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.
“The waterfront is my life”
Debs’ radio station
The union archive that almost didn’t make it
Coit Tower’s New Deal Murals
Who Killed Frank Little?
Life and Times of a Black Wobbly
The Port Chicago Mutiny (Encore)
The Disney Revolt
Under The Iron Heel
MoJo’s March of the Mill Children; Remembering Harry Belafonte
The 1943 RJ Reynolds Strike
Don’t Iron While the Strike is Hot!
Democracy Under Siege
A white-collar strike
Detroit’s Walk to Freedom
Trumka on the power of labor arts
The Memorial Day Massacre
Mackay, Wurf, library workers, Matewan and the first baseball strike (Encore)
Labor Journalism, Farmworkers, and Reynolds Tobacco
Working Class Giant
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Lore