edge of Anarchy” tells the dramatic story of this historic event, transporting the reader from the fabulous White City of the 1893 World’s Fair to the nation’s industrial heartland, where unprecedented hard times are brewing rage across the continent. In the summer of 1894, more than half a million desperate railroad workers went on strike. Riots broke out in Chicago and other major cities. The nation’s commerce ground to a halt—famine threatened isolated towns. The U.S. Attorney General declared the country to be on “the ragged edge of anarchy.”
Produced by Chris Garlock; to contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.
Friday May 01, 2020
Friday May 01, 2020
Hundreds of Thousands Expected to Attend 2020 Virtual May Day Rally in Nation’s Capital; Live coverage by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash May Day started in the U.S. in 1886 as a nationwide general strike by mostly immigrant workers for the 8-hour day. While celebrated throughout the rest of the world, it had become less prominent in the U.S. until recently with the revived protests by immigrant workers. But every year there is more reason for the working class to protest. And this year we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic where the plutocrats are more willing than ever to put their profits ahead of the very lives of workers, who are taking to the streets -- appropriately socially distancing of course -- wearing brightly colored masks and now heading to the Nation’s Capital under banners declaring "We Are The Workers of the World" & "We Have Nothing to Lose But Our Chains & A World To Win," "We are the 99% and Will Reopen the Economy, Putting People Before Profits."
Partial list of speakers at today’s rally:
John L Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) and a driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers; Genora Dollinger, leader of the Women's Auxiliary of the Women's Strike Brigade during the Sit-Down Strikes of 1936-1937 at General Motors Corporation in Flint; A. Phillip Randolph, labor unionist, civil rights activist and socialist politician, who organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Paul Robeson, the eloquent and highly charismatic actor and one of the most treasured names in song, who was a staunch Cold War-era advocate for human rights; Dolores Huerta, labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW); Lisa Tiger, a member of the Muscogee Nation who comes from a family of acclaimed Native American artists, including her father, Jerome Tiger, and grew up surrounded by Native American Art; plus the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eugene Victor Debs, Huey Long, and a cast of tens of thousands that is WE THE PEOPLE, building bridges from the militancy of the past to inspire the workers of today!
This special May Day edition of Labor History Today is produced by Building Bridges' Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash.