Podcasts about industrial organizations

Episode 19 of Fragile Juggernaut weighs up the results of the struggle for hegemony in the 1945-1946 strike wave over the next several years. While millions of workers participated in militant actions, their strikes were uncoordinated and politically isolated, opening the way for the political right to organize a backlash and recapture Congress in the midterm elections. At the center of the agenda of the new Republican Congress: labor law reform, codified in the form of the notorious 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. We dive into the details and consequences of the law, restraining workers' right to organize and, most significantly, driving a wedge between the left wing of the CIO and the rest of the federation.Featured music: The OPA Shout (Pete Seeger); The Same Old Merry Go-Round (Oscar Brand); Taft-Hartley Blues (unidentified); The New Walls of Jericho (Richard Huey and Chorus); The Peekskill Story (The Weavers).Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy Set the Earth on Fire: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 and the Birth of the Police: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2220-set-the-earth-on-fire

Episode 17 of Fragile Juggernaut concerns the momentous arrival of long-dreaded events abroad that broke US politics out of its political and economic impasse during Roosevelt's second term: Europe's descent into fascist war. Foreign policy dislodged the American elite from their indecision over the nature of domestic reform; dislodged President Roosevelt from his indecision over whether to run for a third term; and dislodged the leadership of the CIO from its political cul-de-sac of battling employers at the bargaining table and their own government at the ballot boxes. With Roosevelt's third term, CIO founder John L. Lewis surrendered his presidency of the industrial union center. In the process, the drift into war dramatically transformed the relationship of the industrial union movement to electoral politics and the Democratic Party—and of union leaders to the Depression society now energized and organized around war production. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way.Buy The Tragedy of American Science, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1888-the-tragedy-of-american-scienceSupport us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

Episode 16 is the last in our three-episode regional series, offering a view of the CIO from the West Coast. Andrew, Ben, Emma, and Tim discuss what was distinct about the economy of the West: in this underdeveloped imperial context, working-class activity followed the supply chain, from coastal ports to inland warehouses and processing centers to the fertile valleys of California. This distribution-transportation nexus became a key battleground of jurisdictional disputes with the AFL, only to be scrambled again by an influx of wartime defense spending. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way.Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy Revolution in Seattle, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/872-revolution-in-seattle

Episode 15 of Fragile Juggernaut is the second of our trio of regional episodes, landing this time in the South. Ben, Emma, and Tim are joined by the celebrated historian Robin D.G. Kelley to discuss the patterns of Southern development, the rich organizational ecology of the region, the strategic misfires of the CIO, and the political and social bases of fascism in America. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way.Buy Class Struggle and the Color Line, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/946-class-struggle-and-the-color-lineSupport us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our third special bonus episode. Alex, Ben, Emma, Gabe, and Tim converged at Chicago's Socialism conference to discuss what the CIO can make us alive to in the contemporary labor movement and our conjuncture more broadly. Our series has probed the history of the labor movement of the 1930s and 1940s–detailing its heroism, anatomizing its tragedies, confronting its limits, and rethinking the whole turbulent era of the Great Depression, World War, fascism and antifascism from the vantage point of the mass worker. But the labor movement isn't something to be memorialized: it's something we're building again anew. What can we learn and better understand about the present when we come to terms with the labor movement's past? Read Andrew Elrod's “What Was Bidenomics” in Phenomenal World Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

It's an EmMajority Report Thursday! Emma speaks with Jeff Schuhrke, assistant professor in labor studies at SUNY Empire State University, to discuss his recent book Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade. Then, she speaks with Seamus Malekafzali, freelance writer and journalist, proprietor of the Seamus Malekafzali newsletter on SubStack, to discuss the recent Israeli offensive into Lebanon. First, Emma runs through updates on the indictment of Eric Adams, Netanyahu's visit to the UN, Israel's devastating offensives in Lebanon and Gaza, election spending, the GOP's anti-Haitian attacks, US-Israel aid, Harris' cozying up to crypto, Lina Khan vs. AI, Mark Robinson, and Hurricane Helene, before parsing a little deeper through the beautifully idiotic actions outlined in the fed's Adams indictment. Professor Jeff Schuhrke then joins, diving right into the history of the AFL-CIO's internal cold war and the havoc it wreaked on the institution's organizing capacities, stepping back to outline the start difference in organizing of the then-separate AFL and CIO during the union boom at the peak of the Great Depression in the 1930s, with the Congress of Industrial Organizations taking on a grassroots approach, organizing across the spectrum of the working class to improve class consciousness, including among the growing communist factions in the US, and thus rapidly and drastically expanding their base, unionizing massive corporations, and establishing many openly-communist-led unions, all nationwide, a strategy directly contrasted by the American Federation of Labor's establishment and anti-communist tact of this era. Moving into the 1940s, Professor Schuhrke explores how the post-war period, between the overwhelming backlash to a wave of strikes in 1945, the growth of an anti-communist government-backed military industry, and the onset of the McCarthyist Red Scare, saw a complete inversion of the growing labor power of the last decade, with full-scale communist purges and the GOP's takeover of Congress crippling both the numbers and the rights that had so bolstered labor, resulting in a decimated CIO limping to join the AFL in 1955. From here, Jeff walks Emma through the rapid expansion of the AFL-CIO's anti-communist aims, as funding poured in from the State Department to sponsor an international effort by the labor federation fundamentally conflating anti-communist fear-mongering with labor organizing, be it through worker training or illegal, mafia-backed intimidation practices, putting any attempt to unify the working class to the side as labor took a back seat to US empire, with union rates reflecting exactly that. They wrap up the interview by tackling what we can learn from this period of corruption and degradation as the US finds itself amid a labor renaissance. Séamus Malekafzali then walks Emma through the past few weeks of Israel's terror campaign on Lebanon, first tackling the brief retaliatory attacks from Hezbollah in late August following Israel's assassination of commander Fuad Shukr that preceded Israel's escalation, before diving deep into the material impact of this offensive, between the wide-scale terrorism of Israel's rigged pagers and communications devices, to their following record-setting bombardments in South Lebanon. After stepping back to explore how Israel's offensives in Lebanon and against Hezbollah have been central to the IDF developing their tactics of collective punishment, Séamus wraps up with how these tactics have devastated South Lebanon over the last week, pushed the population into a complete crisis, and what it means for the future of the Lebanese people and Zionist expansion. And in the Fun Half: Emma is joined by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder as they unpack the absurd controversy developing around Chappelle Roan's statement critiquing the Democratic Party (while still saying she'll vote Harris), and the predictably disgusting (and unsuccessful) backlash to Bisan Owda's Emmy nomination. Mike in Denver has some questions about Colorado's ranked-choice referendum, Sophie from Vienna discusses organizing the Palestine Congress, Vienna, and the MR Crew tackles Clay Higgins' decision to join in on the rest of the GOP's anti-Haitian bigotry, plus, your calls and IMs! Check out Jeff's book here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2979-blue-collar-empire Follow Seamus on Twitter here: https://x.com/Seamus_Malek Check out Seamus' newsletter on SubStack here: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/ Find out more about the Palestine Congress in Vienna here: https://palaestinakongress.at/en Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here!: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here!: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here!: https://rumble.com/user/majorityrep ort Check out our alt YouTube channel here!: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Join Sam on the Nation Magazine Cruise! 7 days in December 2024!!: https://nationcruise.com/mr/ Check out StrikeAid here!; https://strikeaid.com/ Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Episode 14 of Fragile Juggernaut is the first of our trio of regional episodes. It dials into New York City, the seat of the country's largest manufacturing base, but one composed of a vast constellation of small and diverse shops; and also host to the nation's largest port, transport system, white collar and cultural complex, and more. With the eminent historian Joshua Freeman, Gabe and Ben talk about worker organizing outside the CIO cast–public transit workers, teachers, laundry workers and domestics–as well as what made New York City, a non-fordist city in the age of Ford, so exemplary compared to other parts of the country. The episode features James Baldwin and Truman Capote; Irish dance halls and cruising on the piers; burial societies, Tammany Hall, and clandestine organizations; the origins of bodegas and how the mob got rackets into organized labor; the trade union origins of “Strange Fruit”; Ella Baker and Esther Cooper Jackson; the IRA and Broadway musicals; how transit workers built their union campaigning against big squeegees; the hybrid combinations of craft and industrial unionism; and the limits to workplace organization in a city defined by tremendous ethnic, religious, and neighborhood segmentation. Featured music: “I Ain't Got Nobody” by Count Basie; “It's Better With A Union Man” by Pins and Needles Orchestra; “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday; “The Boys of the Lough” by Michael Coleman; “Talking Sailor” by Woody Guthrie; “One Big Union for Two” by the Pins and Needles Orchestra; “New York Town” by Woody Guthrie.Archival audio credits: Esther Cooper Jackson discusses domestic work research; Mike Quill debates Rep. Fred Hartley on ABC news; longshoreman and sailor Stan Weir describes conservatizing effects of the racket on the docks. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Buy Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/991-organized-labor-and-the-black-worker-1619-1981

Episode 13 of Fragile Juggernaut surveys the impasse of the Second New Deal with the historian Ahmed White, when the newfound power of working-class organization in mass production confronted the counterattack of property and established social hierarchy. During 1937, the “Little Steel” Strike, the “Roosevelt Recession,” and the political dilemmas of union power in the two-party system challenged the growth of the CIO and began to change its character. In prior chronological episodes, the movement of mass worker organizing has gone from strength to strength, culminating in the effervescence of sitdown strikes amongst very different kinds of workers and the landslide political victories of 1936. But within the year, capital responds with a strike of its own–producing the Roosevelt recession–which leads state agents to turn toward repression of the labor movement rather than conciliation, FDR to reshuffle the basis of his coalition, and workers to find themselves without the leverage that they had possessed a few months earlier. The CIO responds to these new circumstances with new strategies. Some redouble their commitments to FDR's coalition, while others begin seeking autonomy from its confines. The left, however, vacillates, becoming the prime victim to this new moment in the history of the CIO—unable to cohere or politically articulate a new wave of wildcat strikes that take off. Featured music: “Ballad of Harry Bridges” by the Almanac Singers; “CIO song” by Aunt Molly Jackson; “No More Mourning” by John L. Handcox; “Alabama Trio Mill Blues” by Ralph Willis. Archival audio credits: labor organizer Boris Ross from the "Documenting Social History: Chicago's Elderly Speak"; interview with Chicago activist Mollie West; Gaumont British Newsreel on Little Steel Strike; organizer and Congressman John Brenard. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Buy Women and the American Labor Movement, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1168-women-and-the-american-labor-movement

Get ready for a game-changing episode of Connecting the Dots! Dr. Wilmer Leon and Caleb Maupin dive into the seismic shifts happening worldwide—where the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower and what that means for our future. They explore a growing movement challenging America's global influence and break down what the 2024 election could mean for the future of U.S. politics. If you care about where our country is headed, this is a must-listen. Don't miss out on insights that could change how you see the world!     Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links to find @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!   Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!   Wilmer Leon (00:00:00): As we are living through a pivotal moment in world history, the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world, anti-imperialism is at the core of this global movement as the US is at the center of this global shift. How did anti imperialism take hold in the us? Let's find out Announcer (00:00:27): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:00:35): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which these events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historical context in which they take place. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issue before us, the issues before us, are the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world. How is this happening and what does it mean? As well as the developing 2024 US presidential political landscape to help me work through these issues. Let's turn to my guest. He's an author, independent journalist, political analyst and reporter for RT, and his latest book is entitled “Out of the Movement to the Masses, Anti-Imperialist Organizing in America”. And he's also the author of Kamala Harris and The Future of America, an essay in Three Parts. He is Caleb Maupin, my brother. Welcome back! Caleb Maupin (00:01:53): Sure. Glad to be here. Wilmer Leon (00:01:55): So first of all, your thoughts on my introduction, is that a hyperbole or is that a fairly accurate description of the dynamics that we find ourselves dealing with? Caleb Maupin (00:02:13): Trying to stop the rise of a multipolar world would be a lot like trying to stop the sun from rising in the morning, maybe trying to stop gravity. That's the way the world is moving. But our leaders are committed to trying to keep the world centered around Wall Street and London and they are going to fail. The question is how much of a cost in terms of human lives, in terms of the economy, in terms of political repression, are we going to have to endure before they come to the terms of reality, which is that we're going to have a world where there are other centers of power and countries trade with each other on a different basis. So I would agree with you, Wilmer Leon (00:02:54): And so as we look at this changing dynamic from the unipolar to the multipolar, we've got China, we have Russia, we have India. There are a number of countries that over the years have been targets of American sanctions, regimes and all other types of pressure from the United States. With all of that or from all of that, we now have the rise of the BRICS nations, we've got Brazil, we've got Russia, we've got India, we've got China, we've got South Africa, and now what about how many, I've lost track now about 15 or 17 other countries that have joined this organization, this economic organization, which also seems to be an anti imperialist organization. Caleb Maupin (00:03:49): Sure. I mean, if you understand imperialism in the economic sense, imperialism is a system rather than a policy, right? Kind of layman's terms imperialism is when one country is mean to another country or attacks another country. But we're referring specifically to imperialism as an economic system when the world is centered around financial institutions, trusts, cartels and syndicates centered in the Western countries that dominate the world through the export of capital, sending their corporations all over the world to dominate the economies of developing countries, to hold back economic development, to keep countries as captive markets and spheres of influence. That process whereby countries are prevented from lifting themselves up, from electrifying, from building modern education systems, developing modern industries, developing their own economies, and just kind of used to dump the excess commodities of Western countries and have their economy dominated by a foreign country and a foreign monopolies and big corporations from another country from the west. (00:04:55): That process refers to, that's what I mean when I say imperialism. I'm referring to a global economic setup, and that economic setup is on its way out. And that's been pretty clear and a lot has gone on, went on in the 20th century to kind of erode imperialism. And in the 21st century, imperialism continues to be in the decline, and there is this new economy rising around the world, centered around the two U superpowers, Russia and China. They are kind of at the center, the linchpin of a global network of countries, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba. But then there's even other countries that are willing to trade and are kind of on the one hand friendly to the United States, but on the other hand are happy to work with Russia or China if they give them a better deal. The shape of global politics is changing, the world is changing, and this is just something we need to embrace. The world is not going to be centered around the West as it was for so long during the age of colonialism and sense. Wilmer Leon (00:05:54): In fact, what we're finding out is that on the 27th and the 28th of August, Moscow is hosting the sixth annual, the sixth International Municipal BRICS Forum. And what might surprise a lot of people is there are delegations from 126 countries that are expected to take part, more than 5,000 participants from 500 cities around the world. This isn't getting very much attention or coverage here in the western media, but folks need to understand, as we talked about the shift from the unipolar to the multipolar, this is a perfect example of that shift isn't happening, that shift HAS happened. Caleb Maupin (00:06:45): Sure. When I was at the Valdi Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia in the mountains near the city, I saw Ael Togi, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he pointed out that in the Eurasian subcontinent and outside of the Western countries, this is like a golden era. The amount of electrification that's going on, the amount of roads and railways that are being constructed, I mean, there is a whole exploding new economy happening in the world. And I saw that when I was at the Yalta Economic Forum in Crimea in 2018, and other people have seen it when they go to the Vladi Stock Economic Forum in the Russian Far East. People have seen it with the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that China is building. There is this whole new economy in the world now that is focused on development and growth, building power plants, building schools, building universities, building hospitals, and it's a really, really big part of the global economy. And our leaders are being very foolish by trying to just barricade it and blockade it and oppose it because they're locking the United States out of that economic growth. When somebody's growing economically, they have more money to spend, they have more products they can buy, and we could be benefiting from this new economy that's rising, but instead, our Western leaders are committed to maintaining their monopoly at all costs. And so we are getting locked out of an explosion of growth. It's just a very, very mistaken approach. Wilmer Leon (00:08:18): And I want to, with that intro shift to shift to your book out of the movement to the masses, anti-imperialist organizing in America, because as I said in the intro, one of the major elements I believe of this shift from the unipolar to the multipolar is anti imperialism. And you write in the second paragraph of your introduction, what made the Communist party USA important was that it was the first anti-imperialist organization to take hold in the country. There were certainly anti-war organizations such as Mark Twain's, anti-Imperialist League. There had been pacifists and socialists like Eugene Debs, who opposed War on a Class basis, but the Communist party of USA was founded on the ideological breakthroughs of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia specifically the teachings of Vladimir Lenin. So I wanted to use this book out of the Movement to the Masses, which is a textbook, and wanted to start the conversation with what motivated you to write this book and what motivated you to write this as a textbook? Caleb Maupin (00:09:33): Well, it's important to understand that I think the ultimate interest of we the American people is in a society free from imperialism. I don't think that helping ExxonMobil and BP and Shell and Chevron dominate the global oil markets really benefits American working people in the long run. There might be some short-term bonuses, but those things are fading and that there is a long Wilmer Leon (00:09:57): Short-term bonuses such as, Caleb Maupin (00:09:59): Well, we've had a higher standard of living at least in the past, but that standard of living is in decline, and the future of the United States is not in this decaying western financial system. It's in a new order where we're trading with countries on the basis of win-win cooperation. And the reason I wrote the textbook is because I wanted people to be aware of the fact that there has been a strong anti-imperialist movement in this country, and that we can learn from these struggles of the past and these organizations that existed and what they achieved as we figure out in our time how we can build an anti-imperialist movement to rescue our country from the nightmare of the emerging low wage police state and the drive toward World War iii. And I mean, really, you don't have anti imperialism as we understand it, right? You don't have the rise of Russia and China. (00:10:50): You don't have the bricks. You don't have any of that without the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. That was a pivotal moment. That was a country that broke out of the Western imperialist system during World War I and started on an independent course of development. And it came out of the Bolshevik started out as part of the Marxist movement. Marxism was the ideology of the labor movement, right? The worker versus the employer. But there was a division in the labor movement increasingly between wealthy labor union bosses and higher paid skilled trade jobs that increasingly became supporters of empire and supporters of their country, colonizing countries in Africa and countries in Asia, et cetera. And the lower levels of the labor movement of more oppressed workers, the American Federation of Labor, the A FL was the big labor federation in the United States. And the people who started it, like Samuel Goer's, they were socialists or Marxists, but they were not anti-imperialist. (00:11:55): And by the time World War I came along, the A FL was a union that largely was for whites only. Most of the unions that were part of it banned black people from joining, banned people not born in the United States from joining, banned people who did not speak English as their first language from joining. And they were big supporters of World War I when it happened. And there was a divide in the labor movement and Marxism that had been the ideology of the labor movement got very much divided. And you had parties like the British Labor Party, the ruling party of Britain today. It originated as a Marxist party of labor organizers, but it became a pro imperialist party. Well, Bolshevism and the people who took power in Russia, the Bolsheviks, they were a breakaway from the Marxist movement that had developed this new theory of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. (00:12:48): And they said, we're not just fighting against regular capitalism. We're fighting against the monopolistic capitalism of Britain and France and Germany and America, and that means that we support nations, right? Originally, Marxists and the labor movement said, there are no nations workers of the world unite. It's just the workers versus the bosses. No borderers in our struggle. Well, Lenin says, actually, we do support nations in their fight against imperialism. And after the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, one of the first things they did is they called a conference in Baku in Azerbaijan. And at that conference, they invited all kinds of people from all over the world and they said, we will support you as long as you're fighting imperialism. And one of the people that came to that conference and was given military support by the Bolsheviks was the Amir of Afghanistan. And the Amir of Afghanistan was a conservative monarchist. (00:13:40): He was not a Marxist, not a socialist of any stripe. He was a conservative monarchist, a very conservative Muslim, but the Bolshevik said, you're fighting imperialism and so and so, we support you. And he gave them support. And many people around the world were inspired by the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist message that the Bolsheviks had, which was kind of a breakaway from the standard Marxist movement. The understanding was we're not just fighting capitalism, we're fighting against imperialism, and we support nations and colonized people of all different classes, workers, capitalists, whoever who are struggling against imperialism. That is the basis of this new movement that we are trying to build. And the Communist Party of the United States was the incarnation of that movement, and that's why it was embraced by many different sections of the population, most especially the black community in America, because they viewed black people as a colonized people, an oppressed nation within US borders. Marcus Garvey had been leading the black nationalist movement in the United States, the Back to African movement, and many black people saw African-Americans as a colonized people within the US borders. And the Communist Party agreed with that, and that was a winning point that they had with many people in the United States. And the Communist Party was supportive of anyone around the world who was struggling against British American or French imperialism. Wilmer Leon (00:15:04): And as we look at that history and we bring it forward to the current moment and the Russia phobia that we find ourselves subjected to, I submit, and please if I'm wrong, correct me that one of the things that's at the crux of this Russia phobia is the fact that America is an imperialist nation and a neo-colonial power, and Russia has the Soviet Union and then into Russia has been anti-colonialism, which is one of the reasons why we find now Russia gaining so much traction with countries on the continent of Africa. Caleb Maupin (00:15:53): Well, I got to tell you, just a few weeks after the special military operation in Russia began a couple of years ago, I was in New York City with Tanner, 15 of my friends, and we were marching around with American flags and Russian flags chanting, Russia is not our enemy, Russia is not our enemy. And we chanted this in Union Square, and then we went up to Grand Central Station, we marched around Grand Central Station chanting that, and while we were doing that, we got thumbs up from a lot of different people. Now, many people did not agree with us, but the people who did give us thumbs up, many of them were people that were not from the United States. New York City is a big international center. You have the United Nations that's there. You have Wall Street that's there. And I would say the majority of the people who gave us thumbs up and gave us support were from the continent of Africa. (00:16:40): They were people from West Africa, from Nigeria. They were people from South Africa. And that the economy of Africa is very tied in with the Russian economy, and Russia provides fertilizer to many countries. Russia has partnerships with many countries to help them develop their state run mining industries or their state run oil and natural gas industries. So support for Russia on the African continent is widespread. Now, this doesn't match the narrative of liberals. Liberals would have us believe that Russia is a white supremacist country, and that's why they rigged the elections in 2016 to get white supremacist. Donald Trump elected, and that just does not match reality. The Soviet Union, which modern Russia is built on the foundations of the Soviet Union, was the best friend of anti-colonial and liberation movements on the African continent, and those relationships still exist. When I was in Russia, I sat down with people from various African countries. (00:17:43): I sat down with people from Namibia. Well, the ruling party of Namibia is the Southwest People's Organization, which was a Soviet aligned, Soviet funded organization that fought for Namibia to become independent. The ruling party of South Africa, the African National Congress was armed and funded by the Soviet Union. If you go to Ghana, the man who created modern Ghana was Kwame Nkrumah, who was a big friend of the Soviet Union and was called himself an African socialist and developed his own interpretation of the Marxist philosophy that was specific to the African continent. I mean, there was Julius Nire, there was Gaddafi who built Libya into the most prosperous country on the African continent. There are just so many examples of how Russia is intimately tied in with the struggle against colonialism on the African continent with the struggle of African countries to pursue their own course of development. (00:18:43): And that is rooted in the foundation of the Bolshevik Revolution. And the Bolshevik ideology, which I will emphasize was a break with the standard Marxist view. Marx himself, he believed that the first communist revolution would happen in Germany, and it would be the European countries that had the communist revolution first because they were the most advanced. And it was Lenin who came along and said, well, actually, that's wrong. The center of revolutionary energy is going to be in the colonized and oppressed countries of the world. And the working class in the imperialist homeland is largely being bought off, and it's going to be the division between what we now some academics talk about the global north and the global south. It's going to be that division that brings socialism into the world. And that is kind of the defining aspect of what Lenin taught. And as much as the global anti-imperialist movement is not explicitly Marxist Leninist in the Soviet sense, they don't exactly follow that Soviet ideology. That understanding of imperialism and what happened in the 20th century with the Soviet Union, with later the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese revolution, the Cuban Revolution, all of that laid the basis for what exists today. And that understanding is important, and that's why I wrote this textbook. Wilmer Leon (00:19:55): And to your point about all of these myths and stories and fictions about Russia being involved in our election and all of this other foolishness, mark Zuckerberg just wrote a letter to Jim Jordan saying that he apologizes for having purged stories from Facebook regarding the Hunter Biden laptop and some of the other stories, because he has now come to understand that that whole narrative was not Russian propaganda as the FBI had told him, he now has come to understand that those stories are true. And I bring that up just as one data point to demonstrate how so much of this rhetoric that we've been hearing, so much of this propaganda that we've been hearing about China being involved in our elections and Russia being involved in our elections, and Iran, mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, just sent a letter to Jim Jordan laying all this out, that it was bs. It was a fiction created by the FBI, Caleb Moin. Caleb Maupin (00:21:14): Well, we've been through this before, right after the Russian Revolution, just a few years later in London, in Britain, there was a scandal called the Enovia of letter. And the British people were told, oh my goodness, the Russians are meddling in our elections. They're trying to get the Labor Party to win the election. And Lloyd George, who was the conservative military leader, was playing up the idea that the Labor Party was being funded and supported by Russia, and they held up this piece of paper they said was the smoking gun. It was the proof, the Enovia letter, this letter supposedly from the Russian government official of Enovia to the Labor Party. Well, it was later proven to be a complete hoax. It was fake, right? But that was happening back in the 1920s. And we've been through this over and over and over again. When Henry Wallace ran for president, he was the vice president under Roosevelt, and then when Truman was president, he ran against the Democrats as they became a pro-war party, the party that was leading us into the Korean War, et cetera. (00:22:12): He ran as an independent candidate in 1948, and they acclaimed his campaign was a big Russian conspiracy, and it was a communist conspiracy. There's a whole history of this and the FBI, if you look at the number of investigations they've done into supposed Russian influence in American elections, it's endless, but it's always a hoax, right? American elections happen because of events in America, not because of Russia. However, there is no question that many people in the United States do want peace, and they do want peace with the Soviet Union or with modern Russia, and they may vote for candidates who they think are more likely to bring about that peace, but that's not a conspiracy. That's doing what you're supposed to be able to do in a democracy expressing yourself at the ballot box. And what they're really worried about is Americans thinking wrong. They're really worried about not having a monopoly over the information that we receive. They're really worried about us questioning what we're told and not marching in lockstep behind their agenda of war and dividing the world into blocks and isolating certain countries. And this story has happened over and over and over again in American politics. We've been through it so many times. Wilmer Leon (00:23:25): Final point on this, I don't want to get back to the book. As you just said, events happen in American elections due to America. Well, all of this chicken little, the sky is falling and the world is interfering in our elections. Well, there was a story in the New York Times about what, three months ago, about APAC spending $100 million to unseat what they consider to be left-leaning Democrats, whose position on Israel was not consistent with the Zionist ideology. I'm going to say that again. This was in the New York Times. I'm not making this up. This is an anti-Semitic dialogue. It was in New York Times APAC spending $100 million on primary campaigns to remove Democrats that they consider to be anti-Israeli. What happened in New York with Jamal Bowman? That's what happened in Missouri with, what's her name? I think she's in St. Louis, the Congresswoman. I'm drawing a blank on her. Anyway, and they were successful in a number of campaigns. So we're running around chasing ghosts, chasing Russian ghosts, and Chinese ghosts when the real culprits are telling you right upfront in the New York Times what it is they're doing and why it is they're doing it. With that being said, you can either respond to that or how did you organize your textbook and why is it organized in the manner in which it is? Caleb Maupin (00:25:16): Well, I went over like case studies of three different anti-imperialist movements or organizations in the United States. I started with probably the most successful, which was the Communist Party of the United States, which at one point had a huge amount of influence During the Roosevelt administration, they entered an alliance with Roosevelt, and in the late 1930s, the Communist party controlled two of the city council seats in New York City. They had a very close ally in the US Congress representing Harlem named Veto Mark Antonio. They also had a member of Congress in Minnesota who was their friend and ally and read their newspaper into the congressional record. They had meetings at the White House with President Roosevelt. On multiple occasions, members of the Communist Party or the Young Communist League were brought to the White House to meet with Roosevelt, and they led the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which was a new labor federation they had created as an alternative to the American Federation of Labor. (00:26:14): And they were a very influential group in the labor movement among intellectuals in Hollywood. And they put forward an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist message, and their successes are worth studying. There were certainly mistakes that were made, and they were very brutally crushed by the FBI in the aftermath of the Second World War with the rise of McCarthyism. But there were studying then from there, I talked about the Workers' World Party, which was a Marxist Leninist political party that really came into prominence in the late sixties and really kind of peaked in its influence during the 1980s. And they were a party that took inspiration, not just from the Soviet Union, but from the wave of anti-colonial movements that emerged. They were sympathetic to Libya and Gaddafi. They were sympathetic to North Korea and others, and they did a lot of very important anti-war organizing, building anti-war coalitions. They were very close to Ramsey Clark, the former US Attorney General who left the Lyndon Johnson administration and became an international lawyer and an opponent of the International Criminal Court in his final years and such. (00:27:17): And then I talked about the new communist movement of the 1970s, which was a number of different organizations that emerged during the 1970s that were trying to take inspiration from China. They wanted to take guidance from the Chinese revolution. China had argued that the Soviet Union had kind of abandoned the global anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle. They felt it was holding back revolutionary forces, but China was at that point presenting itself as a bastion of anti imperialism. And so there were a number of new political parties formed during the 1970s that modeled themselves on China. And all three of these case studies, all three of these groups made big mistakes, but also had big successes. The most successful was the Communist Party prior to it being crushed by the FBI during the McCarthy period. All of them had big successes and were able to do big important things, and I studied all of them. (00:28:08): And then from there, the fourth chapter talked about divisions in the ruling class, and why is it that we see, at this point, we're seeing a big all-out fight between Donald Trump and those who oppose him. And when you talk about the Watergate scandal and you talk about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, what was really going on behind closed doors? And then in the final chapter, I tried to kind of take from all of that what we could take and what we could learn when trying to build a movement in our time. One thing I made a point of doing in the book is that every chapter is accompanied by a number of original texts from the period discussed. I have a number of texts from the Communist Party, from the Workers' World Party, from the new communist movement of the 1970s, so that we can hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak, what these people were preaching and what they believed as they were building their organizations. Wilmer Leon (00:29:01): So how does this history, how relevant is this history you just mentioned Donald Trump? How relevant is this history to where we find ourselves today with our politics? Caleb Maupin (00:29:15): I would argue it's extremely relevant. And if you look at Roosevelt and who opposed him, and if you look at the Kennedy assassination, and if you look at the Watergate scandal, there has always been a divide among the American elite between what you can call the Eastern establishment, the ultra rich, the ultra monopolies, the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Carnegies that are now at this point aligned with Silicon Valley, the tech monopolies, bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and others. There's always been a divide between these entrenched ultra monopolies and a lot of lower level rich people who are not part of the club and feel that those entrenched monopolies are kind of rigging things against 'em. And I quote, there's a very good text called the Anglo-American Establishment by Carol Quigley that talks about this divide. I think he was one of the first people to talk about it. (00:30:06): But then from there, you also have a great book by Carl Oglesby called The Yankee and Cowboy War that talks about this and specifically applies that analysis to what went on with the Watergate scandal, with the assassination of JFK and the political crisis in the 1960s and seventies. And I would argue that in our time, this is the fight that kind of defines things when we talk about trying to build a movement against colonialism and imperialism in the United States, these lower level capitalists would gain if America had paved roads, if America had a stronger economy, and if we were doing business with the countries around the world that are growing right now in alliance with China, right? If we were trading with them and some of that wealth was flowing into our economy, we would be benefiting. However, it is the ultra monopolies that are very much tied in with the intelligence apparatus, the people who brought us, Henry Kissinger, the people who brought us z, big new Brozinsky. (00:31:01): They are determined to keep the United States at the top and keep Western imperialist this financial system at the top of the world at all costs, even if that means kind of playing a long geopolitical game and if it means dramatically decreasing the standard of living and kind of collapsing the domestic economy of the United States. And so when Trump talks about America first and his supporters rail against globalists, this is really what they're getting at is the lower levels of capital are fighting against the Eastern establishment. And that creates an opening for those of us who want to build an anti-imperialist movement in this country to intervene. And I talk about that, and unfortunately, it seems like really since the 1970s and since kind of the end of the 1960s and seventies, political upsurge, much of the left has kind of just deteriorated into being the foot soldiers of that Eastern establishment. (00:31:56): They see those lower level capitalists as being the most hawkish and warlike as being the most anti-union and the most authoritarian. So they think, okay, we're going to align with the Eastern establishment against them. And I argue that that's not the correct approach because right now it is those lower level capitalists who feel threatened, and it is among them that you found support for Julian Assange that you find interest in being friendly with Russia and with China and anti-establishment sentiment, you find opposition to the tech monopolies and their censorship. And that really we're in a period where those of us who are anti-imperialist need to pivot into trying to build an anti-monopoly coalition. And that's what the Communist Party talked about at the end of the Second War as the Cold War got going, as they were being crushed by the FBI, they said their goal was to build an anti-monopoly coalition to unite with the working class, the small business owners, even some of the wealthy against the big monopolies in their drive for war. (00:32:54): And I would argue that's what we should be aiming to do in our time, is build an anti-monopoly coalition. And that's what I've pulled from that textbook and from that history going over what has been done and what has been successful and that the Communist Party really gained from having an alliance with Roosevelt that was very strategic on their part. And I would argue that similar alliances are necessary, but the main thing is that there needs to be a network of people that are committed to building anti-imperialist politics in America. We need a network of people who can work together, who can rely on each other and can effectively carry out anti-imperialist operations. And there are examples of this. I'm about to go to Florida to support the Yahoo movement, the Yahoo movement, the African People Socialist party. They are an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist organization, and they're doing it. And if you go to St. Louis, Missouri, and if you go to St. Petersburg, Florida, Wilmer Leon (00:33:50): Who, Cory Bush, I'm sorry, her name you said St. Louis, Cory Bush, sorry, is the other congresswoman that was defeated by the, sorry, I had to get it out. Go ahead. Okay. Caleb Maupin (00:34:01): But you'll see the huge community centers that they've built, the farmer's markets that they've built, I mean, they have built a base among the African-American community in these two cities where they are providing services to people while teaching an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist ideology. Now, I don't necessarily agree with their entire approach on everything, but I see why they're being targeted because they are laying the foundations of building a broader anti-imperialist movement. And what they are doing is a great model to look at. They are building a base among the population. The title of the book is Out of the Movement to the Masses. I've been going to anti-war protests, and I've been going to socialist and communist spaces, and very rarely did I ever encounter the African People's Socialist Party, but they were organizing where it counted not in these kind of obscure academic bohemian spaces. (00:34:54): They were organizing in communities and they were providing real services, and they were building community centers and having classes for pregnant mothers and having organic farmer's markets. And they were doing things among the masses of people, not among the, so-called movements of people that like to read books about communism or whatever. And that is why they're being targeted, because they are actually building the kind of movement that needs to be done. They're doing what the Communist Party did during the 1930s. They're doing what the new communist movement of the 1970s attempted to do and was pretty unsuccessful because of global circumstances, et cetera. They are doing what needs to be done to build a real anticolonial movement. And that's kind of what I'm in the text is we have to have a reevaluation and we have to figure out how we can reach the bulk of the American people and not confine ourselves to kind of left academic and intellectual spaces. Wilmer Leon (00:35:50): Is it too simplistic to, when you look at this battle between the elites, is it too simplistic to categorize it as the financials versus the industrialists? Caleb Maupin (00:36:01): Yes. It's a little bit too simplistic because there is a lot of financialization, a lot of the lower levels Wilmer Leon (00:36:07): Of capital. Caleb Maupin (00:36:09): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not exactly right, but you're pointing to a certain trend that there is one faction that favors economic growth because economic growth will mean more money for them. There's another faction that is not concerned about economic growth so much as they're concerned about maintaining their monopoly. And in order to maintain their monopoly, they need to slow down growth around the world, and they're actually pushing degrowth or slow growth economics. So that's probably the primary divide is pro-growth and anti-growth, right? You would think that every businessman would be pro-growth, but the ultra monopolies that are heavily involved in finance at this point, they're blatantly talking about degrowth as a way to stay at the top. Wilmer Leon (00:36:51): In fact, one of the ways that they maintain their position is through consolidation. One of the ways that the banks control their monopoly is by buying smaller banks and bringing the or. So that's just one example. Caleb Maupin (00:37:10): Sure, sure. I mean, we live in a time where at the end of the day, the issue is technology is that it is human labor that creates all wealth, right? It is only human labor that creates value at the end of the day, and it is the value that workers create that lays the basis for the profits that capitalists can make, et cetera. And we are in a period where the technological revolution is reducing the role of workers at the assembly line. There's a lot of jobs that are no longer in existence because of technological advancement. And in a rational society that would be great. But in our society where profits are in command, that's leading to an economic crisis. Great example is self-driving cars, self-driving cars should be a great thing. It should be great that this job called driving this chore, this human labor of driving cars is no longer necessary. (00:38:02): But if they introduce self-driving cars, you would immediately in this country have millions of truck drivers unemployed, millions of Uber drivers unemployed, millions of traffic court employees unemployed. You would have riots in the streets. And Andrew Yang talked about how if self-driving cars came to the United States, we would have a society-wide crisis of unemployment and chaos like we never seen. How is that rational? Why should technological advancement lead to greater poverty? And that is the problem that we are facing. Human creativity and brilliance has outstripped the narrow limits production organized to make profit. We need a rationally planned economy so that economic growth can continue and technological advancement leads to greater prosperity for all Wilmer Leon (00:38:46): That sounds like China. Caleb Maupin (00:38:47): Yeah. And China, by controlling their economy and by having the state assigned credit based on their five-year plans and having state controlled tech corporations that are in line with the Communist party's vision, they're able to continue having growth despite having technological advancement. And that's ultimately what we need to have. And that is what Marx wrote about. One of the writers I quote extensively from is a brilliant thinker from the new communist movement named Nelson Peery and his autobiography, black Radical, which is very good, talks about his involvement in the Communist Party and then getting kicked out of the Communist Party and FBI infiltration of the Communist Party and then starting the Communist Labor Party during the 1970s. But also his very important book that he published before he died, I believe in 2004, called The Future Is Up To Us, which really gets into this contradiction of technology leading to impoverishment. (00:39:42): And he's saying this like during the Bush administration before ai, before any of what we're saying now he's laying out how this is going to lead to a big economic crisis that's going to necessitate a new economic system. Nelson Period is a brilliant thinker who had this kind of understanding. I also draw from Fred Goldstein, from Sam Marcy from some of the other writers who said the same thing. But this has always been kind of the understanding is that technological advancement should not lead to impoverishment, it should lead to greater prosperity. I often quote, there's an old story called the coal miner's riddle, the coal miner. He's sitting in his house with his son. The son says, father, why is it so cold in the house? And he says, because I can't afford to buy any coal. And he says, well, why can't we afford to buy any coal? (00:40:30): And he says, because I lost my job at the coal mine. I was laid off. And he says, father, why were you laid off from the coal mine? Why did you lose your job? He says, because there is too much coal. That's capitalism, but that's not rational. It's poverty created by abundance. I keep hearing our politicians talk about a housing shortage. Have you heard this? A housing shortage in America, there's no housing shortage. I live in New York City, there's four empty apartments for every homeless person. There's millions of empty housing, there's no housing shortage in America. There's a shortage of affordable housing black, because the national economic system, Wilmer Leon (00:41:06): BlackRock bought up a lot of the housing stock and instead of putting those houses back on the market, they held those homes off the market and then put 'em out for rent. So in many instances, it's not a matter of oh, $25,000 credit to those first time home buyers allegedly to lower the price of housing or to make housing more affordable. No, all that's going to do is raise the price of houses by $25,000. What you need to do is get that housing stock that BlackRock has as bought up and put that on the market, make that available. Because if you look at the Econ 1 0 1 supply and demand, you put more houses on the market, chances are the price of houses is going to decline. Caleb Maupin (00:42:02): Absolutely. Absolutely. When we talk about imperialism and we talk about anti-imperialist movements, one great example is the situation with Yemen, right? Yemen right now, this is one of the poorest countries in the world, and right now, this country that has a big movement called the Houthis or Anah, they're shaking the world. But if you go and listen or read the sermons or the founder of the Houthis movement, Hussein Al Houthis, what he's fighting for is economic development because he points out that Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, but yet it has a huge amount of oil. It has a huge amount of arable land to grow food, but the people there are very, very poor. And the Houthis movement that is now at this point, stopping ships in the Mediterranean and standing with the Palestinians and sending drones to the Indian Ocean and just shaking the world. (00:42:56): That was a movement of very, very poor people in one of the poorest countries in the world that demanding to take control of their natural resources and take control of their economy. My understanding of imperialism and such very much had a lot to do with the fact that in 2015, I participated in a humanitarian mission attempting to deliver medical aid to Yemen after the upsurge of 2015 when the Houthis movement and their revolutionary committee took power, I went on a ship from the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Red Crescent Society, and we tried to deliver medical aid to Yemen, and we were blocked in doing so. And reading about this anti-colonial movement that was formed in Yemen, a very religious Shia Muslim movement, demanding economic development, demanding, taking control of their resources, reading about that was very inspiring in the aim of building an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement in the United States. (00:43:54): Now to see what the Houthis are doing as they're blocking ships to support the Palestinians as they're withstanding us attack, this is a movement of impoverished people fighting for their economic development and fighting to build a new country. This is a mass anti-colonial movement that is worth studying. And the fact that they align themselves with Russia and China, they're not blocking ships from Russia, they're not blocking ships from China. They are blocking ships from Israel and any country that trades with them, that shows you that this global anti-imperialist movement that is about mobilizing millions of people to fight for their rights, this global movement has a real strength. Wilmer Leon (00:44:34): Let's shift now to the 2024 presidential election. We've come out of the Republican Convention, we've now come out of the Democratic Convention and the Democratic Party convention, and Donald Trump was shocked when Joe Biden stepped down, Kamala Harris stepped in. That has changed the dynamic, at least in terms of the dialogue, and we're starting to see some shift in the numbers. Your thoughts on where we are now with this landscape. Caleb Maupin (00:45:09): I think that Kamala Harris is a completely manufactured candidate. She was created by the people who brought us the Hillary Clinton State Department when it was made clear that Hillary Clinton couldn't run for president once again in 2020, all of Hillary Clinton's financial backers put their money behind Kamala Harris. She was not popular with the American people, but yet powerful forces twisted Joe Biden's arm and put her on the ticket as vp. She has not been popular or successful as vp, but she is the candidate that the forces that are committed to regime change and all out efforts to oppose Russia and China at all costs. She is the one that they have invested the most in supporting. And I don't think she's going to win. I think that Trump will win the upcoming election. And that doesn't mean everything about Trump is good or I endorsed Donald Trump. (00:46:03): I'm just telling you that I think Trump is going to win. But I also believe that there are very powerful forces that see Kamala Harris as their best bet at getting what they want, which is more regime change wars, more destabilization around the world. I did write a book in 2020 about Kamala Harris four years ago, and I thought it was very odd that right after she got the Democratic nomination, this book that had been on sale for four years on Amazon suddenly got removed from Amazon. And for seven days my book was banned from Amazon and then restored with no explanation seven days later. I thought that was very, very odd. It raised a lot of eyebrows, but it also points to the amount of power the tech monopolies really have. It seems like everything was being done to support Kamala Harris. What I also thought was interesting is that in my book, I talked about Tulsi Gabbard and how Tulsi Gabbard kind of represents forces in the Pentagon that are really worried about another Arab Spring and what Kamala Harris and the Hillary Clinton State Department forces people like Samantha Power, people like Anne-Marie Slaughter, what they might engineer if they come back to office. (00:47:11): My book highlighted Tulsi Gabbard as being kind of a faction that is opposed to Kamala Harris. And the very same day that my book was pulled from Amazon, Tulsi Gabbard was added to the Quiet Sky's terrorism watch list by the American government. When she tried to board a plane, she found out she was accused of being a terrorist. And I thought that was interesting as well. And it just kind of points to, and there was all kinds of weird stuff going on in terms of social media and Google searches that was being manipulated around that time. But the book that I wrote about Kamala Harris and who has backed her and the ties that she has getting pulled from Amazon, it was interesting to see the timing, Wilmer Leon (00:47:52): The position of the Democratic Party as it relates to Gaza. And I was at the DNCI was also at the RNC conventions, but there were protestors in Chicago demanding a change in the US policy as it relates to the genocide in Gaza. Then you had uncommitted delegates that were able to have a sit-in at the DNC right outside the front door of the entrance to the United Center, demanding that a pro-Palestinian spokesperson be added to the speaker's list. And none of that was agreed to. In fact, it was basically dismissed summarily. So your thoughts on the dangers that the Democrats are playing with taking that position as it relates to the general election? Caleb Maupin (00:48:55): Well, if the Democrats are going to win this election, they're going to need lots of votes in Minnesota, lots of votes in Wisconsin and lots of votes in Michigan. And what do all three of those states have in common? Those swing states, Wilmer Leon (00:49:06): Large Arab populations. Caleb Maupin (00:49:08): That's right. Lots of Muslim Americans, lots of Arab Americans, and with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris giving a blank check to Israel to do what they're doing. I think it's very unlikely to see those folks lining up to vote for them. Now, Kamala Harris has made some noise about this or that, but she's basically the president already. If she was going to do something, she could do it right now. I mean, she's the vice president, but Joe Biden doesn't seem to be as actively involved in the political running of the country as some people might expect. That said, I will say that Donald Trump, I mean his position on Israel Palestine, I mean, is pretty reprehensible, and he continues to play up the idea that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are somehow anti-Israel, which they are not. What I think is interesting though, and I noticed that it seems like anti-Israel voices in the Trump camp, they may not be on the front stage, but they do have a lot of influence. (00:50:03): And I'm not saying all these people are doing what they're doing for necessarily good reasons, but I noticed when Elon Musk was interviewing Donald Trump in the chat, it just exploded. And all over Twitter, it exploded. The phrase, no war on Iran that came from Nick Fuentes. Now, Nick Fuentes is somebody that I don't agree with on many, many things and find a lot of his views and just his presentation style to kind of reprehensible and gross, but he, for his own reasons says no war with Iran. I also noticed that Candace Owens, who is a conservative and was very pro-Israel at one point, she was not pro-Israel enough. Now she's kind of moved for interesting reasons that are very different than anything I would say. She's moved into an anti-Israel direction and she has also got a lot of people in the Trump camp who listen to her and she is making noise, no war in Iran and urging Trump supporters not to support Israel. And this points to the fact that opposition to Israel, I think is much more widespread in both parties than anyone wants to recognize. (00:51:07): It's an element of the emperor has no clothes. Both parties pretend that everyone in their camp just supports Israel. But anyone who talks to a typical Democrat, you were at the Republican Convention and the Democrat Convention, and you could probably confirm that opposition to what Israel is doing is boiling beneath the surface, amid both political parties and amid all sections of this country. And that there is a lot of growing outrage about the influence and power of Israel and American politics, even among people who might support Israel otherwise, but just don't appreciate the arrogance and grip that they seem to have over policymaking. Wilmer Leon (00:51:46): And some people just help me understand why, but some people just have a problem with genocide. It's a bit os there are growing groups, Republicans for Harris, and there are those who are positing that this is because she's a stooge of the elite and this represents how she who's truly backing her. What about the argument that many of those in those types of organizations see her as an opportunity to reclaim the Republican party by getting rid of Donald Trump? And it's almost a any port in the storm kind of mentality, they see her as the stalking horse. If they can back her, if she can defeat Trump, they then can, the old school, the traditional Republicans can regain control of their party. What say you Caleb Opin? Caleb Maupin (00:52:58): Well, I would say that the Bush era Republican party is gone. It's never coming back. And Donald Trump is a symptom of that. And that's very clear. And that Donald Trump's recent embracing of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, that indicates that Donald Trump is taking his campaign in an anti-establishment direction. Now, that doesn't mean that he's going to necessarily do good things as president. That just means that he's increasingly realizing that his appeal is to people that are opposed to the establishment. And I think that means the establishment is going to fight him a lot harder. There's no question about that. And that there are your regular traditional neo-conservative Republicans, my country, right or wrong, if you don't like it here, move to some other country, support the military, support the wars, support America dominating the world, and showing the world about our great American way of life. (00:53:51): Those folks are increasingly finding the Republican party to not be their home. And this is all very interesting. I noticed in Kamala Harris's DNC speech, she attacked the Republicans for denigrating America. And that made me smile because it reminded me of what I always heard about the far left, right? It was the far left. They hate America. They're always saying things are bad. Why are you always running down our country? And a lot of things that Kamala Harris said in her speech almost sounded like Neoconservatism. She attacked Donald Trump for meeting with Kim Jong-Un. She said he was cozying up to tyrants and being friendly with tyrants. And it seemed to me like there was very much the Republican Party, I believe over time is going to become more of a catchall populist, anti-establishment party, whereas the Democratic party is more and more becoming the party of the establishment of the way things are supposed to be. I think that what I would call the late Cold War normal in American politics is being flipped. It used to be the Republican party was the party of the establishment, and the Democrats were the party of opposition. Not very sincere opposition in many cases, but they were the party of, if you didn't agree with what you're supposed to think necessarily, if you're a little more critical, you become a Democrat. Well, Wilmer Leon (00:55:05): If you were proc civil rights, if you were pro-environment, if you were anti-war, that's where you went. Caleb Maupin (00:55:12): Yeah. And I think it's being flipped. And that doesn't mean that Republicans and the MAGA base that are talking a certain way are sincere at all. That just means who they're appealing to. The Republican party has an anti-establishment appeal more and more every day. The Democratic party has a ProE establishment appeal. And I think this Republicans for Harris is a great example of that. Wilmer Leon (00:55:32): So as we move now, spiraling towards November 5th, you've already said you believe that Donald Trump is going to win the election. One of the things that I find very, very telling, and I check it every day when you go to the Harris website, there's still no policy positions stated. There's no policy tab. In fact, when I asked that question a couple of times at the DNCC, I was told, oh, you don't understand. She hasn't had time. There hasn't been. I said, wait a minute. She ran for president four years ago. So she had to have, we hope she had established some policy positions as a candidate. She was the vice president going on four years now, we hope during those four years she could have figured out some policy and it's now been almost a month. You can't tell me that she couldn't pick up the phone and call a bunch of people in the room and say, Hey, I need policies on education, on defense, on the economy, on these five positions. I need policy in 10 days. Go get it done. Caleb Opin. Caleb Maupin (00:57:00): Well, I think there are three possible outcomes for the election. In my mind, probably the worst case scenario would be Kamala Harris winning. And I think that would be followed by a number of, there'd be chaos in the streets. A lot of Trump supporters will not accept it as a legitimate election. And I expect there will then be a big crackdown on dissent, and I expect there'll be a lot of provocations, et cetera. And that will be used by the establishment to crack down on dissent. Wilmer Leon (00:57:26): Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. And people need to understand the crackdown on dissent has already started by looking what's being done to who's being platformed from social media sites. Look at what's happening to folks who are getting arrested, the guy that started Instagram and all of these folks, the three Scott Ritter, your book taken off of taking all of these things are data points to support your position that the crackdown on descent has already started? Caleb Maupin (00:58:02): No, I mean the Biden administration has already indicted. Sue me, Terry, who was the top advisor to Obama and Bush on South Korea. And I mean the fact that she's been indicted as a foreign agent of South Korea just because South Korea wants to have mattered negotiations with North Korea. I mean, it looks like blatant retaliation. Wilmer Leon (00:58:22): And South Korea is an ally. Caleb Maupin (00:58:23): Yeah, their closest friend in Washington dc Sumi Terry has now been accused of being a foreign agent. She's facing decades in prison. I mean, this is craziness. This is a top CIA person who's been a top advisor on career matters. So that would be kind of what I think the worst case scenario would be. The most likely scenario is that I think Donald Trump will win. But all the negative things about Trumpism will amplify. I think the pro-Israel stuff, the pro-police stuff, the anti-immigrant stuff will amplify Wilmer Leon (00:58:55): Project 2025. Caleb Maupin (00:58:56): Yeah, the government will try to, the powers that be will try to ride the wave of Trumpism to push forward their own agenda, which is not good But I do think there is a third possible scenario, which is a real long shot. It's a real long shot, which is that Donald Trump takes office in a completely defensive position. And under those circumstances, he may be compelled to do a lot of good things because he's just at odds with the establishment and needs popular support. So much so we shall have to see. But those are my three predictions. But in all of those circumstances on anti-imperialist organization, a network of people that are committed to anti imperialism and building a new America beyond the rule of bankers and war profiteers is going to be vitally important. And at the end of the day, what really matters is not so much who is in office, it's what the balance of forces is in the country and around the world, and what kind of movement exists, what kind organizations. (00:59:58): There are people that are involved in the political process and to change the world and taking responsibility for the future of their country. And I wrote the book as a textbook for the Center for Political Innovation. My organization as we try to do just that, as we try to build a network of people who can rely on each other and build an anti-imperialist movement in the United States to support the Hru three, to study these ideas to be out there. That is one thing we aim to do. If Donald Trump wins the election, one thing that we aim to do is and intend to get that picture of Donald Trump shaking hands with Kim Jong-un and get it everywhere and say that this election is a mandate that the peace talks on the Korean Peninsula should continue. And that could be a way to nudge the discourse toward a more peace oriented wing of Trumpism. (01:00:46): That's one thing that we intend to do. We have other operations that we intend to carry out with the aim of nudging the country in an anti-colonial direction. One thing that I think is very important is Alaska, right? Alaska is right there close to Russia and there's the bearing Strait that separates Russia and Alaska and Abraham Lincoln had the idea of building a bridge to connect Alaska to Russia. And a lot of great people have had the idea of doing that since. And I think popularizing the idea of building a world land bridge to connect Alaska to Russia and pivot the US economy toward trading with the Russian Far East and with the Korean Peninsula and with China that could nudge the world and a direction of Multipolarity pivot away from Western Europe and towards the World Land Bridge and the bearing Strait and all of that. (01:01:36): So there are various things that we can do to try and influence discourse, but I must say the explosion is coming, right? I mean, you can feel it rumbling in the ground. The avalanche is going to pour, the volcano is going to go off. It's only a matter of time. Those of us who study these ideas and understand things, we have the job not of making the explosion come, but rather of trying to guide it in the right direction. The conditions in this country are getting worse. Americans are angry at the establishment. Things are going to change. But what we hope to do is guide that change and point it in a good direction toward a better world. And that's all we can really hope to do. I quote Mao the leader of the Chinese Revolution. He said The masses are the real heroes and at the end of the day, it will be the masses of the American people and their millions who determine what the future of this country will be. I think they are going to awaken and take action. The question is only what type of action will that be? And I think guys like you and I have a role to play in shaping what kind of action they might take when they do awaken. Wilmer Leon (01:02:39): Well, thank you for putting me in that group. And if we are able to build a bridge across the bearing strait between Alaska and Russia, I'm sure Sarah Palin will be the first one. Should be operating the toll booth. My brother. Alright, my brother Kayla mopping. Man, thank you so much for being my guest. Thank you so much for joining the show today. Caleb Maupin (01:03:05): Sure thing. Always a pleasure Wilmer Leon (01:03:07): Folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Woman Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, follow us on social media. The Patreon account is very, very important. That helps to support the effort. You can find all the links below in the show description and remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter. And we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (01:03:50): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.    

Episode 12 of Fragile Juggernaut turns the lens on the situation and activity of white-collar, professional, and creative workers in the 1930s and 1940s. Together with guests Nikil Saval (state senator from Pennsylvania and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace) and Shannan Clark (historian at Montclair State University and author of The Making of the American Creative Class: New York's Culture Workers and Twentieth-Century Consumer Capitalism), Alex and Gabe dig in on a few key sectors: office workers, journalists, academics and scientists, and workers in the culture industries—art, film, radio, theater, and publishing. How did the labor movement and the left conceptualize these kinds of workers and what role they might play? What was the relationship between their organization and struggle, on one hand, and the content and function of their work, on the other?Sonically, this episode is a bit of a concept album, interspersed with excerpts from Marc Blitzstein's 1937 musical play The Cradle Will Rock (actually a higher-quality 1964 recording). Inspired stylistically by the plays of Bertolt Brecht and institutionally sponsored by the WPA (until it panicked and backed out), The Cradle Will Rock is set in Steeltown, USA: a sex worker is thrown in jail after refusing a cop free service. There, she meets academics, artists, and journalists who have been arrested in a police mix-up at a steelworkers' rally, which they were monitoring as members of the anti-union Liberty Committee of steel baron Mr. Mister. While these anti-union professionals and creatives wait for Mr. Mister to come clear things up and bail them out, they explain how he recruited them to the Liberty Committee. Also with them in jail is steelworkers' leader Larry Forman, who warns them that the cozy “cradle” where they sit will soon fall.A correction: Gabe says in the episode that the Disney strike was in 1940. In fact, it was in May 1941.Featured music (besides The Cradle Will Rock): “Teacher's Blues” by Pete Seeger.Archival audio credits: “I Want to Be a Secretary,” Coronet Instructional Films (1941); Dan Mahoney Oral History, San Francisco State Labor Archives and Research Center; Oppenheimer (2023); “WPA Helping Theaters All Black Production of Macbeth”; Isom Moseley oral history, Federal Writers Project (1941); Dumbo (1941).Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way.Buy Ours to Master and to Own, currently 40% off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/366-ours-to-master-and-to-own

Episode 11 of Fragile Juggernaut concerns the Communist Party and its complex role in the creation of the CIO. Andrew and Ben trace the strategic zigzags of America's far-left, recount their pioneering role in organizing drives, and measure the Party's own accounts of its politics against the often ambiguous, even contradictory realities of its practice. Did Communists merely supply the shock troops for someone else's political ambitions, or did they put their stamp on the CIO, in ways that were durable and lasting? Did their practice of unionism conform to the mainstream of the labor movement, or did it contain the germs of another kind of CIO? What, ultimately, did the CIO do to the Communist Party? We discuss this and more amongst our co-hosts, and with our special guest, the historical sociologist Judith Stepan-Norris, co-author of Left Out and Talking Union (our interview begins around 1:25:00).Featured music: “The Bourgeois Blues” by Lead Belly; “The United Front” by New Singers; “Our Line's Been Changed Again” by Joe Glazer; “Internationale” by New Singers)Archival audio credits: Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983)Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Buy Rank and File, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/396-rank-and-file Read Gabriel Winant on the Popular Front in The London Review of Books: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n15/gabriel-winant/we-can-breathe

This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our second special bonus-episode: while we are on a brief summer hiatus, Andrew and Ben sum up the first half of our mini-series, drawing together the core themes of our show so far and discussing where we'll go in the second half. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our first special bonus episode. Tim and Ben talk with Sam-Adler Bell—an excellent writer and one-half of the brilliant Know Your Enemy podcast—about our series. Appearing on Know Your Enemy gave us a chance to explore a new dimension of our project: to think about the CIO not only as a moment when new social forces on the left converge or spring into action, but also as a cauldron for conservatives and reactionaries—a pre-history of the modern conservative movement—some of which would continue to dominate the American political scene for generations. The episode also was an occasion to return to some core themes: an account of the American working class as internally stratified, riven with internal struggles, and shot through with competing strategies and interests. In particular, we talk plenty about the political right within the labor movement, and the vaciliations of what some might call the “middle class,” whose zigzags so often stamp the outcomes of open political contests.Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

Episode 10 of Fragile Juggernaut surveys the wide range of workers who united–and sometimes fought each other–under the banner of the CIO. We begin in the slaughterhouse, with special guest Rick Halpern explaining how the United Packinghouse Workers of America (PWOC/UPWA) brought together black and white workers despite segregation inside and outside the workplace. Then, the hosts discuss two of the largest CIO unions: the United Steel Workers (USWA/SWOC) and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE). These two unions are often thought of, respectively, as emblematic of the “right” and “left” wings of the CIO. But what does that mean? And why did these two unions develop the way they did? Featured music: “The Cloakmaker's Union” (Joe Glazer); “Killing Floor” (Howlin' Wolf); “Hard Times Killing Floor” (Skip James); “Odpocivam v Americkej pode/I Lie in the American Land” (written by Andrew Kovaly, performed by Vivien Richman); “Spirit of Phil Murray” (Sterling Jubilee Singers). Archival audio credits: UPWA oral histories recorded and generously provided by Rick Halpern; Deadline for Action (UE, 1946); James Matles Retirement Speech via UE History; oral histories of James Downey, Tom Girdler, Jr., and Harold Ruttenberg via AAPB. Buy Rick Halpern's Down on the Killing Floor Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p066337Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Socialism 2024 is coming up soon! Visit socialismconference.org to learn more about the conference and register today.

Historian Tim Barker and editor/organizer Ben Mabie join to discuss a thrilling episode in the history of American labor. Barker and Mabie are two co-hosts of Fragile Juggernaut, a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (or CIO). Along with  co-hosts Alex Press, Gabriel Winant, Andrew Elrod, and Emma Teitelman, they've been telling the story of organized labor in the 1930s, the radical possibilities of that decade, and the eclipsing of those possibilities in the post-war years — with the onset of the cold war, McCarthyism, and anti-union legislation like Taft-Hartley.In a sense, this episode is a pre-history of the story we tell on Know Your Enemy. If you've ever wondered, what was it that so terrified reactionary businessmen about the New Deal era? How did they come to believe that revolutionary upheaval was a real prospect in America, that Communists were everywhere, threatening the social order, and that this peril demanded the creation and funding of a new conservative movement? Well part of the answer is: the CIO. From a certain angle, the right-wing fever dream was real, at least for a time: the CIO really was filled with Communists, labor militants really did take over factories and shut down whole cities, and it really did seem possible, if only briefly, that the American working class — including immigrants from all over Europe, black workers, and women — might find solidarity on the shop floor, consolidate politically, and threaten the reign of capital. That didn't quite happen. And this episode will partially explain why. Further Reading:Andrew Elrod, "Fragile Juggernaut: What was the CIO?" n+1, Jan 24, 2024. Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s, U of Illinois Press,  1988.Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955, UNC Press, 1995. Landon R.Y. Storrs,  The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left, Princeton U Press, 2012. Eric Blanc, “Revisiting the Wagner Act & its Causes,” Labor Politics, Jul 28, 2022.  Rhonda Levine, "Class Struggle and the New Deal: Industrial Labor, Industrial Capital, and the State," U of Kansas Press, 1988.Further Listening:The podcast: "Haymarket Originals: Fragile Juggernaut," 2024  ...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy for access to all of our bonus episodes!

Episode 9 of Fragile Juggernaut is the first of a series of thematic episodes, in which we pause our chronological narrative to survey key issues shaping the world of the CIO. In this episode, we turn our view on the escalating confrontation between fascism and anti-fascism. Was there an American fascism? Where did it come from and what did it look like? How did it relate to the labor movement? And what was the meaning of the Popular Front, the broad left coalition against fascism?Featured music: “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” (Billy Bragg, originally Woody Guthrie); “La Crisis Actual” (Los Cancioneros Alegres); “Ballad for Americans” (Paul Robeson); “Ballad of October 16” (The Almanac Singers); “Round and Round Hitler's Grave” (The Almanac Singers)Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy The Black Antifascist Tradition, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2223-the-black-antifascist-tradition

It's Hump Day! Sam speaks with writer and labor organizer Mindy Isser to discuss her recent piece in In These Times entitled "In Labor's Mission to Organize the South, Another Domino Could Soon Fall." Then, he speaks with Anna Clark, reporter at ProPublica covering issues in the MidWest, to discuss her recent reporting on the Flint water crisis, 10 years later. First, Sam runs through updates on Biden's continuing arms sales to Israel, Israel's goal of settling the Gaza Strip, Michael Cohen's star turn, US inflation rates, climate change, Maryland's primaries, Trump's corruption, Rudy Giuliani, suits against major corporations, and the 2024 Presidential Debates, also diving into appearances from Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Johnson at the Trump Trials, featuring some live translation during the latter's speech. Mindy Isser then jumps right into the South's long history of anti-union sentiment and politics, looking at the statistics behind the South's union dearth, and the major driving forces of racism and anti-communism that have shaped the elite-driven attack on organized labor from the Congress of Industrial Organizations' (CIO) “Operation Dixie” in the 1940s through the UAW's ongoing expansion attempt today. After expanding on the role race has played in the recent union-busting attempts at the Vance, Alabama Mercedes plan, Sam and Mindy discuss the recent NLRB ruling that established a system card check lite, and how southern politicians are pushing back against it, before parsing more specifically through what the UAW's success organizing the Chattanooga VW plant meant for a union renaissance in the South, and the hope that remains strong heading into the Vance Mercedes plant vote tally. Next, Anna Clark joins, first walking through the now infamous story of Flint, Michigan's water crisis, which began one decade ago this spring with the horrendously executed switch off of Detroit's Lake Huron water supply, followed by a tremendous display and unaccountability and incompetence from the political leadership of Flint appointed by Governor Snyder. After expanding on the devastating health effects faced by the consumers of Flint's toxic water supply (including a two-year outbreak of legionnaires disease), and the lack of transparency in the face of crisis, Clark looks to the attempts at finding justice for the people of Flint, tackling the state of an ongoing class action lawsuit before wrapping up with the failure of various criminal proceedings, and how Flint is still holding out hope for accountability. And in the Fun Half: Sam talks with Kowalski from Nebraska about getting more votes in a 2024 Nebraska Republican primary than Nikki Haley, and why his stance on immigration (among others) worked in his (albeit brief) campaign, Marjorie Taylor Greene's beef with Mike Johnson continues to stew, and Charlie from the North East has an expansive conversation on gun control. The Biden Administration continues their genocide denial, Tim from Boston has a podcast rec, and Eric Adams has a totally-not-racist idea to solve NYC's lifeguard shortage. Sam from Baltimore discusses his perspective on Maryland's David Trone, and Ronald Raygun challenges Sam on the wokification of comedy. Jordan Peterson continues to be a shameless well of content, plus, your calls and IMs! Check out Mindy's piece here: https://inthesetimes.com/article/mercedes-benz-alabama-uaw-volkswagon-tennessee-union-labor Check out Anna's piece here: https://www.propublica.org/article/flint-michigan-water-crisis-ten-years-after Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Help out the state of Utah by telling them what you see in public bathrooms here!: https://ut-sao-special-prod.web.app/sex_basis_complaint2.html Check out Seder's Seeds here!: https://www.sedersseeds.com/ ALSO, if you have pictures of your Seder's Seeds, send them here!: hello@sedersseeds.com Check out the "Repair Gaza" campaign courtesy of the Glia Project here: https://www.launchgood.com/campaign/rebuild_gaza_help_repair_and_rebuild_the_lives_and_work_of_our_glia_team#!/ Check out StrikeAid here!; https://strikeaid.com/ Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! http://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: http://majority.fm/app Check out today's sponsors: Nutrafol: Take the first step to visibly thicker, healthier hair. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to https://Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code TMR. That's https://Nutrafol.com, promo code TMR. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech @BradKAlsop Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on Youtube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/ The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Episode 8 of Fragile Juggernaut places us back in the critical juncture of 1936: the final year of Roosevelt's first term in office. What were FDR's re-election prospects as workers' insurgencies erupted from below and as capital waited in vain for the courts to demolish the Wagner Act? What did this juncture mean for the CIO and its relationship to electoral politics? Episode 8 dives into these questions and surveys the evolving links between the CIO, leftwing intellectuals in the Roosevelt administration, and the Democratic Party. Featuring special guest Samir Sonti, an assistant professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Featured music: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Back Again (The New Lost City Ramblers); Old Age Pension Check (The New Lost City Ramblers); Farmer-Labor Train (Woody Guthrie); Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt (McKinley Peebles)Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy The Long Deep Grudge, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1383-the-long-deep-grudge

For episode 157, Elia Ayoub sits with Bill Fletcher Jr to talk about why downplaying authoritarianism is so dangerous, whether with regards to the upcoming US elections or even in organising spaces. We spoke about the US, Lebanon, Syria, Zimbabwe and more. Bill Fletcher Jr is a longtime USA-based labor and social justice activist who has worked for several unions and organizations. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They're Bankrupting Us' – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. The best way to support The Fire These Times is to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Become a member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/firethesetimes⁠⁠. With a monthly or yearly subscription, you get perks including early access, exclusive videos, monthly hangouts, access to the video and book clubs, merch and more. Leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. This allows us to show up on these platforms in the first place. Tell your friends and enemies about it. Episode Credits: Host(s): Elia J. Ayoub Producer(s): Elia J. Ayoub Guest(s): Bill Fletcher Jr Music: ⁠Rap and Revenge⁠ Sound editor(s): Elia J. Ayoub Episode designer(s): Elia J. Ayoub Team profile pics: Molly Crabapple Original TFTT design: Wenyi Geng

Episode seven of Fragile Juggernaut dramatizes the Sit Down strikes that built the UAW: why they proved to be powerful, what effect they had on the labor movement, and the truly global spread of the strike tactic. The fight in Flint and Cleveland, Kansas City and Atlanta, provides an occasion to talk both about the global organization of production and highly contingent efforts to root out spies, covering both the architectonics of capital and street battles barely won against advancing cops. These stories are where structural analysis meets the heist movie. We want to flag two small factual mistakes on this episode: at one point Gabe refers to the federal CIO locals where he means federal AFL locals; elsewhere, Ben says Fisher Body a few times when he means the Chevy plant. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy Unite and Win: The Workplace Organizer's Handbook: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2434-unite-and-win

Episode six of Fragile Juggernaut pivots to high politics and institutional history: chronicling the passage of the Wagner Act, debating its significance, and recounting the raucous AFL convention in Atlantic City where the CIO was born. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy The Lean Years and The Turbulent Years, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/319-the-lean-yearshttps://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/320-the-turbulent-years

Episode five of Fragile Juggernaut is a dramatic retelling of the nearly-revolutionary strikes of 1934, in Toledo and San Francisco, in Minneapolis and across America's textile belt: moments that dramatize the powerful interaction between radical militant minorities on the shop floor and mass working class struggles. Frustrated by the passivity of “the National Run Around” of FDR's first years in office, workers took up “self-help” in the form of fighting unionism. Their violently fought strikes would go on to produce a new “social warrant” for working class self-activity in the years to come. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy Revolutionary Teamsters, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/605-revolutionary-teamsters

Episode 6 - Women Build the CIO If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. For the first few decades of the 20th century, the AFL consistently failed to live up to its promises to fight for equal pay for equal work. But in the 1930s, an alternate labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, broke away and launched the most historic nationwide labor upsurge in US history, and a key part of their success was the organization of women. The UAW and the UE, two of our favorite unions, led the fight for women's equality in the workplace, striking for equal pay and winning it in contracts across the country. In the 1940s, World War 2 also made enormous changes for women workers, opening up countless fields that had previously been barred from them by chauvinism. While some unions were slow to accept the massive changes in the workforce during the war, this period marked the first time major unions consistently began to fight and win demands for equality on a national scale. Pushed by prominent Communist organizers, the CIO finally devoted resources to organizing women and closing the wage gap, and the gains for the labor movement as a whole were enormous. Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Episode four of Fragile Juggernaut surveys the panorama of social life transfigured by the first three years of the Great Depression. By examining the sharp and persisting business downturn as a crisis of social reproduction—in which the conditions for working people to reproduce themselves appeared to permanently subside—Tim, Ben, Emma, and Andrew discuss how challenges of survival transformed into struggles defending working-class life. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy Radical Unionism, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/559-radical-unionism

In the early twentieth century the vast majority of mass production industries were unorganized in the United States. Efforts to replicate the success of the United Mine Workers, brewery workers, and the garment trades were largely unsuccessful until the 1930s when the Congress of Industrial Organizations changed everything. Fragile Juggernaut tells this story with a narrative that spans from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1950s. Andrew Elrod joins us to discuss why this history is important and what organizers can learn from it today.

This penultimate episode of Organize the Unorganized concludes the story of the CIO. We cover first the communist purge in the late 1940s, as well as Operation Dixie, the failed campaign to organize the south. We then get to merger with the AFL in 1955, and the afterlife of the CIO in the Industrial Union Department and its contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. Guests in order of appearance: Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies at Harvard University; James Young, Professor Emeritus of History at Edinboro University; Melvyn Dubofsky, Professor Emeritus of History and Sociology at Binghamton University; Erik Loomis, Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island; David Brody, Professor Emeritus of History at UC-Davis; Jeremy Brecher, Labor Historian; William P. Jones, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota; Nelson Lichtenstein, Professor of History at UC-Santa Barbara; Lisa Phillips, Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University; Steve Fraser, Labor Historian; Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center; Dorothy Sue Cobble, Professor Emerita of History and Labor Studies at Rutgers University Clips in order of appearance: “Bill Strength Congress of Industrial Organizations Program,” Part 11, “Congress of Industrial Organizations and Americanism” (1524A/28), in “Textile Workers Union of America Records, 1915-1994,” Wisconsin Historical Society, https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-whs-us00129a (0:00); “James Matles - 1973, District 10 meeting, Lake Arrowhead, CA,” UE History, https://soundcloud.com/user-141302221/james-matles-1973-district-10-meeting-lake-arrowhead-ca (9:41); “Congress of Industrial Organizations convention debate on the expulsion of the communists, circa 4 November 1949” (1524A/91&92), in “Textile Workers Union of America Records, 1915-1994,” Wisconsin Historical Society, https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-whs-us00129a (19:40, 20:14, 21:49, 22:33, 23:53); “Martin Luther King, AFL-CIO Convention 4 Dec 11, 1961,” AFL-CIO archive at the University of Maryland (35:30); “John F. Kennedy's remarks to a labor group, 24 September, 1963” (375A/41), in “United Packinghouse, Food, and Allied Workers Records, 1937-1968,” Wisconsin Historical Society, https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=wiarchives;id=navbarbrowselink;cginame=findaid-idx;cc=wiarchives;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=uw-whs-mss00118;focusrgn=C02;byte=412854728 (39:50); “UAW Audiovisual Collection: 1955 Documentary on the CIO,” Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University (46:40) Theme music by Drake Tyler.

Episode three of Fragile Juggernaut explores the transformations within the working class brought about by World War I and its decade-long aftermath. A growing political alliance between the AF of L and Woodrow Wilson's Democratic Party profoundly altered the labor movement of the Progressive Era, growing its size and militancy amid the rising prices of the war boom, culminating in the combustive strike-year of 1919. But in the corporate reaction and federal repression that followed, labor unions shed a third of their combined membership and entered the assembly-line era divided and dwindling in power. This society the Great War bequeathed was, as its contemporaries argued, unbalanced. The 1920s “return to normalcy” intensified, rather than counteracted, this lack of balance—swinging toward the struggles within organized labor that would elicit the CIO. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way.Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy Radicals in the Barrio, 20% Off: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/987-radicals-in-the-barrio

Episode two of Fragile Juggernaut picks up with the labor movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. How did workers organize themselves amidst shifts in the structure of the economy, from the acceleration of proletarianization to the rise of corporate capitalism, and what opposition did they confront? Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/postsBuy The Labor Wars, 20% Off!

First up David Griscom & Matt Lech talk about the border, Biden's waffling, and Greg Abbott's advantage. Then we are joined by Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) of Jacobin magazine to talk about his piece on Nikki Haley: https://jacobin.com/2024/01/nikki-haley-south-carolina-scandal-mismanagement Last up we are joined by Benjamin Fong, associate director of the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University, and of Damage Magazine to talk about his new podcast Organize The Unorganized, a radical investigation into the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Check out the podcast here on Jacobin Radio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jacobin-radio/id791564318 Benjamin Fong's book on drugs in 21st-century America Quick Fixes is available here: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2981-quick-fixes Subscribe to Damage Magazine: https://damagemag.com/issues/issue-1-building-big-things/

Welcome to episode one of Fragile Juggernaut, the first project from Haymarket Originals! In episode one, we introduce our “organizing committee” of six rotating hosts and our goals for this collective project of inquiry into the history of the U.S. workers' movement. We then tackle a key historical question: what was the American working class? We begin the story of the CIO in the nineteenth century in order to identify the different groups—immigrants, farmers, artisans, enslaved workers—who comprised the “raw materials” of an inchoate working class. Following their varied paths into wage work, and their relationship to the politics that resulted in the Civil War, the episode ends with the rise of industrial corporations, most notably the railroads, and the political compromise that ended Reconstruction—with a national uprising of workers in 1877. That mass action anticipates what's to come for the emerging labor movement. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we've amassed along the way. Buy Class Struggle Unionism, 20% off!

In episode one of Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, we explore the conditions that led to the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. We first dive into the history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor. Then, we discuss three key developments that raised workers' expectations in the lead-up to the CIO's inauguration: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 1934.Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO is a limited-run history podcast telling the story of the CIO through the voices of labor historians. Hosted by Benjamin Y. Fong and produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University with Jacobin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first episode of Organize the Unorganized sets the stage for the story of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, first getting into the history of the organization from which it broke off, the American Federation of Labor, and then describing three developments that raised workers' expectations in the lead-up to the founding of the CIO: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 1934. Interviewees, in order of appearance: Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center; Robert Cherny, Professor Emeritus of History at San Francisco State University; Ahmed White, Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law at the University of Colorado-Boulder; Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor Emerita of History and Labor Studies at Rutgers University; Nelson Lichtenstein, Professor of History at UC-Santa Barbara; Lizabeth Cohen, Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies at Harvard University; Bryan Palmer, Professor Emeritus of History at Trent University; Steve Fraser, Labor Historian; David Brody, Professor Emeritus of History at UC-Davis; Erik Loomis, Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island; Jeremy Brecher, Labor Historian Songs, in order of appearance: Aunt Molly Jackson, “CIO Union Song,” https://lomaxky.omeka.net/items/show/1352 (7:28); Joe and Esther Zane Gelders, “The Ballad of John Catchings,” https://lomaxky.omeka.net/items/show/197 (23:50); John Greenway, “The Ballad of Bloody Thursday,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWafvcwXCtc (32:08) Clips, in order of appearance: John L. Lewis speech, from Mike Wallace's Biography, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fwAr3_oHKg&t=384s (0:00); AFL vs. CIO split in 1935, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IsJZAknuIQ (11:51); David Dubinsky speech, from “ILGWU. David Dubinsky Audio-visual Recordings: Collection Number: 5780/002 AV,” Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Box 2, Folder 10, “David Dubinsky—United Auto Worker Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, regarding racketeering” (18:49); “1934 United States Labor Disputes and Strikes newsreel archival footage,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIaLk-LKlqI (25:33); “San Francisco General Strike, 1934 - Part 2,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaccCzN7WLc (29:45); “Farrell Dobbs Speaks! Teamster Battles of the 1930s: Part 1,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLr45LwsqGI&t=1462s (41:46) Theme music by Drake Tyler.

There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America: the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and after World War I, and the great wave of public sector unionism in the 1960s and ‘70s. But none matches the period of the 1930s and ‘40s, when millions of workers unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. If we're looking to get millions of private-sector workers into the labor movement today, there's no better example than the ascendant period of the CIO.In Organize the Unorganized, a podcast produced by the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University and Jacobin, author Benjamin Y. Fong tells the story of the CIO with the help of prominent labor historians, including Nelson Lichtenstein, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Steve Fraser, Erik Loomis, Jeremy Brecher, Robert Cherny, Lizabeth Cohen, David Brody, Melvyn Dubofsky, and others. The multi-part series begins with a short history of the organization from which the CIO broke off, the American Federation of Labor, and explores central causes for the CIO's founding: the broken promises of welfare capitalism, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the mass strikes of 1934.Organize the Unorganized will be available weekly here on Jacobin Radio starting January 9. Subscribe and join us as we explore the rise, importance, and legacy of this crucial labor federation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There have been many moments of labor upsurge in America, including the influx of members into the Knights of Labor in 1886, the dramatic growth of unions during and in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and the great public sector unionism surge of the 1960s and 70s, but none matches the scale of the 1930s, when millions of workers were unionized under the aegis of the great labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. If we're looking to get millions of private-sector workers into the labor movement, there's really one time to look to, and that is the ascendant period of the CIO. In Organize the Unorganized, a forthcoming podcast from the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University and Jacobin Magazine, we'll be telling the story of the CIO through the voices of prominent labor historians, including Jeremy Brecher, Robert Cherny, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Lizabeth Cohen, David Brody, Melvyn Dubofsky, Steve Fraser, Rick Halpern, William P. Jones, Nelson Lichtenstein, Erik Loomis, Ruth Milkman, Daniel Nelson, Bryan Palmer, Lisa Phillips, Ahmed White, and Jim Young. These interviews have been spliced together into an account of the rise, importance, and legacy of the CIO. In addition to being released on soundcloud.com/organizetheunorganized, these episodes will also be released on Jacobin magazine's podcast feed. Jacobin will also be publishing the individual interview transcriptions while the podcast is running.

The following article of the tech industry is: “Three Cybersecurity Axes of Survival for Industrial Organizations” by Claudio Martinelli, General Manager for Latin America of Kaspersky

The United Auto Workers emerged as a powerful force during the 1930s. Sit-down strikers challenged the capitalists of the Big Three car companies. Their willingness to take militant action unleashed a wave of unionization in the industry that could not be contained and spread to other sections of the working class. The UAW formed the bedrock of the Congress of Industrial Organizations which shifted the balance of power between capital and labor. A decade later leadership negotiated the Treaty of Detroit. An agreement that established wage increases, pensions, and health insurance. It became the foundation of labor relations in the United States. The union fought for more than bread and butter as it developed into a key backer of the civil rights movement. Various factors began to undermine the power of the UAW. Many of its most effective organizers were purged amidst the Red Scare. The Midwest experienced deindustrialization as factories were moved down South or out of the country. The Administrative Caucus led throughout this process and became increasingly corrupt. A movement for workers' democracy in the union sprouted forth and demanded competitive elections. After securing One Member, One Vote in a referendum, ​​Unite All Workers for Democracy successfully elected new leadership. What does this mean for the UAW and the broader movement for working class empowerment? UAW member Chris joins us to discuss this and much more.

If you're not a patron you can get the full episode by visiting patreon.com/workstoppage and support us with $5 a month. Pamphlet Link: https://ladyizdihar.com/blogs/izdihars-soviet-archive-2/report-of-the-cio-delegation-to-the-soviet-union-1945 We talk a lot about labor history on our Overtime episodes, looking back at past struggles by workers to see what lessons we can draw out for our own struggles today. One of the lesser known but very interesting periods in US labor history came during the temporary friendly relations between the US and the Soviet Union during World War 2. Immediately following the war, quite in contrast to the depths of McCarthyism just a few years later, the US remained on nominally friendly grounds with the USSR. The Soviet victory over the Nazi war machine had raised the prestige of the still young socialist nation all around the world. This week, we sat down to discuss a historical artifact from this period, a pamphlet describing a 1945 visit of a delegation from the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the US to the USSR. In this period before the second Red Scare, the union leaders reported back a far more open and positive review of the Soviet system than described following their anti-communist turn.  Join the discord: discord.gg/tDvmNzX  Follow the pod at instagram.com/workstoppage, @WorkStoppagePod on Twitter,  John @facebookvillain, and Lina @solidaritybee

Search Engine Optimization is no longer optional. To stay relevant, set a budget for your SEO plan and adopt it at your earliest.   In this episode, Arti Sharma talks all about SEO and the value it brings to manufacturing and industrial organizations.  She shares relevant tips on the things you should consider for your SEO campaign.   Listen and learn in this episode!     KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE   If you are one of those companies who was trying to attract the new generation of engineers to specify their products in their RFI, then you need to start working on your SEO plan.   If you go straight up in defining high-volume search keywords, you may end up risking the targeted phrases that your ideal customers are looking for and you have missed out on optimizing your web presence.   Build your buyer profile, understand their desires, their requirements, and reasons for making that search, and then choose the keywords.   Search intent is the why behind that search query.   Google's aim is to provide users with the most relevant result and if you're showing up for a non-relevant result, those people who found you came to your site and bounced back.    A higher bounce-back rate tells Google that your site is not relevant to the audience.     Four Types of Search Intent:  Information - people are looking for information about your product. Navigational - they already know what they want and where they want to go. Transactional - the searcher is looking to make a purchase. Commercial Investigation - they are in the market for a specific product or service but they still have to make a decision on which solution is right for them.   Make sure that you have your technical house in order. Make sure your website is easy to find and trusted by both users and search engines.   SSL certificate is not just for E-commerce companies, it should be considered because it establishes trust. Google might spit out and say your network is not safe to visit the site.   Site speed is critical especially when everything now is so instant.   A local approach is advised if you work for a manufacturing facility that can only deliver items to specific locations or has predefined boundaries. Whereas, an international approach is advised if you are a large industrial enterprise that may distribute statewide through various locations.   Metadata is a code that contains webpages descriptions. It aims to explain to search engine robots what the page is all about.   Be as specific as you can get on your metadata.   Require somebody to monitor your rankings, your competition, and what your data is telling you.   Like any marketing plan, your SEO campaign is incomplete without a measurable ROI process.   Clean up your 404 pages.       If you liked this episode of Fuel Your Marketing, tell your friends! Find us on iTunes and Google Play to rate/review/subscribe to the show. Want more? Visit our website, and find us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! iTunes: http://ow.ly/Ihl350xDn8M Google Play: http://ow.ly/sPag50xDn8T Spotify: http://ow.ly/bt0g50xDn8Q Our Podcast Portal: http://ow.ly/ogQK50xDn8S

QUESTION PRESENTED:Whether a supervisor making over $200,000 each year is entitled to overtime pay because the standalone regulatory exemption set forth in 29 C.F.R. § 541.601 remains subject to the detailed requirements of 29 C.F.R. § 541.604 when determining whether highly compensated supervisors are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act's overtime-pay requirements.Date                   Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)Jan 07 2022 | Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due February 10, 2022)Jan 25 2022 | Blanket Consent filed by Petitioner, Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., et al.Jan 27 2022 | Letter of January 25, 2022 pertaining to the corporate discosure statement, received from counsel for the petiitoners.Feb 07 2022 | Letter of February 7, 2022 pertaining to amicus briefs, received from counsel for the petiitoners.Feb 09 2022 | Waiver of right of respondent Michael J. Hewitt to respond filed.Feb 09 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Texas Oil and Gas Association, Inc. and The American Petroleum Institute filed.Feb 10 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Independent Petroleum Association of America and Offshore Operators Committee filed.Feb 10 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Mississippi, et al. filed.Feb 16 2022 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 3/4/2022.Feb 18 2022 | Response Requested. (Due March 21, 2022)Mar 21 2022 | Brief of respondent Michael J. Hewitt in opposition filed.Apr 05 2022 | Reply of petitioners Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., et al. filed. (Distributed)Apr 06 2022 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 4/22/2022.Apr 25 2022 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 4/29/2022.May 02 2022 | Petition GRANTED.May 06 2022 | Motion for an extension of time to file the briefs on the merits filed.May 26 2022 | Motion for an extension of time to file the briefs on the merits filed.Jun 07 2022 | May 26, 2022 motion to extend the time to file the briefs on the merits granted. The time to file the joint appendix and petitioners' brief on the merits is extended to and including July 8, 2022. The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including August 31, 2022.Jun 14 2022 | ARGUMENT SET FOR Wednesday, October, 12, 2022.Jun 22 2022 | Record requested from the 5th Circuit.Jun 22 2022 | The record from the U.S.C.A. 5th Circuit is electronic and located on Pacer.Jun 23 2022 | The record from the U.S.D.C. Southern District of Texas (Houston) has been electronically filed.Jul 08 2022 | Joint appendix filed (statement of cost filed.)Jul 08 2022 | Brief of petitioners Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., et al. filed.Jul 13 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Independent Petroleum Association of America filed.Jul 15 2022 | Brief amici curiae of States of Mississippi, et al. filed.Jul 15 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Texas Oil and Gas Association, Inc., et al. filed.Jul 15 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America filed.Jul 21 2022 | CIRCULATEDAug 31 2022 | Brief of respondent Michael J. Hewitt filed. (Distributed)Sep 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Massachusetts Nurses Association filed. (Distributed)Sep 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of United States filed. (Distributed)Sep 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of National Nurses United filed. (Distributed)Sep 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations filed. (Distributed)Sep 07 2022 | Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae, for divided argument, and for enlargement of time for oral argument filed.Sep 28 2022 | Motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate in oral argument as amicus curiae, for divided argument, and for enlargement of time for oral argument GRANTED.Sep 30 2022 | Reply of petitioners Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., et al. filed. (Distributed)Oct 12 2022 | Argued. For petitioners: Paul D. Clement, Alexandria, Va. For respondent: Edwin Sullivan, Houston, Tex.; and Anthony A. Yang, Assistant to the Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. (for United States, as amicus curiae.)

We are shaking up the sports landscape, ladies and gentlemen. For the first time EVER, a new sports league is being founded. We may call it the Xtreme Football League - Congress of Industrial Organizations, or we may call it something else. We haven't settled on that yet. But that doesn't matter. Sports are a cash cow, and we're getting ready to milk that sucker twice a day.

This week's guest is Rebecca Reindel, the Safety and Health Director at the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations). The AFL-CIO is the largest labor federation in the United States, representing 57 national and international labor unions with 12.5 million union members nationwide. Like many of our listeners, Rebecca's story didn't start out with a passion for safety, although her passion for people and worker's rights landed her a role as a Safety Pro. Learn how the AFL-CIO's Death on the Job report is raising awareness and keeping workers safe today.

“...one of the characters in my book is grappling with the issue of revenge and the question of how far he should go is what I wanted to leave the readers thinking about.” ~Bill Fletcher Jr. Overview ​In 1970, a sniper's bullet shocks the sleepy Cape Cod village of Osterville. David Gomes, a young reporter for the Cape & Islands Gazette covers the story, thinking his reporting might lead to a job with a major metropolitan newspaper. With protests against the Viet Nam war and the rise of the Black Panthers roiling the public, the murder investigation becomes deeply personal when Gomes, a Cape Verdean American, encounters the smoldering racial antagonism between the descendants of Cape Verde and African-Americans, as well as the deep-seated hatred toward all people of color among some members of the white community. BUY THE MAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY http://www.hardballpress.com/fiction--poetry.html  Reviews “Bill Fletcher pulls together history and mystery to create an exciting and compelling story of race and revenge. It is truly an unexpected page turner.” ~Danny Glover  "Set amidst the rich cultural mix of Cape Verdean and Portuguese fishermen who came to the country as free men and consequentially fought being seen as the descendants of slaves, Fletcher lets a son of those men tell the story, a journalist. Bent on relieving the suffering of one family, he ends up finding the truth is more complicated, the villain a victim too of a bigger cruelty and devastation that stretched through the generations.” ~Walter Mosley About Bill Fletcher Jr. Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staff person in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They're Bankrupting Us' – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. Follow his work: Website: https://billfletcherjr.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillFletcherJr Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bill.fletcherjr  BUY THE MAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY http://www.hardballpress.com/fiction--poetry.html  About Empathy Media Lab The Harmony of Interest Book Talk series interviews authors about their work while exploring ideas that positively shape our world.  Empathy Media Lab is produced by Evan Matthew Papp and we are a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. Support media, authors, artists, historians, and journalists, who are fighting to improve the prosperity of the working class.  All Links: https://wlo.link/@empathymedialab 

QUESTION PRESENTED:Whether the Federal Arbitration Act requires enforcement of a bilateral arbitration agreement providing that an employee cannot raise representative claims, including under the California Private Attorneys General Act.Date  Proceedings and OrdersMay 10 2021 | Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due June 14, 2021)May 25 2021 | Blanket Consent filed by Petitioner, Viking River Cruises, Inc.Jun 11 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of Washington Legal Foundation filed.Jun 14 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of Retail Litigation Center, Inc. filed.Jun 14 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of California New Car Dealers Association filed.Jun 14 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America filed.Jun 14 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of Restaurant Law Center filed.Jun 30 2021 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 9/27/2021.Jul 13 2021 | Response Requested. (Due August 12, 2021)Aug 04 2021 | Motion to extend the time to file a response from August 12, 2021 to September 10, 2021, submitted to The Clerk.Aug 05 2021 | Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including September 10, 2021.Sep 10 2021 | Brief of respondent Angie Moriana in opposition filed.Sep 28 2021 | Reply of petitioner Viking River Cruises, Inc. filed.Nov 23 2021 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 12/10/2021.Dec 15 2021 | Petition GRANTED.Jan 04 2022 | Blanket Consent filed by Petitioner, Viking River Cruises, Inc.Jan 13 2022 | Blanket Consent filed by Respondent, Angie MorianaJan 28 2022 | ARGUMENT SET FOR Wednesday, March 30, 2022.Jan 31 2022 | Brief of petitioner Viking River Cruises, Inc. filed.Jan 31 2022 | Joint appendix filed.Feb 01 2022 | Record requested from the U.S. Court of Appeal of California 2nd Appellate.Feb 04 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of California New Car Dealers Association filed.Feb 04 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Washington Legal Foundation and Atlantic Legal Foundation filed. (Distributed)Feb 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Employers Group filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Uber Technologies, Inc. and Postmates, LLC filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amici curiae of The Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, et al. filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Retail Litigation Center, Inc. and the National Retail Federation filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of California Employment Law Council filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Civil Justice Association of California filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Restaurant Law Center filed.Feb 07 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of The California Business and Industrial Alliance filed. (Distributed)Feb 11 2022 | CIRCULATEDFeb 14 2022 | The record received from the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles has been electronically filed.Mar 02 2022 | Brief of respondent Angie Moriana filed. (Distributed)Mar 08 2022 | Amicus brief of National Academy of Arbitrators not accepted for filing. (March 08, 2022 -- Corrected version to be submitted)Mar 08 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of National Academy of Arbitrators filed. (Distributed)Mar 08 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Steve Chow filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amici curiae of California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Civil Procedure and Arbitration Law Professors filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amici curiae of California Employment Lawyers' Association, et al. filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Public Justice filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of State of California filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Arbitration Scholar Imre Stephen Szalai filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Tracy Chen, in Her Representative Proxy Capacity on Behalf of the State of California filed. (Distributed)Mar 09 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of American Association for Justice filed. (Distributed)Mar 18 2022 | Reply of petitioner Viking River Cruises, Inc. filed. (Distributed)★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

QUESTION PRESENTED:Whether workers who load or unload goods from vehicles that travel in interstate commerce, but do not physically transport such goods themselves, are interstate “transportation workers” exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act.Date   Proceedings and OrdersAug 27 2021 | Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due September 30, 2021)Sep 08 2021 | Motion to extend the time to file a response from September 30, 2021 to November 1, 2021, submitted to The Clerk.Sep 09 2021 | Motion to extend the time to file a response is granted and the time is extended to and including November 1, 2021.Sep 27 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of Washington Legal Foundation filed.Sep 30 2021 | Brief amicus curiae of Airlines for America filed.Nov 01 2021 | Brief of respondent Latrice Saxon in opposition filed.Nov 15 2021 | Reply of petitioner Southwest Airlines Co. filed. (Distributed)Nov 16 2021 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 12/3/2021.Dec 06 2021 | DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 12/10/2021.Dec 10 2021 | Petition GRANTED. Justice Barrett took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.Jan 18 2022 | Motion to dispense with printing the joint appendix filed by petitioner Southwest Airlines Co.Jan 24 2022 | Brief of petitioner Southwest Airlines Co. filed.Jan 26 2022 | Record requested from the U.S.C.A. 7th Circuit.Jan 26 2022 | The record from the U.S.C.A. 7th Circuit is electronic and located on Pacer.Jan 28 2022 | ARGUMENT SET FOR Monday, March 28, 2022.Jan 28 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Washington Legal Foundation filed.Jan 31 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America; National Association of Manufacturers filed.Jan 31 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Lyft, Inc. filed.Jan 31 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Airlines for America filed.Jan 31 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Uber Technologies, Inc. filed.Jan 31 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Amazon.com, Inc. filed.Feb 11 2022 | CIRCULATEDFeb 22 2022 | Motion to dispense with printing the joint appendix filed by petitioner GRANTED. Justice Barrett took no part in the consideration or decision of this motion.Feb 22 2022 | Motion for an extension of time to file respondent's brief on the merits filed.Feb 22 2022 | Motion to extend the time to file respondent's brief on the merits is granted and the time is extended to and including February 24, 2022.Feb 24 2022 | Brief of respondent Latrice Saxon filed. (Distributed)Mar 01 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of National Employment Lawyers Association filed. (Distributed)Mar 02 2022 | Amicus brief of Historians not accepted for filing. (March 02, 2022)Mar 02 2022 | Brief amici curiae of Historians filed. (Distributed)Mar 02 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations filed. (Distributed)Mar 02 2022 | Brief amici curiae of National Academy of Arbitrators and National Association of Railroad Referees filed (3/10/2020). (Distributed)Mar 03 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of Public Justice filed. (Distributed)Mar 03 2022 | Brief amicus curiae of American Association for Justice filed. (Distributed)Mar 03 2022 | Brief amici curiae of State of Illinois, et al. filed. (Distributed)Mar 17 2022 | Reply of petitioner Southwest Airlines Co. filed. (Distributed)Mar 28 2022 | Argued. For petitioner: Shay Dvoretzky, Washington, D. C. For respondent: Jennifer D. Bennett, San Francisco, Cal.★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

QUESTION PRESENTED:Whether the Supreme Court should issue a stay of OSHA's vaccine-or-testing regime for all businesses with 100 or more employees.Date                   Proceedings and Orders Dec 17 2021  | Application (21A244) for a stay, submitted to Justice Kavanaugh.Dec 20 2021 | Response to application (21A244) requested by Justice Kavanaugh, due by 4 p.m., Thursday, December 30, 2021.Dec 20 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by Washington Legal Foundation.Dec 22 2021 | Application (21A244) referred to the Court.Dec 22 2021 | Consideration of the applications (21A244 and 21A247) for stay presented to Justice Kavanaugh and by him referred to the Court is deferred pending oral argument. The applications are consolidated, and a total of one hour is allotted for oral argument. The applications are set for oral argument on Friday, January 7, 2022.Dec 22 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by Former OSHA Administrators Charles Jeffress, David Michaels, and Gerard Scannell. VIDED.Dec 23 2021 | Because the Court has consolidated these applications for oral argument, future filings and activity in 21A244 and 21A247 will now be reflected on the docket of No. 21A244. Subsequent filings in No. 21A244 and/or 21A247 must therefore be submitted through the electronic filing system in No. 21A244. Any document submitted in connection with either of these applications must include on its cover the application number and caption for each application in which the filing is intended to be submitted. Where a filing is submitted in only one application, the docket entry will reflect that; a document filed in both applications will be noted as “VIDED.”Dec 23 2021 | Motion for divided argument filed by applicants. VIDED.Dec 23 2021 | Replies, if any, shall be filed by 10 a.m., Monday, January 3, 2022. VIDED.Dec 23 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by Constitutional Accountability Center. VIDED.Dec 27 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by National Employment Lawyers Association and Jobs With Justice Educational Fund. VIDED.Dec 28 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by Tore Says LLC. VIDED.Dec 28 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by Liberty, Life and Law Foundation. VIDED.Dec 29 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed byDefending The Republic, Inc. VIDED.Dec 29 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by Standard Process Inc. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for divided argument filed by applicants GRANTED. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for Leave to File and Brief of Amici Curiae of Members of Congress not accepted for filing. (January 03, 2022)Dec 30 2021 | Response to application from respondents Occupational Safety and Health Administration, et al. filed. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by American Public Health Association, et al. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by Local Unions 1249 and 97 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Response to application from respondents American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations filed. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by America's Frontline Doctors. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by We The Patriots USA, Inc. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by American Medical Association, et al. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by Center for Medical Freedom, et al. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by Advancing American Freedom. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by National Disability Rights Network, et al. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by Small Business Majority, et al. VIDED.Dec 30 2021 | Motion for leave to file amicus curiae brief filed by the IU Family for Choice, not Mandates, Inc. VIDED.Jan 03 2022 | Reply of applicant National Federation of Independent Business, et al. filed.Jan 03 2022 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by Texas Values, et al. VIDED.Jan 03 2022 | Motion for leave to file amici curiae brief filed by Members of Congress. VIDED.Jan 03 2022 | Reply of Ohio, et al. in support of application submitted.Jan 05 2022 | Motion of Jason Feliciano , et al.Jan 06 2022 | Motion of Alsco, Inc. for Leave to File Brief as Amicus Curiae in Opposition to Emergency Applications for a Stay or Injunction Pending Certiorari Review; For Leave to File Without 10 Days' Notice; and For Leave to File in Paper Format of Alsco, Inc. submitted.Jan 06 2022 | Motion of 400 Physicians, Surgeons, Nurses, and Medical Professionals Opposing OSHA's Unconstitutional Overreach Leave to File Attached Brief as Amicus Curiae in Support of Applicants of 400 Physicians, Surgeons, Nurses, and Medical Professionals Opposing OSHA's Unconstitutional Overreach submitted.Jan 06 2022 | Motion for Leave to File; and Amici Brief of Two Unnamed Workers in Support of Application for Stay, Grant of Certiorari, and Reversal of Two Unnamed Workers submitted.Jan 06 2022 | Motion for Leave to File Amicus Brief and Brief of American Commitment Foundation, Inc. submitted.Jan 07 2022 | Argued. For applicants in 21A244: Scott A. Keller, Washington, D. C. For applicants in 21A247: Benjamin M. Flowers, Solicitor General, Columbus, Ohio. For respondents: Elizabeth B. Prelogar, Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. VIDED.★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Industrial Organizations should have a diverse group of employees that are included in the daily activities of growing, developing, and progressing the organization in today's global economy. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/joan-b-townsend/message

Annie joins Chris Townsend, longtime organizer with both the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) and the Amalgamated Transit Union for an oral history on UE from the second World War, through their split with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the offshoring wave of the late 20th century and the collapse of the USSR. They discuss how UE develops a militant class consciousness in its members, their survival through the dark years of the 1990s, organizing the unorganized, their attitude towards union bureaucracy and much more! Check out Chris's Letter to the Socialists, Old and New and his previous podcast appearance in From Trade Union Consciousness to Socialist Consciousness.

Join Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Bill Fletcher Jr. for an urgent discussion of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and a history of exclusion Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, a new book from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States. Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US's history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and ahistorical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States. ——————————————————————————————————— Get the book, Not “A Nation of Immigrants” from Beacon Press: http://www.beacon.org/Not-A-Nation-of-Immigrants-P1641.aspx ——————————————————————————————————— Speakers: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a historian, writer, speaker, and professor emerita at California State University East Bay. She is author of numerous scholarly Indigenous related books and articles, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico and The Great Sioux Nation, as well as a memoir trilogy and is author of the award-winning book, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. Her book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment was published in 2018, and her new book, Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion is out now from Beacon Press. Bill Fletcher Jr is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice, and the author of “They're Bankrupting Us!” And 20 Other Myths about Unions. Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. This event is sponsored by Beacon Press and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/bNvn0jVWcfw Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

On August 5, 2021, Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known simply as the AFL"CIO, unexpectedly passed away. He was 72 years old. Today on Sojourner Truth, we honor the life and legacy of Richard Trumka. We bring you exclusive audio from his keynote speech at the 2013 AFL-CIO conference in Los Angeles, California. We also speak with Jerry Acosta, a former regional director and senior national representative for the Utility Workers Union of America. In March of 1997, Jerry was appointed by AFL-CIO National President John J. Sweeney as the Arizona State Field Director for the Department of Field Mobilization. By 2005, he was appointed as Regional Director for the Western Region of the AFL-CIO, during which he worked alongside Richard Trumka for several years.

On August 5, 2021, Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known simply as the AFL"CIO, unexpectedly passed away. He was 72 years old. Today on Sojourner Truth, we honor the life and legacy of Richard Trumka. We bring you exclusive audio from his keynote speech at the 2013 AFL-CIO conference in Los Angeles, California. We also speak with Jerry Acosta, a former regional director and senior national representative for the Utility Workers Union of America. In March of 1997, Jerry was appointed by AFL-CIO National President John J. Sweeney as the Arizona State Field Director for the Department of Field Mobilization. By 2005, he was appointed as Regional Director for the Western Region of the AFL-CIO, during which he worked alongside Richard Trumka for several years.

On August 5, 2021, Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known simply as the AFL"CIO, unexpectedly passed away. He was 72 years old. Today on Sojourner Truth, we honor the life and legacy of Richard Trumka. We bring you exclusive audio from his keynote speech at the 2013 AFL-CIO conference in Los Angeles, California. We also speak with Jerry Acosta, a former regional director and senior national representative for the Utility Workers Union of America. In March of 1997, Jerry was appointed by AFL-CIO National President John J. Sweeney as the Arizona State Field Director for the Department of Field Mobilization. By 2005, he was appointed as Regional Director for the Western Region of the AFL-CIO, during which he worked alongside Richard Trumka for several years.

On August 5, 2021, Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, known simply as the AFL"CIO, unexpectedly passed away. He was 72 years old. Today on Sojourner Truth, we honor the life and legacy of Richard Trumka. We bring you exclusive audio from his keynote speech at the 2013 AFL-CIO conference in Los Angeles, California. We also speak with Jerry Acosta, a former regional director and senior national representative for the Utility Workers Union of America. In March of 1997, Jerry was appointed by AFL-CIO National President John J. Sweeney as the Arizona State Field Director for the Department of Field Mobilization. By 2005, he was appointed as Regional Director for the Western Region of the AFL-CIO, during which he worked alongside Richard Trumka for several years.

This is the WFHB Local News for Wednesday, May 5th, 2021. Later in the program, we will hear from Brett Voorhies, President of the Indiana American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, about a report which shows an increase of workplace fatalities in Indiana. More coming up in today’s feature report. Also coming …

In Segment 1, Josh Sword, president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations of West Virginia, joins us to discuss the lack of access the public has to the state legislature due to the pandemic. Sword says, given pandemic restrictions, the organization is not asking that the doors be opened completely, but that the legislature allow a restricted number of people to where socially distancing is still possible so the public can still discuss bills with the legislators.He also tells us that with closed doors, audio-only streams and no public discussion, the legislature could pass bills that end up having a negative impact on working families in the Mountain State. Sword says the organization has sent a letter to the legislature, and if they do not receive a response they could consider a legal challenge.In Segment 2, we take a step back from politics and turn our attention to medicine, specifically, with the construction of the new WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital. President and CEO of WVU Health System Albert Wright Jr. says progress on the construction is moving along and he was able to tour the site last week, describing it as “pretty fabulous.”He says the pandemic has made for a challenging time to build a hospital between supply delays and subcontractors who have had to quarantine. Wright says despite the challenges, they’re getting final schedule done and hoping to announce an opening date later this year.The current children’s hospital is the sixth floor of Ruby Memorial Hospital. Wright says the new stand-alone children’s hospital will allow WVU Medicine to embrace specialized care to better serve the community, including a unique birthing center for high-risk pregnancies.Last week, WVU Health System hosted a media-thon to help raise money for construction, which raised about $684,000 dollars, according to Wright. They are still taking donations from those who wish to help with the costs necessary to complete the hospital.“We’re so thankful for everyone’s support,” Wright said.In Segment 3, we’re talking money with West Virginia’s new State Treasurer Riley Moore, including two bills in the legislature he has been advocating for this year.One project Moore has played a key role in is the Jumpstart Savings Act, which would help West Virginians who want to pursue a vocation or trade the ability to save up to potentially start their own business. Moore says the bill focuses on after schooling, helping people afford the costs that come after education, such as licensing, certifications and purchasing equipment needed for their trade.Moore has also been an advocate for the Online Payments Bill, which would allow anyone anywhere in the state of West Virginia to make payments online. He says this would extend to fees, fines, taxes, licenses and other payments. Moore says this bill does not mean people wouldn’t be able to make payments in-person, and if that is their preferred method of paying, they will still be able to do so. For those who do wish to make their payments online, he says this bill will save people time and money.In Segment 4, Mercer County Commissioner Greg Puckett joins us to talk about his concerns over Senate Bill 12.The bill would gives more authority to county commissions for oversight of local health departments. Puckett says the bill would take away provisions from local public health, which he says is “a detriment to the community at large.” He says the idea of giving a political body authority over public health is concerning. Moving that authority would also transfer the legal liability back to county commissions, which could put them up to litigation in some cases and cause constituents more money, according to Puckett.Health departments’ boards make multiple decisions regarding public health from handling the COVID-19 pandemic to needle exchange programs. Puckett, who is also a member of the Coalition for Tobacco-Free West Virginia, says the bill would put these decisions above them, whic could also open doors to other issues, such as permitting smoking in bars, casinos, racetracks, etc. He says legal scrutiny could also mean county commissions would not move forward with additional regulations.

On this week’s Inside West Virginia Politics, we talk about we could expect from Tuesday’s election, how the coronavirus impacted the election, and whether the state should promote school choice.In segment one, Professor Robert Rupp, professor of political science at West Virginia Wesleyan College, explains what he believes we can expect from Tuesday’s General Election, why he thinks Republicans will do very well in the Mountain State, and the impact the coronavirus had on this election cycle.In segment two, Rupp, author of the new book “The Primary that Made a President” explains why the 1960 Presidential Primary was such a critical Primary Election, what impact Former President John F. Kennedy’s religion had on his campaign, and the importance of “retail politics” in Kennedy’s day, as well as now in West Virginia.In segment three, Garrett Ballengee, executive director of The Cardinal Institute of West Virginia, explains why he would like to see candidates who can present a positive vision for the state do well in Tuesday’s election, why his organization supports school choice, and what they would like to see to promote economic development in the Mountain State.In segment four, Josh Sword, president of The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations of West Virginia, explains what his organization supports candidates that support working families, why he believes national politics often takes the spotlight off of state and local politics, which directly impacts our lives more, and why his organization supports more funding for public schools.

In the last of our election specials, we debate the big issues with a Republican and a Democrat. William Spriggs is chief economist at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations - a Democrat appointed to the Department of Labor by President Obama. Michael Johns is the National Tea Party movement co-founder and leader, and a former White House speechwriter for President George Bush. Sasha Twining is joined by them both throughout the programme to debate the key issues of the election, including the economy, the US-China trade war and the coronavirus pandemic. Also in the programme, we speak to Sarah Bryner, research director at the Center for Responsive Politics in Chicago, about election fundraising and what all those dollars are spent on. And Marylouise Serrato of American Citizens Abroad tells us what US voters abroad are concerned about in the run up to polling day. (Picture: 'Vote' badges, credit: Getty Images)

Recent years have seen a resurgence of right-wing nationalism and authoritarian political movements, from Trump in the US to Bolsanaro in Brazil and to Modi in India. How are we best to grasp the nature of these contemporary political trends? Are Trump and the movement to support him usefully understood as a form of neo-fascism? Right-wing populism? Something else? What are the political, economic, social, and cultural drivers of this trend, and how can they most effectively be countered and defeated? How does contemporary right-wing authoritarianism compare with classic fascist movements of the past? What lessons for today can be found in the arsenal of historical anti-fascism, and what needs updating? How does the way we think about the threats we face shape the necessary political response? How can grasping the roots of current right-wing movements help us build the movement to defeat them, from the ballot box to the workplace to the streets and beyond? Shelter & Solidarity (9/3/20) took a deep dive with activist-thinkers who have been studying historical and contemporary right-wing movements as well as fascism and anti-fascism for decades: Bill V. Mullen, Chris Vials, and Bill Fletcher Jr. Bill V. Mullen and Chris Vials are co-editors of The U.S. Antifascism Reader (2020). Bill Mullen is former Professor of American Studies at Purdue University. He is the author most recently of James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019). His other books include Afro-Orientalism (University of Minnesota Press) and (as co-editor with Ashley Dawson) Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities (Haymarket Books). He is a member of the Organizing Collective for USACBI (United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) Christopher Vials is a Professor of English and Director of American Studies at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. He is the author of Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States (2014) and has appeared on public forums such as NPR, PBS, and CBC radio to discuss the history of fascism and antifascism in the United States. Bill Fletcher Jr. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com, and is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice. Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.

Many countries agreed that the best way to stem the pandemic was to shut down movement, but the US took a different path than its peers in handling the economic fallout. Instead of being kept on payrolls through furlough schemes, millions of Americans have had to seek jobless benefits. Rana Foroohar, the FT's global business columnist, is standing in for Gideon Rachman this week. She talks with William Spriggs, a professor of economics at Howard University and chief economist of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, about how the pandemic is changing the labour market, and what happens to monopoly power, big data and faith in the free market in its wake.  Review clips: Reuters  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is a preview of an episode available only to Patreon subscribers. Show notes to this episode, if we decide to do any, will eventually be available to Patreon subscribers at patreon.com/champagnesharks. This is part 2 of a 2-part episode hosted by Ken, Mario, T., and special guest co-host Andray Domise. Part 2 and is available to $5/month Patreon subscribers here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cs-231-black-jr-32464337 The guest is Bill Fletcher, Jr., a Black Socialist who is an ex-Black Panther and a current labor activist. We discuss what socialism means to him and what it has to offer Black people today. We also ask him some listener questions, including one about his feelings on the ADOS movement and their push for reparations. Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. Co-produced & edited by Aaron C. Schroeder / Pierced Ears Recording Co, Seattle WA (piercedearsmusic@gmail.com). Opening theme composed by T. Beaulieu. Closing theme composed by Dustfingaz (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRazhu_)

As is now the norm for our free episodes, this episode was available only to $5/month subscribers for the first 24 hours, and is now unlocked to the general public. Show notes to this episode, if we decide to do any, will eventually be available to Patreon subscribers at patreon.com/champagnesharks. This is part 1 of a 2-part episode hosted by Ken, Mario, T., and special guest co-host Andray Domise. Part 2 is available to $5/month Patreon subscribers here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cs-231-black-jr-32464337 The guest is Bill Fletcher, Jr., a Black Socialist who is an ex-Black Panther and a current labor activist. We discuss what socialism means to him and what it has to offer Black people today. We also ask him some listener questions, including one about his feelings on the ADOS movement and their push for reparations. Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. Co-produced & edited by Aaron C. Schroeder / Pierced Ears Recording Co, Seattle WA (piercedearsmusic@gmail.com). Opening theme composed by T. Beaulieu. Closing theme composed by Dustfingaz (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRazhu_)

Today’s episode will be about Juan Perón and his complicated legacy!Against all odds, Donald Trump succeeded in challenging political elites during the presidential campaign. He had not yet won the election, but commentators already struggled to find historical examples to explain the appeal of his vociferous movement. On 11 August, the Financial Times ran an article titled: “Donald Trump Evokes Latin America’s Old Style Strongmen.” The article was illustrated with cartoons of Trump, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, and, yes, Perón. Many followed. “Is Donald Trump a Peronist?” “It’s What Perón Sounded Like.” This time, analysts’ emphasis was not only placed on government intervention in the economy, but on the supposed political irrationality of the lower classes: under economic duress, blue-­collar workers—allegedly unlike bankers or dentists—are prone to support demagogues who trick them into believing that there are easy shortcuts to their daily hardshipsWhere did those images associated with Perón come from? How did they arrive in the United States in 2009 or 2016? Many of them were born in the mid-1940s in remote places like León Segovia’s house in the Chaco territory, a region in northern Argentina, eight hundred miles from Buenos Aires. On 9 December 1946, Segovia received a letter with a presidential seal and the signature of President Juan Perón. Segovia was a welder at Las Palmas, a sugar mill that belonged to an Irish couple until a traditional Argentine family bought both it and the entire town. Housing, food, drink, currency—everything was provided by the mill. Of criollo descent and indigenous features, Segovia did not even use the official Spanish language at home.4 Although fluent in Spanish, he spoke mostly Guaraní—a language spoken by native inhabitants of the Chaco Forest—with his parents and friends. Three aspects of Segovia’s life were deeply entangled with the larger national community: he was a member of his union, he had had run-­ins with the National Gendarmerie, and he had voted for Colonel Juan Perón in the presidential elections. His decision to vote for Perón seemed an unlikely one, given that his socialist union had supported the republic in the Spanish Civil War and the Allies in World War II, while Perón was a nationalist who revered Spanish Falangism and belonged to a group of officers with Nazi sympathies. In the official letter, President Perón notified Segovia that he had been selected as a student in the training course for diplomatic worker attachés.5 It was a new position within the Argentine foreign service that Perón created a few weeks after taking office. Along with Segovia, approximately one hundred rank-­and-­file union members received similar letters. The General Confed­eration of Labor (cgt) had selected its most valued activists to represent Argentina abroad. A few months later, leaving the country for the first time in their lives, Segovia and forty other labor activists traveled to embassies worldwide with the mission of spreading Perón’s gospel of social revolution. Originating from the small towns of the countryside and the crowded working-­class suburbs of Buenos Aires, the attachés were stationed in Washington, São Paulo, Moscow, Bogotá, and Paris, “as [Perón’s] personal representatives beyond the national borders.” Over the following decade, five hundred labor activists became members of the Argentine foreign service. Self-­described as Perón’s proud foot soldiers, they represent the largest presence of blue-­collar workers in the foreign service of any country in historyOnce abroad, the attachés wielded their own diplomatic position as proof of the swift changes occurring in Argentina under Perón. Nowhere else had workers accomplished so much, reaching positions in a realm usually reserved for elites. As part of their mission, they described the Argentine reality: hundreds of factories—many of them state-­owned—were producing everything from steel to canned food. Unions held unprecedented bargaining power. They managed hotels for their workers at the most scenic vacation resorts. And hospitals and schools were free to all. The attachés showed that the daily caloric intake of an Argentine worker was among the highest in the world. And they emphatically attributed these advances to Perón and his wife, Eva Perón. In diplomatic dispatches, personal letters, and news articles, they reported back to Argentina about a European continent ravaged by the war. From Latin America, they described with ethnographic precision the meager wages of workers at an oil refinery in Peru and the kilometers that Guatemalan peasants at a plantation had to walk between their shacks and the first source of running water. From the United States, they chronicled layoffs at telephone companies, the end of rent regulation, which had benefited low-­income workers during the New Deal, and the massive strikes in the automaker sector. The attachés made sure that the setbacks of unions and the efforts of the business sector to reverse workers’ gains in the United States were widely publicized in Argentina and the rest of Latin America.The attachés joined the democratic spring that swept Latin America after 1945. The contrast in the achievements of organized labor at home and the difficulties of workers abroad reinforced their belief in the exceptionality of the Peronist recipe. And this, in turn, provided a class ethos to a long-­standing sense of predestination and to ambitions for regional leadership that ran deep in Argentine nationalism. They promoted Peronism as a path for the expansion of social citizenship for the emerging working class and denounced U.S. foreign policy as an ally of local elites in obstructing that mission. With this basic toolkit of ideas, they allied with the leftist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948 in Colombia and made sure that indigenous people in Peru had a copy of Perón’s Declaration of the Rights of Workers, which had been translated into Quechua by 1950. They funded an early venture abroad of a young Cuban law student, Fidel Castro, and befriended an equally young Argentine doctor, Ernesto Guevara. In 1954, a Peronist attaché sheltered members of the future leadership of the Guatemalan guerrilla in the Argentine embassy during the cia-­backed military coup. The attachés confronted U.S. labor diplomats of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (afl-­cio), who had deployed representatives throughout the world since the end of World War II. Particularly in Latin America, they had worked closely with the U.S. government, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the business sector. Labor diplomats became part of the larger U.S. efforts to contain communism by gaining the support of workers in the region for the strengthening of liberal democracy. The U.S. labor diplomats saw Peronism as a fascist threat and worked with U.S. officials in containing Perón’s transnational aims. They shared with Peronism the idea that inequality was a major problem in Latin America. They also argued that democracy could not be achieved without social reform. But they claimed that workers should gain their rights without violent upheavals of social order, which could be used by demagogues (i.e., Perón) to create a totalitarian government that would curtail citizens’ freedoms. The Peronist specter captured the concerns of officials and elites in the Americas. By 1946, Argentina was already mentioned as one of the main threats to democratic liberalism in the document that became the blueprint for Cold War containment. And two years later, a U.S. official stationed in Europe reflected, “The threat which gives us the worst case of cold shivers is that of a southern bloc dominated by Argentina.” Attachés like Segovia came to represent this menace to the extent that their actions were eventually described by Robert Alexander, the scholar with the greatest influence on U.S. officials working with organized labor in Latin America, as part of “the whole Peronista propaganda apparatus . . . against the United States [that] outdid even that of the Communists.” By the onset of the Cold War, the image of Peronism as a symbol of social change gone awry was engraved in such a powerful way that it survived the Cold War itself. Excerpt from Ambassadors of the Working Class, by Ernesto SeamanYou can find out more about Ernesto by visiting his twitter page Get full access to Historic.ly at historicly.substack.com/subscribe

On Wednesday, the security and anti-phishing firm Area 1 published details of a breach that compromised one of the European Union's diplomatic communication channels for three years. The perpetrators also compromised systems related to the United Nations, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, and a number of international foreign affairs ministries.

Lex Musta recalls his introduction to 'The Other Tradition' by Dr. Richard Thomas in 2012, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (3:50), Focus Hope (7:30), Detroit Interracial Cooperation after 1943 and 1967 Pogroms (8:45), Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress published by the Association for Baha'i Studies in 1993 (11:15), Understanding Interracial Unity: A Study of U.S. Race Relations published in the SAGE series on Race and Ethnic Relations in 1995 (11:30), Black and Jewish Faculty on College Campuses and Minister Farrakhan (15:00), Grimke Sisters (17:00), Bacon's Rebellion (20:00), Revolutionary War (23:15), John Brown meets Frederick Douglass (27:00), USCT (31:15), Knights of Labor (31:30), Reconstruction (32:00), NAACP (32:45), Northern Migration (34:30), Herbert Aptheker (37:00), Congress of Industrial Organizations (37:30), Highlander Folk School (38:15), Southern Conference for Human Welfare (38:30), Southern Conference Educational Fund (38:45), Howard Thurman (40:30), Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (40:45), Baha'i Civil Rights Work in 1964 (44:15).

The 1920s Jazz Age is remembered for flappers and speakeasies, not for the success of a declining labor movement. A more complex story was unfolding among the young women and men in the hosiery mills of Kensington, the working-class heart of Philadelphia. Their product was silk stockings, the iconic fashion item of the flapper culture then sweeping America and the world. Although the young people who flooded into this booming industry were avid participants in Jazz Age culture, they also embraced a surprising, rights-based labor movement, headed by the socialist-led American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW). In this first history of this remarkable union, Sharon McConnell-Sidorick reveals how activists ingeniously fused youth culture and radical politics to build a subculture that included dances and parties as well as picket lines and sit-down strikes, while forging a vision for social change. In documenting AFFFHW members and the Kensington community, McConnell-Sidorick shows how labor federations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and government programs like the New Deal did not spring from the heads of union leaders or policy experts but were instead nurtured by grassroots social movements across America. Sharon McConnell-Sidorick is an independent scholar and lives in the Philadelphia area.

Bill Fletcher Jr. has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They're Bankrupting Us' – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web. You can find him at billfletcherjr.com He wrote the article Obama Morocco and Saharawi Self-Determination.

Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941″; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.

Recently, President Obama appointed two union lawyers, Craig Becker and Mark Pearce to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) creating a labor law controversy. Some say that the addition of Becker and Pearce will restore balance, while others, like business groups, fear their influence on the board will cater to unions on big issues. Co-host and Attorney Bob Ambrogi welcomes Nancy Schiffer, Associate General Counsel with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, (AFL-CIO) and Attorney Charles I. Cohen, senior counsel in Morgan Lewis & Bockius’ Labor and Employment Practice, to get their reaction to the recess appointments of Becker and Pearce to the NLRB.