Podcasts about wobblies

While we're told by politicians that the ideas of Karl Marx are foreign and have no place in this country, history proves otherwise. Andrew Hartman shows that Marx and Marxism have had an a significant influence on the United States, from Marx's journalistic writings for the New York Daily Tribune, to the mass politics the Socialist and Communist Parties and the Wobblies, on the most radical edge of the New Deal, and the New Left, and finally with the return to Marx's ideas since the Global Financial Crisis. The post Fund Drive Special: Marx's Influence on America appeared first on KPFA.

A year ago, the great American historian Adam Hochschild came on KEEN ON AMERICA to discuss American Midnight, his best selling account of the crisis of American democracy after World War One. A year later, is history really repeating itself in today's crisis of American democracy? For Hochschild, there are certainly parallels between the current political situation in the US and post WW1 America. Describing how wartime hysteria and fear of communism led to unprecedented government repression, including mass imprisonment for political speech, vigilante violence, and press censorship. Hochschild notes eery similarities to today's Trump's administration. He expresses concern about today's threats to democratic institutions while suggesting the importance of understanding Trump supporters' grievances and finding ways to bridge political divides. Five Key Takeaways* The period of 1917-1921 in America saw extreme government repression, including imprisoning people for speech, vigilante violence, and widespread censorship—what Hochschild calls America's "Trumpiest" era before Trump.* American history shows recurring patterns of nativism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and scapegoating that politicians exploit during times of economic or social stress.* The current political climate shows concerning parallels to this earlier period, including intimidation of opposition, attacks on institutions, and the widespread acceptance of authoritarian tendencies.* Hochschild emphasizes the importance of understanding the grievances and suffering that lead people to support authoritarian figures rather than dismissing their concerns.* Despite current divisions, Hochschild believes reconciliation is possible and necessary, pointing to historical examples like President Harding pardoning Eugene Debs after Wilson imprisoned him. Full Transcript Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We recently celebrated our 2500th edition of Keen On. Some people suggest I'm mad. I think I probably am to do so many shows. Just over a little more than a year ago, we celebrated our 2000th show featuring one of America's most distinguished historians, Adam Hochschild. I'm thrilled that Adam is joining us again a year later. He's the author of "American Midnight, The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis." This was his last book. He's the author of many other books. He is now working on a book on the Great Depression. He's joining us from his home in Berkeley, California. Adam, to borrow a famous phrase or remix a famous phrase, a year is a long time in American history.Adam Hochschild: That's true, Andrew. I think this past year, or actually this past 100 days or so has been a very long and very difficult time in American history that we all saw coming to some degree, but I don't think we realized it would be as extreme and as rapid as it has been.Andrew Keen: Your book, Adam, "American Midnight, A Great War of Violent Peace and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis," is perhaps the most prescient warning. When you researched that you were saying before we went live that your books usually take you between four and five years, so you couldn't really have planned for this, although I guess you began writing and researching American Midnight during the Trump 1.0 regime. Did you write it as a warning to something like is happening today in America?Adam Hochschild: Well, I did start writing it and did most of the work on it during Trump's first term in office. So I was very struck by the parallels. And they're in plain sight for everybody to see. There are various dark currents that run through this country of ours. Nativism, threats to deport troublemakers. Politicians stirring up violent feelings against immigrants, vigilante violence, all those things have been with us for a long time. I've always been fascinated by that period, 1917 to 21, when they surged to the surface in a very nasty way. That was the subject of the book. Naturally, I hoped we wouldn't have to go through anything like that again, but here we are definitely going through it again.Andrew Keen: You wrote a lovely piece earlier this month for the Washington Post. "America was at its Trumpiest a hundred years ago. Here's how to prevent the worst." What did you mean by Trumpiest, Adam? I'm not sure if you came up with that title, but I know you like the term. You begin the essay. What was the Trumpiest period in American life before Donald Trump?Adam Hochschild: Well, I didn't invent the word, but I certainly did use it in the piece. What I meant by that is that when you look at this period just over 100 years ago, 1917 to 1921, Woodrow Wilson's second term in office, two things happened in 1917 that kicked off a kind of hysteria in this country. One was that Wilson asked the American Congress to declare war on Germany, which it promptly did, and when a country enters a major war, especially a world war, it sets off a kind of hysteria. And then that was redoubled some months later when the country received news of the Russian Revolution, and many people in the establishment in America were afraid the Russian Revolution might come to the United States.So, a number of things happened. One was that there was a total hysteria against all things German. There were bonfires of German books all around the country. People would take German books out of libraries, schools, college and university libraries and burn them in the street. 19 such bonfires in Ohio alone. You can see pictures of it on the internet. There was hysteria about the German language. I heard about this from my father as I was growing up because his father was a Jewish immigrant from Germany. They lived in New York City. They spoke German around the family dinner table, but they were terrified of doing so on the street because you could get beaten up for that. Several states passed laws against speaking German in public or speaking German on the telephone. Eminent professors declared that German was a barbaric language. So there was that kind of hysteria.Then as soon as the United States declared war, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act through Congress, this draconian law, which essentially gave the government the right to lock up anybody who said something that was taken to be against the war. And they used this law in a devastating way. During those four years, roughly a thousand Americans spent a year or more in jail and a much larger number, shorter periods in jail solely for things that they wrote or said. These were people who were political prisoners sent to jail simply for something they wrote or said, the most famous of them was Eugene Debs, many times the socialist candidate for president. He'd gotten 6% of the popular vote in 1912 and in 1918. For giving an anti-war speech from a park bandstand in Ohio, he was sent to prison for 10 years. And he was still in prison two years after the war ended in November, 1920, when he pulled more than 900,000 votes for president from his jail cell in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.So that was one phase of the repression, political prisoners. Another was vigilante violence. The government itself, the Department of Justice, chartered a vigilante group, something called the American Protective League, which went around roughing up people that it thought were evading the draft, beating up people at anti-war rallies, arresting people with citizens arrest whom they didn't have their proper draft papers on them, holding them for hours or sometimes for days until they could produce the right paperwork.Andrew Keen: I remember, Adam, you have a very graphic description of some of this violence in American Midnight. There was a story, was it a union leader?Adam Hochschild: Well, there is so much violence that happened during that time. I begin the book with a graphic description of vigilantes raiding an office of the Wobblies, the Industrial Workers of the World, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, taking a bunch of wobblies out into the prairie at night, stripping them, whipping them, flogging them fiercely, and then tarring and feathering them, and firing shotguns over their heads so they would run off into the Prairie at Night. And they did. Those guys were lucky because they survive. Other people were killed by this vigilante violence.And the final thing about that period which I would mention is the press censorship. The Espionage Act gave the Postmaster General the power to declare any publication in the United States unmailable. And for a newspaper or a magazine that was trying to reach a national audience, the only way you could do so was through the US mail because there was no internet then. No radio, no TV, no other way of getting your publication to somebody. And this put some 75 newspapers and magazines that the government didn't like out of business. It in addition censored three or four hundred specific issues of other publications as well.So that's why I feel this is all a very dark period of American life. Ironically, that press censorship operation, because it was run by the postmaster general, who by the way loved being chief censor, it was ran out of the building that was then the post office headquarters in Washington, which a hundred years later became the Trump International Hotel. And for $4,000 a night, you could stay in the Postmaster General's suite.Andrew Keen: You, Adam, the First World War is a subject you're very familiar with. In addition to American Midnight, you wrote "To End All Wars, a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914 to 18," which was another very successful of your historical recreations. Many countries around the world experience this turbulence, the violence. Of course, we had fascism in the 20s in Europe. And later in the 30s as well. America has a long history of violence. You talk about the violence after the First World War or after the declaration. But I was just in Montgomery, Alabama, went to the lynching museum there, which is considerably troubling. I'm sure you've been there. You're not necessarily a comparative political scientist, Adam. How does America, in its paranoia during the war and its clampdown on press freedom, on its violence, on its attempt to create an authoritarian political system, how does it compare to other democracies? Is some of this stuff uniquely American or is it a similar development around the world?Adam Hochschild: You see similar pressures almost any time that a major country is involved in a major war. Wars are never good for civil liberties. The First World War, to stick with that period of comparison, was a time that saw strong anti-war movements in all of the warring countries, in Germany and Britain and Russia. There were people who understood at the time that this war was going to remake the world for the worse in every way, which indeed it did, and who refused to fight. There were 800 conscientious objectors jailed in Russia, and Russia did not have much freedom of expression to begin with. In Germany, many distinguished people on the left, like Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to jail for most of the war.Britain was an interesting case because I think they had a much longer established tradition of free speech than did the countries on the continent. It goes way back and it's a distinguished and wonderful tradition. They were also worried for the first two and a half, three years of the war before the United States entered, that if they crack down too hard on their anti-war movement, it would upset people in the United States, which they were desperate to draw into the war on their side. Nonetheless, there were 6,000 conscientious objectors who were sent to jail in England. There was intermittent censorship of anti-war publications, although some were able to publish some of the time. There were many distinguished Britons, such as Bertrand Russell, the philosopher who later won a Nobel Prize, sent to jails for six months for his opposition to the war. So some of this happened all over.But I think in the United States, especially with these vigilante groups, it took a more violent form because remember the country at that time was only a few decades away from these frontier wars with the Indians. And the westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century, the western expansion of white settlement was an enormously bloody business that was almost genocidal for the Native Americans. Many people had participated in that. Many people saw that violence as integral to what the country was. So there was a pretty well-established tradition of settling differences violently.Andrew Keen: I'm sure you're familiar with Stephen Hahn's book, "A Liberal America." He teaches at NYU, a book which in some ways is very similar to yours, but covers all of American history. Hahn was recently on the Ezra Klein show, talking like you, like we're talking today, Adam, about the very American roots of Trumpism. Hahn, it's an interesting book, traces much of this back to Jackson and the wars of the frontier against Indians. Do you share his thesis on that front? Are there strong similarities between Jackson, Wilson, and perhaps even Trump?Adam Hochschild: Well, I regret to say I'm not familiar with Hahn's book, but I certainly do feel that that legacy of constant war for most of the 19th century against the Native Americans ran very deep in this country. And we must never forget how appealing it is to young men to take part in war. Unfortunately, all through history, there have been people very tempted by this. And I think when you have wars of conquest, such as happen in the American West, against people who are more poorly armed, or colonial wars such as Europe fought in Africa and Asia against much more poorly-armed opponents, these are especially appealing to young people. And in both the United States and in the European colonization of Africa, which I know something about. For young men joining in these colonizing or conquering adventures, there was a chance not just to get martial glory, but to also get rich in the process.Andrew Keen: You're all too familiar with colonial history, Adam. Another of your books was about King Leopold's Congo and the brutality there. Where was the most coherent opposition morally and politically to what was happening? My sense in Trump's America is perhaps the most persuasive and moral critique comes from the old Republican Center from people like David Brooks, Peter Wayno has been on the show many times, Jonathan Rausch. Where were people like Teddy Roosevelt in this narrative? Were there critics from the right as well as from the left?Adam Hochschild: Good question. I first of all would give a shout out to those Republican centrists who've spoken out against Trump, the McCain Republicans. There are some good people there - Romney, of course as well. They've been very forceful. There wasn't really an equivalent to that, a direct equivalent to that in the Wilson era. Teddy Roosevelt whom you mentioned was a far more ferocious drum beater than Wilson himself and was pushing Wilson to declare war long before Wilson did. Roosevelt really believed that war was good for the soul. He desperately tried to get Wilson to appoint him to lead a volunteer force, came up with an elaborate plan for this would be a volunteer army staffed by descendants of both Union and Confederate generals and by French officers as well and homage to the Marquis de Lafayette. Wilson refused to allow Roosevelt to do this, and plus Roosevelt was, I think, 58 years old at the time. But all four of Roosevelt's sons enlisted and joined in the war, and one of them was killed. And his father was absolutely devastated by this.So there was not really that equivalent to the McCain Republicans who are resisting Trump, so to speak. In fact, what resistance there was in the U.S. came mostly from the left, and it was mostly ruthlessly silenced, all these people who went to jail. It was silenced also because this is another important part of what happened, which is different from today. When the federal government passed the Espionage Act that gave it these draconian powers, state governments, many of them passed copycat laws. In fact, a federal justice department agent actually helped draft the law in New Hampshire. Montana locked up people serving more than 60 years cumulatively of hard labor for opposing the war. California had 70 people in prison. Even my hometown of Berkeley, California passed a copycat law. So, this martial spirit really spread throughout the country at that time.Andrew Keen: So you've mentioned that Debs was the great critic and was imprisoned and got a considerable number of votes in the election. You're writing a book now about the Great Depression and FDR's involvement in it. FDR, of course, was a distant cousin of Teddy Roosevelt. At this point, he was an aspiring Democratic politician. Where was the critique within the mainstream Democratic party? Were people like FDR, who had a position in the Wilson administration, wasn't he naval secretary?Adam Hochschild: He was assistant secretary of the Navy. And he went to Europe during the war. For an aspiring politician, it's always very important to say I've been at the front. And so he went to Europe and certainly made no sign of resistance. And then in 1920, he was the democratic candidate for vice president. That ticket lost of course.Andrew Keen: And just to remind ourselves, this was before he became disabled through polio, is that correct?Adam Hochschild: That's right. That happened in the early 20s and it completely changed his life and I think quite deepened him as a person. He was a very ambitious social climbing young politician before then but I think he became something deeper. Also the political parties at the time were divided each party between right and left wings or war mongering and pacifist wings. And when the Congress voted on the war, there were six senators who voted against going to war and 50 members of the House of Representatives. And those senators and representatives came from both parties. We think of the Republican Party as being more conservative, but it had some staunch liberals in it. The most outspoken voice against the war in the Senate was Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin, who was a Republican.Andrew Keen: I know you write about La Follette in American Midnight, but couldn't one, Adam, couldn't won before the war and against domestic repression. You wrote an interesting piece recently for the New York Review of Books about the Scopes trial. William Jennings Bryan, of course, was involved in that. He was the defeated Democratic candidate, what in about three or four presidential elections in the past. In the early 20th century. What was Bryan's position on this? He had been against the war, is that correct? But I'm guessing he would have been quite critical of some of the domestic repression.Adam Hochschild: You know, I should know the answer to that, Andrew, but I don't. He certainly was against going to war. He had started out in Wilson's first term as Wilson's secretary of state and then resigned in protest against the military buildup and what he saw as a drift to war, and I give him great credit for that. I don't recall his speaking out against the repression after it began, once the US entered the war, but I could be wrong on that. It was not something that I researched. There were just so few voices speaking out. I think I would remember if he had been one of them.Andrew Keen: Adam, again, I'm thinking out loud here, so please correct me if this is a dumb question. What would it be fair to say that one of the things that distinguished the United States from the European powers during the First World War in this period it remained an incredibly insular provincial place barely involved in international politics with a population many of them were migrants themselves would come from Europe but nonetheless cut off from the world. And much of that accounted for the anti-immigrant, anti-foreign hysteria. That exists in many countries, but perhaps it was a little bit more pronounced in the America of the early 20th century, and perhaps in some ways in the early 21st century.Adam Hochschild: Well, we remain a pretty insular place in many ways. A few years ago, I remember seeing the statistic in the New York Times, I have not checked to see whether it's still the case, but I suspect it is that half the members of the United States Congress do not have passports. And we are more cut off from the world than people living in most of the countries of Europe, for example. And I think that does account for some of the tremendous feeling against immigrants and refugees. Although, of course, this is something that is common, not just in Europe, but in many countries all over the world. And I fear it's going to get all the stronger as climate change generates more and more refugees from the center of the earth going to places farther north or farther south where they can get away from parts of the world that have become almost unlivable because of climate change.Andrew Keen: I wonder Democratic Congress people perhaps aren't leaving the country because they fear they won't be let back in. What were the concrete consequences of all this? You write in your book about a young lawyer, J. Edgar Hoover, of course, who made his name in this period. He was very much involved in the Palmer Raids. He worked, I think his first job was for Palmer. How do you see this structurally? Of course, many historians, biographers of Hoover have seen this as the beginning of some sort of American security state. Is that over-reading it, exaggerating what happened in this period?Adam Hochschild: Well, security state may be too dignified a word for the hysteria that reigned in the country at that time. One of the things we've long had in the United States is a hysteria, paranoia directed at immigrants who are coming from what seems to be a new and threatening part of the world. In the mid-19th century, for example, we had the Know-Nothing Party, as it was called, who were violently opposed to Catholic immigrants coming from Ireland. Now, they were people of Anglo-Saxon descent, pretty much, who felt that these Irish Catholics were a tremendous threat to the America that they knew. There was much violence. There were people killed in riots against Catholic immigrants. There were Catholic merchants who had their stores burned and so on.Then it began to shift. The Irish sort of became acceptable, but by the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century the immigrants coming from Europe were now coming primarily from southern and eastern Europe. In other words, Italians, Sicilians, Poles, and Jews. And they became the target of the anti-immigrant crusaders with much hysteria directed against them. It was further inflamed at that time by the Eugenics movement, which was something very strong, where people believed that there was a Nordic race that was somehow superior to everybody else, that the Mediterraneans were inferior people, and that the Africans were so far down the scale, barely worth talking about. And this culminated in 1924 with the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act that year, which basically slammed the door completely on immigrants coming from Asia and slowed to an absolute trickle those coming from Europe for the next 40 years or so.Andrew Keen: It wasn't until the mid-60s that immigration changed, which is often overlooked. Some people, even on the left, suggest that it was a mistake to radically reform the Immigration Act because we would have inevitably found ourselves back in this situation. What do you think about that, Adam?Adam Hochschild: Well, I think a country has the right to regulate to some degree its immigration, but there always will be immigration in this world. I mean, my ancestors all came from other countries. The Jewish side of my family, I'm half Jewish, were lucky to get out of Europe in plenty of time. Some relatives who stayed there were not lucky and perished in the Holocaust. So who am I to say that somebody fleeing a repressive regime in El Salvador or somewhere else doesn't have the right to come here? I think we should be pretty tolerant, especially if people fleeing countries where they really risk death for one reason or another. But there is always gonna be this strong anti-immigrant feeling because unscrupulous politicians like Donald Trump, and he has many predecessors in this country, can point to immigrants and blame them for the economic misfortunes that many Americans are experiencing for reasons that don't have anything to do with immigration.Andrew Keen: Fast forward Adam to today. You were involved in an interesting conversation on the Nation about the role of universities in the resistance. What do you make of this first hundred days, I was going to say hundred years that would be a Freudian error, a hundred days of the Trump regime, the role, of big law, big universities, newspapers, media outlets? In this emerging opposition, are you chilled or encouraged?Adam Hochschild: Well, I hope it's a hundred days and not a hundred years. I am moderately encouraged. I was certainly deeply disappointed at the outset to see all of those tech titans go to Washington, kiss the ring, contribute to Trump's inauguration festivities, be there in the front row. Very depressing spectacle, which kind of reminds one of how all the big German industrialists fell into line so quickly behind Hitler. And I'm particularly depressed to see the changes in the media, both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post becoming much more tame when it came to endorsing.Andrew Keen: One of the reasons for that, Adam, of course, is that you're a long-time professor at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, so you've been on the front lines.Adam Hochschild: So I really care about a lively press that has free expression. And we also have a huge part of the media like Fox News and One American Network and other outlets that are just pouring forth a constant fire hose of lies and falsehood.Andrew Keen: And you're being kind of calling it a fire hose. I think we could come up with other terms for it. Anyway, a sewage pipe, but that's another issue.Adam Hochschild: But I'm encouraged when I see media organizations that take a stand. There are places like the New York Times, like CNN, like MSNBC, like the major TV networks, which you can read or watch and really find an honest picture of what's going on. And I think that's a tremendously important thing for a country to have. And that you look at the countries that Donald Trump admires, like Putin's Russia, for example, they don't have this. So I value that. I want to keep it. I think that's tremendously important.I was sorry, of course, that so many of those big law firms immediately cave to these ridiculous and unprecedented demands that he made, contributing pro bono work to his causes in return for not getting banned from government buildings. Nothing like that has happened in American history before, and the people in those firms that made those decisions should really be ashamed of themselves. I was glad to see Harvard University, which happens to be my alma mater, be defiant after caving in a little bit on a couple of issues. They finally put their foot down and said no. And I must say, feeling Harvard patriotism is a very rare emotion for me. But this is the first time in 50 years that I've felt some of it.Andrew Keen: You may even give a donation, Adam.Adam Hochschild: And I hope other universities are going to follow its lead, and it looks like they will. But this is pretty unprecedented, a president coming after universities with this determined of ferocity. And he's going after nonprofit organizations as well. There will be many fights there as well, I'm sure we're just waiting to hear about the next wave of attacks which will be on places like the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation and other big nonprofits. So hold on and wait for that and I hope they are as defiant as possible too.Andrew Keen: It's a little bit jarring to hear a wise historian like yourself use the word unprecedented. Is there much else of this given that we're talking historically and the similarities with the period after the first world war, is there anything else unprecedented about Trumpism?Adam Hochschild: I think in a way, we have often had, or not often, but certainly sometimes had presidents in this country who wanted to assume almost dictatorial powers. Richard Nixon certainly is the most recent case before Trump. And he was eventually stopped and forced to leave office. Had that not happened, I think he would have very happily turned himself into a dictator. So we know that there are temptations that come with the desire for absolute power everywhere. But Trump has gotten farther along on this process and has shown less willingness to do things like abide by court orders. The way that he puts pressure on Republican members of Congress.To me, one of the most startling, disappointing, remarkable, and shocking things about these first hundred days is how very few Republican members to the House or Senate have dared to defy Trump on anything. At most, these ridiculous set of appointees that he muscled through the Senate. At most, they got three Republican votes against them. They couldn't muster the fourth necessary vote. And in the House, only one or two Republicans have voted against Trump on anything. And of course, he has threatened to have Elon Musk fund primaries against any member of Congress who does defy him. And I can't help but think that these folks must also be afraid of physical violence because Trump has let all the January 6th people out of jail and the way vigilantes like that operate is they first go after the traitors on their own side then they come for the rest of us just as in the first real burst of violence in Hitler's Germany was the night of the long knives against another faction of the Nazi Party. Then they started coming for the Jews.Andrew Keen: Finally, Adam, your wife, Arlie, is another very distinguished writer.Adam Hochschild: I've got a better picture of her than that one though.Andrew Keen: Well, I got some very nice photos. This one is perhaps a little, well she's thinking Adam. Everyone knows Arlie from her hugely successful work, "Strangers in their Own Land." She has a new book out, "Stolen Pride, Lost Shame and the Rise of the Right." I don't want to put words into Arlie's mouth and she certainly wouldn't let me do that, Adam, but would it be fair to say that her reading, certainly of recent American history, is trying to bring people back together. She talks about the lessons she learned from her therapist brother. And in some ways, I see her as a kind of marriage counselor in America. Given what's happening today in America with Trump, is this still an opportunity? This thing is going to end and it will end in some ways rather badly and perhaps bloodily one way or the other. But is this still a way to bring people, to bring Americans back together? Can America be reunited? What can we learn from American Midnight? I mean, one of the more encouraging stories I remember, and please correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't it Coolidge or Harding who invited Debs when he left prison to the White House? So American history might be in some ways violent, but it's also made up of chapters of forgiveness.Adam Hochschild: That's true. I mean, that Debs-Harding example is a wonderful one. Here is Debs sent to prison by Woodrow Wilson for a 10-year term. And Debs, by the way, had been in jail before for his leadership of a railway strike when he was a railway workers union organizer. Labor organizing was a very dangerous profession in those days. But Debs was a fairly gentle man, deeply committed to nonviolence. About a year into, a little less than a year into his term, Warren Harding, Woodrow Wilson's successor, pardoned Debs, let him out of prison, invited him to visit the White House on his way home. And they had a half hour's chat. And when he left the building, Debs told reporters, "I've run for the White house five times, but this is the first time I've actually gotten here." Harding privately told a friend. This was revealed only after his death, that he said, "Debs was right about that war. We never should have gotten involved in it."So yeah, there can be reconciliation. There can be talk across these great differences that we have, and I think there are a number of organizations that are working on that specific project, getting people—Andrew Keen: We've done many of those shows. I'm sure you're familiar with the organization Braver Angels, which seems to be a very good group.Adam Hochschild: So I think it can be done. I really think it could be done and it has to be done and it's important for those of us who are deeply worried about Trump, as you and I are, to understand the grievances and the losses and the suffering that has made Trump's backers feel that here is somebody who can get them out of the pickle that they're in. We have to understand that, and the Democratic Party has to come up with promising alternatives for them, which it really has not done. It didn't really offer one in this last election. And the party itself is in complete disarray right now, I fear.Andrew Keen: I think perhaps Arlie should run for president. She would certainly do a better job than Kamala Harris in explaining it. And of course they're both from Berkeley. Finally, Adam, you're very familiar with the history of Africa, Southern Africa, your family I think was originally from there. Might we need after all this, when hopefully the smoke clears, might we need a Mandela style truth and reconciliation committee to make sense of what's happening?Adam Hochschild: My family's actually not from there, but they were in business there.Andrew Keen: Right, they were in the mining business, weren't they?Adam Hochschild: That's right. Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Well, I don't think it would be on quite the same model as South Africa's. But I certainly think we need to find some way of talking across the differences that we have. Coming from the left side of that divide I just feel all too often when I'm talking to people who feel as I do about the world that there is a kind of contempt or disinterest in Trump's backers. These are people that I want to understand, that we need to understand. We need to understand them in order to hear what their real grievances are and to develop alternative policies that are going to give them a real alternative to vote for. Unless we can do that, we're going to have Trump and his like for a long time, I fear.Andrew Keen: Wise words, Adam. I hope in the next 500 episodes of this show, things will improve. We'll get you back on the show, keep doing your important work, and I'm very excited to learn more about your new project, which we'll come to in the next few months or certainly years. Thank you so much.Adam Hochschild: OK, thank you, Andrew. Good being with you. This is a public episode. 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In this episode we interview Tariq Khan on his book The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression.  We'll be releasing this conversation as a two part episode on this excellent book which studies how anticommunism within the US is deeply intertwined with settler colonialism, anti-indigenous thought, and genocidal violence. This helps us to reframe our often twentieth century centric view of anti-left repression in the US. Khan's work on the 19th century in particular also helps us to see the ways things like race science, eugenics, and phrenology were formed a backbone of the original assumptions of US policing, anti-anarchist repression, lynching, and regimes of deportation. Alongside and related to settler colonial violence against indigenous people, and anti-Black violence, we also through this conversation really get into how central the repression of anarchists in the 19th century was to the development of logics and technologies of anti-left repression in the so-called United States.  It is also important to see the resonance between US genocidal violence and state repression and that of the so-called State of Israel on Palestinians, something we explore a little bit more in part two of this discussion along with delving into William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and more. This conversation was recorded this past December so we don't reference a lot of what has happened in the last couple of months, but pairing this conversation with a discussion we hosted on our YouTube channel a week ago with Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly (CBS) helps us to see how many things we are constantly told represent the crossing of new red lines, or the onset of a fascism that is foreign to the US, are actually foundational pillars of US statecraft, warfare and policing with very long histories.  On the subject of our YouTube channel, we have once again been very busy over there, releasing eight episodes over the last two weeks. We are only 13 subscribers away from 10,000 on our YouTube page, so now is a great time to sign up for free if you haven't, and help us to hit that milestone. And you can catch up on all the conversations we've had over there recently and over the past year and a half if you've been following us there. We also set-up a “Buy Me A Coffee” account which allows people to offer us one time support if they prefer doing that instead of the recurring contributions of patreon. You can support us in either place, and that is the only financial support we receive for these audio episodes, so we really appreciate whatever you can give to keep these conversations coming.  Music by Televangel  Guest bio: Dr. Tariq Khan is a historian with an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intertwined forces underlying and shaping our social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. He has wide-ranging research, writing, and teaching experience in the fields of global capitalism, transnational studies, U.S. history, psychology, sociology, ethnicity & race studies, gender studies, colonialism & postcolonialism, labor & working-class history, radical social movements, history “from below,” public history, and community-based research and teaching. A few examples of his published works are his chapter “Living Social Dynamite: Early Twentieth-Century IWW-South Asia Connections,” in the book Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW,  his chapter “Frantz Fanon,” in the forthcoming anthology Fifty Key Scholars in Black Social Thought, and his new book The Republic Shall Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression

THE MAD LAD Michael D. Kennedy returns to the show to talk about his newest book that's out now on Drawn & Quarterly, Milk White Steed. We catch up with Michael on his journey of making the book, UK's dire economic situation and how it's impacted artists like himself, what motivates him to keep making work, and his recent residency at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. We also suck him off for like a solid 15 minutes because the book is that good. Follow Michael on IG @michael_d_kennedy to check out more of his comics. Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email us at gutterboyspodcast@gmail.com and we'll read it on the next episode, or give the Gutter Boys a follow on Instagram and Twitter (JB: @mortcrimpjr; Cam: @camdelrosario). And of course, please rate, review, like, share, and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform and help grow the Gutter Gang Nation! If you're feeling generous, subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/gutterboys (or gutterboys.top) and browse our different subscription tiers to receive exclusive merch, behind-the-scenes comic process updates, bonus episodes, plus much more! Support this podcast: https://gutterboyspodcast.podbean.com/  

Both major political parties claim to be the true champions of the working class at a time when excessive concentrations of wealth and power are eroding the foundations of American democracy. Unions are not a reality for most workers, especially in the private sector where the unionization rate is about 6 percent. So it is no surprise that worker solidarity -- a collective sense that working-class people have a shared interest in fighting for a greater share of the wealth and more control over their working lives -- is at a low point. In this episode, Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin traces the rise and fall of worker solidarity in America. Further reading: What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party by Michael Kazin Structure and Solidarity by Leo Casey in Dissent (article)

Matewan (written and directed by John Sayles) dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners' strike in 1920 in a small town in the hills of West Virginia. In the film, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, in his film debut), an ex-Wobbly organizer for the United Mine Workers (also known as the “Wobblies”), arrives in Matewan, to organize miners against the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Kenehan and his supporters must battle the company's use of scabs and outright violence, resist the complicity of law enforcement in the company's tactics, and overcome the racism and xenophobia that helps divide the labor movement. Sayles's film provides a window into the legal and social issues confronting the labor movement in the early twentieth century and into the Great Coalfield War of that period. I'm joined by Fred B. Jacob, Solicitor of the National Labor Relations Board and labor law professor at George Washington University Law School. Fred's views on this podcast are solely his own and not those of the National Labor Relations Board or the U.S. Government.Timestamps:0:00      Introduction2:46       A miner's life7:44       The power of the mining companies12:25     Law's hostility to labor19:01     Violence and the labor movement25:33    Organizing the miners in Matewan30:08   Overcoming racial and ethnic tensions within the labor movement39:29    What was law and who was law46:40    The Battle of Blair Mountain51:54:    From the Great Coalfield War to the National Labor Relations Act56:59    Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA1:01:59  The power of the strike Further reading:Green, James, The Devil Is Here in These Hills:West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom (2015)Hood, Abby Lee, “What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History,” Smithsonian Magazine (Aug. 25, 2001)Moore, Roger, “A Masterpiece that reminds us why there is a Labor Day,” Movie Nation (Sept. 2, 2024)Sayles, John, Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan (1987)Zappia, Charles A., “Labor, Race, and Ethnicity in the West Virginia Mines: 'Matewan,'” 30(4) J. Am. Ethnic History 44 (Summer 2011) Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.htmlYou can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.comYou can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilmYou can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast

Mini-podcast about an event on this day in working class history.Our work is only possible because of support from you, our listeners on patreon. If you appreciate our work, please join us and access exclusive content and benefits at patreon.com/workingclasshistory.See all of our anniversaries each day, alongside sources and maps on the On This Day section of our Stories app: stories.workingclasshistory.com/date/todayBrowse all Stories by Date here on the Date index: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/dateCheck out our Map of historical Stories: https://map.workingclasshistory.comCheck out books, posters, clothing and more in our online store, here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.comIf you enjoy this podcast, make sure to check out our flagship longform podcast, Working Class History.  AcknowledgementsWritten and edited by Working Class History.Theme music by Ricardo Araya. Check out his YouTube channel at youtube.com/@peptoattack

In this interview episode, Sam and Gabe sit down with Dr. Peter Cole, author of "Ben Fletcher: life and times of a Black Wobbly" and "Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia." Originally aired: October 16, 2023.Support the showwww.laborjawn.com

We're gonna get all Commie and Pinko on you here. #howthewestwasfucked#htwwf#americanhistory#oldwest#wildwest

Blood in the Streets, photographer Chuck Avery's illustrated history of American labor struggles, and Kurt Stand shares an excerpt from his essay, Peekskill, 1949: What Was Lost, What Remained, What It Means Today. On this week's Labor History in Two:  the year was 1918; that was the day that 101 leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies were convicted in a Chicago Federal Court. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at LaborHistoryToday@gmail.com Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. #LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory  

The saga of the Bisbee Deportation comes to an end. By 1920 everyone behind the illegal measure had gotten off scot free and by 1925 the Wobblies as an organization were pretty much dead. For all intents and purposes, Arizona was now in the hands of the copper companies.

After rounding up a couple thousand of their neighbors and acquaintances during the morning of July 12, 1917, the citizens of Bisbee held them at a local ballpark before stuffing the majority into the cattle cars of an eastbound train. About 15 hours later, the deported men founxd themselves abandoned, cold, thirty and starving in the middle of New Mexico.

Usually we have songwriters sharing their own songs, but today we have Chris David Westover-Muñoz, (and on Facebook) associate professor and director of bands at Denison University near Columbus, Ohio.

There's a crisis in Fairyland

Hey, y'all! For part four of the Eugene Debs saga, Gene keeps doing the thing he is best at and the thing he desperately never wants to do again: starting a brand new union and running for president. Also, he gets to experience the joy of trying to keep a group of socialists from splitting into their own party. In this episode, Gene is not having a great time.

Newly obtained documents reveal that the U.S. government was monitoring environmental activists opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline far earlier than previously known. Young, Native activists were among the government's first targets. The FBI file describes Native American groups as a potentially dangerous threat and likens them to “environmental extremists” whose actions could lead to violence. The records also reveal for the first time that the State Department was involved in monitoring activists, beginning in late 2013. From the Wobblies to the Black Panthers, this is an all too familiar pattern of the federal government surveilling and spying on anyone that deviates too much from business as usual. In the latest episode, Scott talks with journalist Adam Federman (@adamfederman) about his latest article exposing the U.S. government's spying on the anti-pipeline movement much earlier than thought. Bio// Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations who has written widely on environmental policy, public lands, and corporate and police spying on environmental activists. The recipient of a 2020 Fetisov Award for his environmental reporting, he has written for Politico Magazine, The Washington Post, Wired, Slate, The Nation, and other publications. His first book, Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray, was a New York Times notable book of 2017 and a finalist for the LA Times Book prize in biography. ------------------------------------------ Outro- "Fuck the FBI" by Intentional Harassment Links// +Adam's Website: http://adamfederman.com/ + How the U.S. Government Began Its Decade-Long Campaign Against the Anti-Pipeline Movement (https://bit.ly/3v48TRH) Follow Green and Red// +G&R Linktree: ⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast⁠⁠⁠ +Our rad website: ⁠⁠⁠https://greenandredpodcast.org/⁠⁠⁠ +We're part of the Labor Podcast Network: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.laborradionetwork.org/⁠⁠ + Join our Discord community (https://discord.gg/XS5jQkPF) Support the Green and Red Podcast// +Become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast +Or make a one time donation here: ⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/DonateGandR⁠⁠⁠ This is a Green and Red Podcast (@PodcastGreenRed) production. Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969). “Green and Red Blues" by Moody. Editing by Scott.

Industrial Workers of the World union grew strong in the woods just before the First World War broke out — and the U.S. Army had to teach soldiers to cut timber to get the industry moving again. (Lumber camps, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1301d-wobblies-come-to-oregon-timber.html)

We watch a documentary full of cool old people, daring strike actions, lumberjack stunts, and a knock-off Felix the Cat!   Check us out on social media: Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/teach-me-communism?ref_id=10068 Instagram: @teachmecommunism Twitter: @teachcommunism Gmail: teachmecommunism@gmail.com Patreon: Patreon.com/teachmecommunism  And like and subscribe to us at Teach Me Communism on YouTube!   Solidarity forever!

In this interview episode, Sam and Gabe sit down with Dr. Peter Cole, author of "Ben Fletcher: life and times of a Black Wobbly" and "Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia."Support the showhttps://linktr.ee/laborjawn

The final, final (no really) installment in our series on socialism looks narrowly at the period between World War One and the Russian Revolution to identify factors that contributed to the Bolshevik departure from Marxist theory and how nationalism squashed any hope for an internationalist movement. We revisit the words of the theorists and activists we covered in the series from Jeremy Bentham to Eugene Debs and raise difficult questions about the future of socialist activity in the United States specifically and whether new ideas are required to battle the ravages of capitalism. Chapters Intro: 00:04:17 Part One: 00:05:41 Part Two: 00:16:08 Post Show Musings: 00:37:16 Outro: 00:55:37 Book Love Joseph A. Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy John M. Thompson: Revolutionary Russia, 1917 Bernard Harcourt: Critique and Praxis Ray Ginger: The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx: Das Kapital  Michael Harrington: Socialism: Past and Future Victor Serge + Natalia Ivanovna Sedova: Life and Death of Leon Trotsky Anne Sebba: Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy Peter Kropotkin: The Conquest of Bread  Staughton Lynd + Andrej Grubačic: Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History Emma Goldman: Anarchism and Other Essays Anthony J. Nocella II, Mark Seis and Jeff Shantz: Classic Writings in Anarchist Criminology: A Historical Dismantling of Punishment and Domination. Margaret MacMillan: The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 Resources The Collector: What do Hegel and Marx Have in Common? Socialist Alternative: Robert Owen and Utopian Socialism Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Events Washington State University: Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism Howard Zinn: Commemorating Emma Goldman: 'Living My Life' Stanford: Hegel's Dialectics The History of Economic Thought: Cesare Beccaria  Stanford: Jeremy Bentham Foundation for Economic Education: Robert Owen: The Woolly-Minded Cotton Spinner Stanford: Karl Marx  Central European Economic and Social History: Economic Development In Europe In The 19th Century Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism The New Yorker: Karl Marx, Yesterday and Today Marxists.org: Glossary of Organisations Northwestern Whitepaper: The Second Industrial Revolution The Collector: Revolutions of 1848 Chemins de Mémoire: Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Journal of Modern History: 1870 in European History and Historiography JSTOR: Paul Avrich: The Legacy of Bakunin Marxists.org: Bakunin The Anarchist Library: The Federative Principle The Anarchist Library: Property Is Theft Jacobin: Why Kautsky was Right  The New Yorker: Dreyfus Affair The Jacobin: John Dewey Marxists.org: Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism  Spartacus Ed: Karl Kautsky U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: FAQs -- If you like the pod version of #UNFTR, make sure to check out the video version on YouTube where Max shows his beautiful face! www.youtube.com/@UNFTR Please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Join the Unf*cker-run Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/2051537518349565 Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee® at shop.unftr.com. Subscribe to Unf*cking The Republic® at unftr.com/blog to get the essays these episode are framed around sent to your inbox every week. Check out the UNFTR Pod Love playlist on Spotify: spoti.fi/3yzIlUP. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic® is produced by 99 and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is written and hosted by Max and distributed by 99. Podcast art description: Image of the US Constitution ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic®."Support the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/unftrSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lizaveta Merliak, former Salidarnast leader, on the Labor Heritage Power Hour. Today's labor quote: IWW. Today's labor history: Wobblies indicted for protesting WWI. @wpfwdc @AFLCIO #1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

This is technically the final installment of our series “Understanding Socialism” where we cover the period between the Paris Commune in 1871 and onset of World War I, which precedes (and leads to) the Russian Revolution in 1917. We're going to cover the Russian Revolution briefly in an epilogue that speaks to the divergence from classical Marxism from the Revolution forward and where socialist movements stand today. This final episode brings new figures into the spotlight such as Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg and crosses the pond to introduce the likes of Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs. Chapters Intro: 00:02:05 Chapter Ten: 00:07:16 Chapter Eleven: 00:22:43 Chapter Twelve: 00:50:52 Book Love Joseph A. Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy John M. Thompson: Revolutionary Russia, 1917 Bernard Harcourt: Critique and Praxis Ray Ginger: The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx: Das Kapital  Michael Harrington: Socialism: Past and Future Victor Serge + Natalia Ivanovna Sedova: Life and Death of Leon Trotsky Anne Sebba: Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy Peter Kropotkin: The Conquest of Bread  Staughton Lynd + Andrej Grubačic: Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History Emma Goldman: Anarchism and Other Essays Anthony J. Nocella II, Mark Seis and Jeff Shantz: Classic Writings in Anarchist Criminology: A Historical Dismantling of Punishment and Domination.    Resources The Collector: What do Hegel and Marx Have in Common? Socialist Alternative: Robert Owen and Utopian Socialism Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Events Washington State University: Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism Howard Zinn: Commemorating Emma Goldman: 'Living My Life' Stanford: Hegel's Dialectics The History of Economic Thought: Cesare Beccaria  Stanford: Jeremy Bentham Foundation for Economic Education: Robert Owen: The Woolly-Minded Cotton Spinner Stanford: Karl Marx  Central European Economic and Social History: Economic Development In Europe In The 19th Century Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism The New Yorker: Karl Marx, Yesterday and Today Marxists.org: Glossary of Organisations Northwestern Whitepaper: The Second Industrial Revolution The Collector: Revolutions of 1848 Chemins de Mémoire: Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Journal of Modern History: 1870 in European History and Historiography JSTOR: Paul Avrich: The Legacy of Bakunin Marxists.org: Bakunin The Anarchist Library: The Federative Principle The Anarchist Library: Property Is Theft The Collector: What do Hegel and Marx Have in Common? Socialist Alternative: Robert Owen and Utopian Socialism Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Events Washington State University: Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism | Common Errors in English Usage and More Howard Zinn: Commemorating Emma Goldman: 'Living My Life' Stanford: Hegel's Dialectics The History of Economic Thought: Cesare Beccaria  Stanford: Jeremy Bentham Foundation for Economic Education: Robert Owen: The Woolly-Minded Cotton Spinner Stanford: Karl Marx  Central European Economic and Social History: Economic Development In Europe In The 19th Century Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism The New Yorker: Karl Marx, Yesterday and Today Marxists.org: Glossary of Organisations Northwestern Whitepaper: The Second Industrial Revolution  The Collector: Revolutions of 1848 Chemins de Mémoire: Franco-Prussian War of 1870 Journal of Modern History: 1870 in European History and Historiography Jacobin: Why Kautsky was Right  The New Yorker: Dreyfus Affair  The Jacobin: John Dewey  Marxists.org: Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism  Spartacus Ed: Karl Kautsky -- If you like the pod version of #UNFTR, make sure to check out the video version on YouTube where Max shows his beautiful face! www.youtube.com/@UNFTR Please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Join the Unf*cker-run Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/2051537518349565 Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee® at shop.unftr.com. Subscribe to Unf*cking The Republic® at unftr.com/blog to get the essays these episode are framed around sent to your inbox every week. Check out the UNFTR Pod Love playlist on Spotify: spoti.fi/3yzIlUP. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic® is produced by 99 and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is written and hosted by Max and distributed by 99. Podcast art description: Image of the US Constitution ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic®."Support the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/unftrSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ahmed White talks about his history of the Wobblies, Under the Iron Heel. Then Nikhil Goyal tells us about his book, Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty.

Longtime union organizer Bob Muehlenkamp on how a failed 1969 strike in Charleston led to an organizing win for Baltimore-area hospital and nursing home workers. Today's labor quote: The Wobblies. Today's labor history: IWW members tried for opposing war. @wpfwdc @AFLCIO #1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod @1199SEIU_MDDC Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

Happy Wednesday! We love y'all and hope that you're having a blessed week. We hope that you enjoy this week's podcast!

Work Week Radio reports the threat of robot taxis in San Francisco. Today's labor quote: Boris Karloff. Today's labor history: Bisbee deports Wobblies. @wpfwdc @AFLCIO #1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod @labormedianow Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, are celebrated on the left for their militant opposition to capitalism, their broad church unionism across race and gender lines, and their ability to organize migrant and other precarious workers. As Ahmed White documents, they were crushed by unprecedented violence and vigilantism, which cast a long shadow over the U.S. labor movement and the left. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers UC Press, 2022 The post The War on the Industrial Workers of the World appeared first on KPFA.

Comentario: 154 del natalicio de Emma Goldman, la mujer más odiada de América Agitadora, propagandista y promotora de los métodos anticonceptivos y la igualdad de género, fue considerada por los tribunales estadounidenses como una de las mujeres más peligrosas de la puritana América de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX. ‘Emma la Roja’ se convirtió en un hito de la historia del feminismo Nota del 2020: https://www.lavanguardia.com/hemeroteca/20200513/481097748007/emma-goldman-feminismo-anarquismo-mujeres-estados-unidos-rusia-emma-la-roja.html "Si no puedo bailar, no quiero ser parte de tu revolución" "Puede que me arresten, me procesen y me metan en la cárcel, pero nunca me callaré; nunca asentiré o me someteré a la autoridad, nunca haré las paces con un sistema que degrada a la mujer a una mera incubadora y que se ceba con sus inocentes víctimas. Aquí y ahora declaro la guerra a este sistema y no descansaré hasta que sea liberado el camino para una libre maternidad y una saludable, alegre y feliz niñez." Aniversario 118 del sidicato Industrial Workers of the World —Trabajadores Industriales del Mundo— (IWW o los Wobblies) https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World El sindicato IWW fue fundado en junio de 1905 en Chicago en una convención de 200 socialistas, anarquistas y sindicalistas revolucionarios de todos los Estados Unidos, principalmente de la Western Federation of Miners, opositores de las políticas de la American Federation of Labor (AFL). La convención tuvo lugar el 27 de junio de ese año, y se la llamó como el "Industrial Congress" o la "Industrial Union Convention"; más tarde se la conocería como la First Annual Convention of the IWW (Primera Convención Anual de la IWW). Este ha sido considerado uno de los sucesos más importantes en la historia del sindicalismo obrero industrial y del movimiento laboral americano en general Felicitaciones al amigo Jorge Vélez-Juarbe Descubren primeros antepasados de los delfines. Los detalles fueron publicados en un artículo escrito por un investigador puertorriqueño. https://www.primerahora.com/estilos-de-vida/ph-mas-pa-aprender/notas/descubren-primeros-antepasados-de-los-delfines/ Abre convocatoria del Fondo de Becas Benito Massó para Jóvenes de Loíza https://www.fcpr.org/2023/06/22/opotunidad-de-becas-para-jovenes-de-loiza-del-fondo-benito-masso/ Botadera de dinero: Jay Fonseca en Twitter @jayfonsecapr: Puerto Rico votará por presidente simbólicamente conforme a la ley electoral del 2020 y que esta parte entra en vigor en 2024 por lo que de fondos del pueblo de PR pagaremos por un voto presidencial simbólico. Hoy (pasado domingo) sale la encuesta de NBC que encontró que Trump barre en la primaria, pero Biden ganaría la elección. Biden le gana por 4% a Trump, pero con DeSantis quedaría empate según encuesta de NBC la que pone a Trump barriendo con DeSantis en la primaria. ¿Por quién votarás en primaria republicana y en elección general? Destituyen a la delegada congresional Elizabeth Torres. El veredicto responde a un supuesto incumplimiento de las responsabilidades de su cargo. https://www.elvocero.com/gobierno/legislatura/documento-destituyen-a-la-delegada-congresional-elizabeth-torres/article_19f2d9c0-1441-11ee-9af5-b76ffc0d2e09.html

The Industrial Workers of the World or IWW is remembered as militant and creative. Its vision was one big union where workers decide what to produce, working conditions, and pay. […] The post Ahmed White: Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers and Isn't It Time to Nationalize the Railroads? appeared first on KKFI.

Ahmed White, author of "Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers." The term 'Wobblies' in the subtitle refers to members of the I.W.W. - the Industrial Workers of the World - a radical union formed in 1905 that sought to overturn capitalism in order to eliminate the brutal working conditions of millions of U.S. factory workers in early 20th century America. The union was ultimately destroyed thanks to internal division as well as a concerted attack from government officials, law enforcement, and capitalist leaders.

The Wobblies is a nickname for an early 20th century union called the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW. Book author Ahmed White writes: "Like the Christian martyrs to whom they have been likened, the Wobblies were left to find confirmation and redemption mainly in their own destruction." Yale Law School graduate Ahmed White has a book titled "Under the Iron Heel," a takeoff from a novel written by author Jack London. Prof. White is currently teaching labor and criminal law at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest: Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University in Macomb and a research associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.  He is the author of the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia.  He coedited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW. He is the founder and codirector of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.  His latest book is Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. The post The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly: Ben Fletcher appeared first on KPFA.

WPFW (89.3 FM) celebrates International Workers Day, Wobblies rally and march, DC Labor FilmFest opens tonight. Today's labor quote: Billy Bragg sings The Internationale. Today's labor history: 8-hour day demonstrations launch May Day tradition. @wpfwdc #1u #unions #LaborRadioPod @AFLCIO @DC_IWW@AFISilver #BlackBerry Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

We talk to Logar the Barbarian about this past Zine Quest and big changes happening at the Wobblies and Wizards - the daily podcast that features Indie game designers sharing their new games. Learn more about Logar and Wobblies and Wizards: https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizards https://www.patreon.com/wobbliesandwizards https://www.facebook.com/wobbliesandwizards https://twitter.com/LogarHailCrom https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGCTMmdN-k17RHg2cTlXx2w http://www.wobbliesandwizards.com Learn more about Dieku Games: https://diekugames.com https://diekugames.itch.io https://www.instagram.com/diekugames https://www.twitter.com/diekugames https://www.tiktok.com/@diekugames https://www.patreon.com/diekugames https://discord.gg/6yhYJx92SN #osr #ttrpg #gamedesign --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/diekugames/message

We will be wrapping up Wobblies & Wizards daily podcast at the end of March. So that's this next month of your daily 15 minute RPG podcast for your drive to work in the mornings you can still catch. And Logar announces his intent to sing, so listen in to catch it when he does. https://www.patreon.com/wobbliesandwizards --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizards/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wobbliesandwizards/support

The American Legion held an Armistice Day procession in Centralia's downtown on the 11th of November, 1919. In what is now known as the Centralia Massacre, or the Centralia Tragedy, a number of Wobblies opened fire on the legionnaires at the conclusion of the procession. Four legionnaires were shot and killed, including Warren Grimm. An enraged mob beat and lynched a Wobbly that evening named Wesley Everest, the last known lynching in the Evergreen State.Listen now to learn more about this Evergreen State labor tragedy!A special thank you goes out to Al Hirsch for providing the music for the podcast, check him out on YouTube.Find merchandise for the podcast now available at:     https://washington-history-by-jon-c.creator-spring.comIf you enjoy the podcast and would like to contribute, please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/EvergreenpodIf you have any questions, episode ideas you'd like to see explored, or just have a general comment, please reach out at Historyoftheevergreenstatepod@gmail.comTo keep up on news for the podcast and other related announcements, please like and follow:https://www.facebook.com/HistoryoftheevergreenstatepodcastThank you for listening!

The worst labor dispute in Northwest history has been dubbed the Everett Massacre and took place on Sunday, the 5th of November, 1916. On that day, a group of Industrial Workers of the World, better known as Wobblies, took the steamers Verona and Calista from Seattle to Everett with the intention of speaking in support of a strike by nearby shingle-weavers at the intersection of Hewitt and Wetmore Avenues. They were prevented from landing by a team of citizen-deputies working under Snohomish County Sheriff Donald McRae. There was a shot, then several minutes of gunfire that resulted in the deaths of two deputies and at least five Wobblies. 74 IWW members were detained and transported back to the Snohomish County jail when the ships arrived in Seattle.Listen now to learn more about this tragedy! A special thank you goes out to Al Hirsch for providing the music for the podcast, check him out on YouTube.Find merchandise for the podcast now available at:     https://washington-history-by-jon-c.creator-spring.comIf you enjoy the podcast and would like to contribute, please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/EvergreenpodIf you have any questions, episode ideas you'd like to see explored, or just have a general comment, please reach out at Historyoftheevergreenstatepod@gmail.comTo keep up on news for the podcast and other related announcements, please like and follow:https://www.facebook.com/HistoryoftheevergreenstatepodcastThank you for listening!

The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, are celebrated on the left for their militant opposition to capitalism, their broad church unionism across race and gender lines, and their ability to organize migrant and other precarious workers. As Ahmed White documents, they were crushed by unprecedented violence and vigilantism, which cast a long shadow over the U.S. labor movement and the left. Resources: Ahmed White, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers UC Press, 2022 The post The War on the Industrial Workers of the World appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Ahmed White teaches labor and criminal law at the University of Colorado Boulder and is author of Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers. The post The Rise & Fall of The Wobblies: America's Most Radical Union appeared first on KPFA.

The Pacific Northwest is a lumber magnate's dream: high-quality wood in quantities one can only imagine and cheap, easily exploited labor to harvest it. But a pesky bunch calling themselves Wobblies has taken root in the region, and their presence is creating a disobedient and un-American workforce. 

This is the continuation of our conversation with Winston James about his latest work Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik. In part 1 we talked about McKay's origins in Jamaica up through the Red Summer of 1919 when he would pen his famous poem “If We Must Die.” In this conversation we talk about McKay's time in Harlem, his relationship with Hubert Harrison, his support of - and political differences with - the Garvey movement or the UNIA. In that vein we also talk about McKay's theorization of the relationship between class struggle, anticolonial struggle, and anticapitalist revolution. And relatedly his support of movements for Irish nationalism, Indian independence, and Black Nationalism.  James also shares McKay's experiences as a worker, as a member of the Wobblies or the IWW, and as a member of Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers Socialist Federation in the UK and some associated discussion of syndicalism and leftwing communism. We close with some reflections on McKay's attitudes towards Bolshevism over time, especially after Lenin. We really enjoyed Winston James book and highly recommend it to people who are interested in McKay's life or just in history including debates of the Black left - and communist left - in the early 20th century. You can pick up Winston James' Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik which is currently on sale from our friends at Massive Bookshop. A final reminder as this is likely to be our final episode of this month. October is the 5 year anniversary of Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. We had set a goal of adding 50 patrons this month. And with 2 days left is attainable. We need just 4 more patrons to hit that goal. You can help us hit that goal for as little as $1 a month or $10.80 per year at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. A new post will be up on patreon about it this week, but our Black Marxism study group will start up in November, and our 5 year anniversary episode is still on its way.

In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history. Under the Iron Heel is the first comprehensive account of this campaign. Founded in 1905, the IWW offered to the millions of workers aggrieved by industrial capitalism the promise of a better world. But its growth, coinciding with World War I and the Russian Revolution and driven by uncompromising militancy, was seen by powerful capitalists and government officials as an existential threat that had to be eliminated. In Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers (U California Press, 2022), Ahmed White documents the torrent of legal persecution and extralegal, sometimes lethal violence that shattered the IWW. In so doing, he reveals the remarkable courage of those who faced this campaign, lays bare the origins of the profoundly unequal and conflicted nation we know today, and uncovers disturbing truths about the law, political repression, and the limits of free speech and association in class society. Ahmed White teaches labor and criminal law at the University of Colorado Boulder and is author of The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America. Jackson Reinhardt is a graduate of University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University. He is currently an independent scholar, freelance writer, and research assistant. You can reach Jackson at jtreinhardt1997@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @JTRhardt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 1917, the Industrial Workers of the World was rapidly gaining strength and members. Within a decade, this radical union was effectively destroyed, the victim of the most remarkable campaign of legal repression and vigilantism in American history. Under the Iron Heel is the first comprehensive account of this campaign. Founded in 1905, the IWW offered to the millions of workers aggrieved by industrial capitalism the promise of a better world. But its growth, coinciding with World War I and the Russian Revolution and driven by uncompromising militancy, was seen by powerful capitalists and government officials as an existential threat that had to be eliminated. In Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers (U California Press, 2022), Ahmed White documents the torrent of legal persecution and extralegal, sometimes lethal violence that shattered the IWW. In so doing, he reveals the remarkable courage of those who faced this campaign, lays bare the origins of the profoundly unequal and conflicted nation we know today, and uncovers disturbing truths about the law, political repression, and the limits of free speech and association in class society. Ahmed White teaches labor and criminal law at the University of Colorado Boulder and is author of The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America. Jackson Reinhardt is a graduate of University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University. He is currently an independent scholar, freelance writer, and research assistant. You can reach Jackson at jtreinhardt1997@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @JTRhardt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Mike Hellman is country and americana musician writing songs, putting out albums and playing gigs in Texas, California and beyond. But he also has organized with the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) for over a decade. He's been part of campaigns against Starbucks and Whole Foods a long time before the current campaigns against those corporate giants. Flying solo, Scott talks with old friend and comrade Mike about music and labor politics. They discussed his campaign and organizing work with the Wobblies, thoughts on the current state of labor and how big unions and labor law formulated for the bosses hold the rank and file back.They also talk about his musical influences and inspiration, from hip hop to punk to Joe Hill. We then about his upcoming live gigs in California and his new album. Mike Hellman (@MikeHellmanForReal) is a construction worker by day and a country and americana troubadour by night. He also has been an organizer with the Wobblies, Earth First! and various other radical causes. -------------------------- Interlude- Mike Hellman "Someday" Outro- Mike Hellman "What I am" Links MikeHellmanMusic.com Mike on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/mikehellmanforreal/ Follow Green and Red// G&R Linktree: https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast https://greenandredpodcast.org/ NEW LINK! Join our Discord community: Support the Green and Red Podcast// Become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast Or make a one time donation here: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR **Our friends with Certain Days now have their 2023 calendar available for sale. Get yours now at https://www.certaindays.org/ This is a Green and Red Podcast (@PodcastGreenRed) production. Produced by Bob (@bobbuzzanco) and Scott (@sparki1969). “Green and Red Blues" by Moody. Editing by Isaac.

Industrial Workers of the World union grew strong in the woods just before the First World War broke out — and the U.S. Army had to teach soldiers to cut timber to get the industry moving again. (1900s, 1910s) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1301d-wobblies-come-to-oregon-timber.html)

David discusses the movies he's been watching, including Delta Space Mission, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Holy Mountain, The Wobblies, Bitterbrush, Los Conductos, Psychomagic, a Healing Art, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Montana Story.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Happy belated May Day!We celebrate international workers’ day by discussing a newly remastered version of the 1979 documentary The Wobblies (directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer), now showing in theaters and online. We discuss the continuing relevance of the Industrial Workers of the World for today’s labor movements, its universalist vision (in contrast to that of the AFL), the role of the Pacific Northwest in labor history, and continuities in the organization of labor and business ever since. Plus: a controversy over the screening at Metrograph in New York.Then, we get back to the pod’s roots to talk about what’s next in the pandemic, in a United States that seems increasingly ready to get rid of all of its mandates. What do we make of data suggesting that even the vaccinated are at risk of dying? Are our pandemic responses doomed to be privatized and individualized?Thanks for listening, and get in touch via Substack, timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com, https://twitter.com/ttsgpod, and/or https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe

Breht was invited onto the local NPR station in Omaha to discuss the classic documentary from 1979 "The Wobblies" to help promote its remastering and re-release in theaters across the country this May Day! Find a showing near you here: https://kinomarquee.com/film/venue/624202eb7b0e1200011ce8c3 Find the original version of The Wobblies for free on YT here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7U9wQ7La4&ab_channel=TretanoTrampo Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Russian missiles fly over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising fears of a nuclear disaster; Science writer Ed Yong on why future pandemics are more likely, due to the climate crisis; The landmark 1979 labor documentary “The Wobblies” is rereleased in high definition and entered into the Library of Congress. Get Democracy Now! delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Daily Digest: democracynow.org/subscribe

Holy cow, this is Working People's 200th episode! Thank you to everyone who has listened to and supported us over the past five seasons—and, of course, thank you to every guest who has ever come on the show to share their story. To commemorate our 200th regular-season episode, we have a special installment of our series of conversations with teachers, organizers, scholars, and activists in Wisconsin that Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) recorded in the summer of 2021 as part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine. In this episode, we talk with longtime artist, activist, and registered nurse Susan Simensky Bietila in Milwaukee. Hearkening back to the episodes we published in the first season of Working People, this is an extended conversation that traces the incredible, winding path that Sue has taken in life, from growing up in the projects in New York to drawing and collaging for The Guardian, the radical US newsweekly, during the height of the Vietnam War, to protesting at the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 during the Wisconsin Uprising.   Additional links/info below... Susan Simensky Bietila's website and art archives  Susan Simensky Bietila, "Wisconsin: Walk Like an Egyptian"  Susan Simensky Bietila's Facebook page Paul Buhle & Nicole Schulman (eds.), Verso, Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World  Maximillian Alvarez, Current Affairs, "Can the Working Class Speak?" In These Times investigative series: The Wisconsin Idea The Jacobin Show, "The Democratic Coalition after Trump and the Fall of Wisconsin" Dan Kaufman, Norton Books, The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics Michael D. Yates, Monthly Review Press, Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back John Nichols, Bold Type Books, Uprising: How Scott Walker Betrayed Wisconsin and Inspired a New Politics of Protest Permanent links below... Working People Patreon page Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show! Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org) Jules Taylor, "Working People Theme Song"