NOTE: This show was originally released on June 14, 2020.
“We're sick and tired of being left out. We're sick and tired of not being heard. And we're sick and tired of our communities, where we live and work, are not being heard.”
That’s Ken Rigmaiden, president of the Painters union. Our Cool Things at the Meany Archive team caught up with him last Monday when the Painters joined the Black Lives Matters protests in downtown Washington, DC…
“I'll be frank with you, I've watched police behavior and reform and policies over time. It's been sort of a surprising, shocking that many of the police departments have sort of reverted to tactics, you know, that mirrored or that represented how police operated before African American mayors and before African-Americans became police chiefs and police commissioners.”
W. Marvin Dulaney, emeritus professor of history at the University of Texas Arlington and the author of Black Police in America talks with LHT’s Patrick Dixon about the history of black police in America.
“Just the fact that they've devoted so much space to trying to explain how we got here I think sort of validates the idea that you really need to understand the past to understand what's happening in the present.”
Archivist Megan Courtney talks about the 1968 Kerner Commission Report with Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English in their podcast Tales from the Reuther Archive…
That’s all on this week’s Labor History Today, along with a song from the R.J. Phillips Band recorded three years ago for the families who have lost loved ones as a result of police brutality. And, on Labor History in 2, we hear about a miner shot dead trying to organize.
Produced by Chris Garlock. Patrick Dixon produced and edited the W. Marvin Dulaney interview; 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. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 100 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns.
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Links:
Tales from the Reuther Archive
Labor History in 2
Labor Day: no picnic in a pandemic
“Boomer Jones": Vintage labor radio show (LHT podcast extra)
We Do The Work; Working History
Cutting along the Color Line
A travel guide to labor landmarks
“The Flintstones” and class struggle; The Ford Hunger March
Remembering Gene Debs; Waging Peace
No longer newsworthy?
Confederate monuments and the Knights of Labor
Strike!
“Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work”: the Housewives League of Detroit
2020 Great Labor Arts Exchange contest winners!
Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth
SCOTUS bans LGBTQ workplace discrimination; Queer history of the UAW
Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion
Labor supports DC Black Lives Matter protests; “Debs In Canton” preview; Revisiting The Battle of Homestead; Voices of exiled Iranian workers
The Minneapolis general strike; “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property”
“Politics of the Pantry”; “We Just Come to Work Here”
“The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland”
“Strike for Your Life!”; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis
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