Labor supports DC Black Lives Matter protests; “Debs In Canton” preview; Revisiting The Battle of Homestead; Voices of exiled Iranian workers

“The first thing that (AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka) let me know was nobody was hurt, no protesters or no AFL-CIO people were hurt, which to me showed his priority of taking care of people first and the building secondary. And he later made public statements to that effect. You know, we can clean up the building, but what's important is to support the movement for racial justice and equality.”
Just a block from The White House, AFL-CIO headquarters have been right in the middle of the DC protests against the murder of George Floyd and police brutality. Ben Blake of the Meany Labor Archives reports from the scene.
    
“102 years ago this June Debs stepped onto a stage in Canton, Ohio and gave a soul-stirring speech against American intervention in world war one. Even though he knew he would be arrested for speaking out against the war.”
On this week’s show, we preview 'Debs In Canton,' an original radioplay that airs later this week at the HEAR Now Festival…

“On July six, 1892, about 300 Pinkertons landed right over there. They killed seven strikers here that day. You're standing on sacred ground here for the labor movement in Western PA. We were founded through these very bloody struggles and the Battle of Homestead is something that has always had a big impact on me.”
What’s the connection between the 1892 Battle of Homestead memorial, the Henry K. Frick Car Museum, and Carnegie Mellon University? Labor reporter Mike Elk takes us on a very unauthorized tour this week.

“There was no considerable working class movement until 1967 because of the existence of the dictatorship and its suppression. But after 1967 despite the coercion, the workers struggle took a new turn.”
Jessica Pauzek has been thinking a lot about what it means to be part of a global community and how our actions in one part of the world are impacted by and impact others far away. This week she brings us the voices of exiled Iranian workers.

That’s all coming up in this week’s Labor History Today, plus, on Labor History in 2, we remember the strike at Loray Mills…“The year was 1929. That was the day that police chief Orville Aderholt  was shot and killed at a camp of striking textile workers in Gastonia, North Carolina.”

Produced by Chris Garlock. Evan Papp of the Empathy Media Lab produced the Homestead Strike piece; find out more about their great work at empathymedialab.com. Alan Wierdak produces Cool Things from the Meany Archives. 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.

Links:
NATF Playhouse: Debs In Canton

Learn from the Homestead Strike with labor reporter Mike Elk of Paydayreport.com

FWWCP Digital Collection

Labor History in 2