MK Lees, contributor and regular editor of Organizing Work, joins Laborwave Radio to discuss the strategy of "salting" a workplace to boost a union campaign, and the need to refine this practice for optimal impact.

Among topics discussed in this episode is a response to the claim that salting is the best strategy for revitalizing a militant labor movement, and how salting done well abides by understanding that a salt cannot substitute for a committee of rank and file workers. 

The article, "Salt: The Flavor, Not the Meal," published in Organizing Work formed the basis of our conversation. Read it at https://organizing.work/2020/06/salt-the-flavor-not-the-meal/ 


Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

Union Shop: Consider a "Salt-free" Meal w/ MK Lees

Ruby and Zama, workers at Amazon and members of Amazonians United, join the show to discuss their methods of shop floor organizing and direct unionism.

They share stories of how AU emerged, initially through breaking bread and resocializing the workplace, to their first direct action demanding access to water in the shop. 

We also discussed the dismissal of AU by proponents of business unionism, and offer a critique of conventional labor union practices.

Learn more about AU at https://www.amazoniansunited.org/ 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.  

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners.
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Music:
Ty Segall- Love Fuzz

Shop Floor Organizing at Amazon w/ Amazonians United Chicagoland

Veteran labor organizer, Elizabeth Laycak, joins the show to discuss how two new workers employed by Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. in Scranton, PA would initiate a unionization campaign with a strategy to win. 

We cover mapping and charting, assessments, identifying leaders (and isolating anti-union workers), along with the importance of secrecy and inoculation throughout the campaign. 

Very fun episode and Laborwave Radio is making an open invitation to any of our listeners that wish to discuss the hypothetical union campaign they would conduct at any fictional workplace on television or the big screen! Contact LR at laborwavenews@gmail.com if you've got a pitch!

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.  

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

Unionizing "The Office" (US Version) w/ Elizabeth Laycak

Eric Laursen, author of The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State, joins the show to provide a concrete analysis of the State as opposed to states and compares the modern state to an operating system. 

As he explains, the State seeks to be everything. The State absorbs dissent and incorporates it into building a more expansive State. Though humans created the State, it has become nearly autonomous and now shapes our conceptions of ourselves. 

How do we break away from the State? What would it look like to replace the State? These challenging questions and more in our conversation with Eric Laursen.

Get a copy of the book at https://www.akpress.org/operating-system.html 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State

Marianne Garneau, publisher of Organizing.Work, joins the show to discuss her article Workplace Struggles Are Political.

Garneau's provides a necessary corrective over common views amongst "socialists" that work and politics are two separate spheres in which struggle takes place. Following the wrongheaded opinion of Lenin, who assessed workers as only capable of rising to a level of "trade union consciousness," these socialists, according to Garneau, "take a surprisingly apolitical view of what goes on in the workplace."

Lenin Was Wrong: Workplace Struggles Are Political

Joe Burns, a veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer and the author of Strike Back and Reviving the Strike, joins the show to discuss the role militant traditional labor strikes have in revitalizing the labor movement. His forthcoming book is Class Struggle Unionism, from Haymarket Books.

Burns highlights the limitations of labor strategies that prioritize either reforming labor law, electing new labor officials, or seek to "organize our way out of the crisis" by increasing union density. All of these approaches, while they may possess beneficial aspects, fall short of accomplishing the rebirth of a militant labor movement if they are not backed by a wave of traditional labor strikes. 

We discuss this and more in our conversation. Get a copy of Reviving the Strike and Strike Back at https://www.igpub.com/reviving-the-strike/ and pre-order a copy of the forthcoming title, Class Struggle Unionism, at https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1767-class-struggle-unionism 

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

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Reviving The Strike

Bill Fletcher Jr joins the show and discusses the need for "social justice unionism" in a post-Janus United States. Workers are increasingly atomized in the US, and the state continues to rollback any investments into the reproductive labor that stitches society together. The moment, as Fletcher Jr states, that organized labor can seize for victory is almost over. We might not get another moment.

What role do teachers strikes, worker-owned businesses, and housing cooperatives play in seizing this current moment? How do the rank and file push labor leadership to understand that we cannot continue doing "business as usual" despite not being knocked out by Janus right away?

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

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State of Unions After Janus vs. AFSCME

Andrea Haverkamp, a labor organizer based in Seattle, joins the show to talk shop about organic leaders, private vs public sector organizing approaches, one-on-one conversations, internal democracy, and more!

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners.
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Shop Talk: Are They An Organic Leader or Bootlicker?

Liz, host of Rebel Steps podcast, joins the show to discuss a fictional workplace campaign to unionize the hotel workers at the illustrious White Lotus!

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

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Organizing the White Lotus w/ Liz from Rebel Steps

Michael Beyea Reagan discusses the characteristics of intersectional class struggle and shares insights around movement-building geared toward the task of fighting all forms of oppression.

Get a copy of the book that informs this conversation at https://www.akpress.org/intersectional-class-struggle.html 

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.


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Intersectional Class Struggle

Joe Burns discusses class struggle unionism on this joint episode between Laborwave Radio and Wobcast of Organizing Work. 

Marianne Garneau collaborates on this interview with Joe Burns about his forthcoming book from Haymarket, Class Struggle Unionism.

The current labor movement is dominated, and negatively influenced, by what Burns describes as "labor liberalism." In order to revive a militant union movement, he argues, we need to break free of labor liberalism and return to the aggressive tactics that animate the spirit of class struggle. 

To order a copy of the book, visit https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1767-class-struggle-unionism

Check out the articles on Organizing Work and episodes of Wobcast at organizing.work

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com 

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

Class Struggle Unionism [cross-over w/ Wobcast!]

Daisy Pitkin joins the show to discuss her book about labor organizing and solidarity, On The Line.

Daisy Pitkin has spent more than twenty years as a community and union organizer, working first in support of garment workers around the world, and then for U.S. labor unions organizing industrial laundry workers. Her essays have been awarded the Montana Prize, the DISQUIET Literary Prize, the New Millennium Award, and the Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship. She grew up in rural Ohio and received an MFA from the University of Arizona. Pitkin lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she works as an organizer with an offshoot of the union UNITE. Find her at daisypitkin.net.

On The Line w/ Daisy Pitkin

Graham Kovich joins the show to discuss varying media and communications strategies for increasing union power. 

Graham is running for the role of Communications Officer for the IWW and explains his viewpoints on the need for internally focused communications that are member-driven, and how and when it's most effective to utilize external communications to meet union needs.

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwave We have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server.

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

Media Strategies for Unions, A Wobbly's Take with Graham Kovich

Nick Driedger joins the show to discuss the legacy and ideas of William Z. Foster, former president the Communist Party USA and trade unionist involved in the early IWW and AFL. 

We adopt a critical lens discuss Foster's concepts of a "militant minority" and "boring from within" as a strategy for pulling conservative unions to the left. Driedger also explains the reaction and criticism leveled against Foster's ideas when he presented them to the IWW in 1911. 

This and more on the latest episode of Laborwave Radio.

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com  

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com  

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwaveWe have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server. 

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

William Z. Foster: A Critical Examination on his Theories and Politics

Second episode in our discussion of the life and thought of William Z. Foster. 

On this go around Lucas Carpenter and Tim Shields join the show to do a deep dive over Foster's proposed methods for effective labor organizing. In particular we examine his pamphlets Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry and Strike Strategy. 

We also discuss the techniques of pink sheeting, role of popular education in organizing, and competing conceptions of leadership identification and development.

This and more on the latest episode of Laborwave Radio.

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com  

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com  

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwaveWe have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server. 

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

William Z. Foster: A Critical Examination on his Methods and Strategies

Toni Gilpin joins the show to discuss her book, The Long Deep Grudge, which chronicles the epic battles of the Farm Equipment Workers Union (FE) against corporate giant International Harvester.

From the book description, "International Harvester – and the McCormick family that largely controlled it – garnered a reputation for bare-knuckled union-busting in the 1880s, but in the 20th century also pioneered sophisticated union-avoidance techniques that have since become standard corporate practice. On the other side the militant Farm Equipment Workers union, connected to the Communist Party, mounted a vociferous challenge to the cooperative ethos that came to define the American labor movement after World War II."

Order the book at https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1383-the-long-deep-grudge 

Laborwave Radio has joined the Channel Zero Network, an english-based anarchist radio/podcast network run by radical media makers. Explore the network's co-conspirators at channelzeronetwork.com 

Send comments and questions about labor organizing to laborwavenews@gmail.com  

Please support Laborwave Radio by subscribing to our patreon at patreon.com/laborwaveWe have gifts depending on the tier you join, and exclusive access to our archives and Discord server. 

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/laborwave-radio/id1536697871

The Long Deep Grudge w/ Toni Gilpin

Matthew Dimick, Professor of Law at the University of Buffalo, joins the show to respond to recent debate over the Wagner Act. Dimick makes clear that rather than trying to posit the Act was a gift to labor that the labor movement should be cautious whenever the state seeks to substitute its powers for unions own self-activity. 

Our discussion touches on the following articles written by Dimick in Organizing Work and Catalyst Journal. 

Counterfeit Liberty- https://catalyst-journal.com/2019/07/counterfeit-liberty

The Wagner Act, Cause and Consequences- https://organizing.work/2022/08/the-wagner-act-causes-and-consequences/

Labor Rights or Labor Freedoms? A Conversation with Matthew Dimick

Back from hiatus with a no holds barred takedown of every popular argument for reviving the power of organizing labor! Marianne Garneau, editor in chief of Organizing Work, joins the discussion to breakdown the debates on organizing the unorganized, the rank and file strategy, and forming new types of contemporary unions.

Check out my new article in Organizing Work that dives deeper into the problems with the "militant minority" tendency: https://organizing.work

How To Revive the Labor Movement w/ Marianne Garneau

Eric Dirnbach joins the show to discuss premajority unionism, where you don't need to wait around to act like a union but can be a union from the start! 

We also talk about strikes, dues checkoff, fighting corporate giants like Starbucks and Amazon, and more. 

Check out the article written by Eric Dirnbach and Colette Perold on premajority unionism at https://workerorganizing.org/premajority-unionism/

Premajority Unionism with Eric Dirnbach

"Rather than viewing strikes as a last-resort bargaining tactic, the labor movement must embrace them as engines of political transformation."

Erik Baker, an American historian, associate editor at The Drift, and a former UAW staff organizer, joins Laborwave to discuss his article for Jewish Currents, Revaluing the Strike. 

You can read the full article at https://jewishcurrents.org/revaluing-the-strike

Revaluing The Strike w/ Erik Baker

"At their best, premonitions alert us to the unresolved history contained within the smallest of fragments. The distress that such attentiveness yields makes sense; it corresponds to the developmental outcomes demanded by the neurotic course on which we're set. Such outcomes are not inevitable, however, and Premonitions may yet suggest another path." 

We spoke with AK Thompson about his recent book, Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt. Our conversation touched on subjects as wide-ranging as Occupy Wall Street and decolonization to prefigurative politics and James Cameron's Avatar. 

AK Thompson is a activist, author, and social theorist. A professor of social movements and social change at Ithaca College, his publications include Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements/Social Research (2006), Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent (2010), Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (2016), and Spontaneous Combustion: The Eros Effect and Global Revolution (2017). 

Get a copy of Premonitions at:
https://www.akpress.org/premonitions.html

Read a conversation about Premonitions at:
http://www.revolutionbythebook.akpress.org/having-premonitions-an-interview-with-ak-thompson/

Music by John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees:
Can You See
Wait, Let's Go
The Axis

Premonitions on the Culture of Revolt w/ AK Thompson

Laborwave spoke with Nora Samaran about her recent publication, Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture, printed by AK Press. 

Our conversation ranged from topics of trauma, violence, rape culture, numbness, entitlement, and gaslighting along with care, nurturance, healing, empathy, attachment, and systemic change. 

Turn This World Inside Out tackles all of these subjects along with dialogues on white supremacy, transphobia, settler colonization, and the power of turning our gifts for healing toward societal change. 

Get a copy from AK Press at:
https://www.akpress.org/turn-this-world-inside-out.html

Read Nora Samaran at: 
https://norasamaran.com/ 

Nora Samaran is a white settler from a working class immigrant family background. She was a member of the No One is Illegal-Vancouver collective from 2005-2008, and the Media Democracy Day-Vancouver collective from 2008-2010. Her essay ‘The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture’ went viral in February 2016 and has grown into a book, Turn This World Inside Out, out with AK Press in June 2019. She teaches at Douglas College in Coast Salish Territories, also known as Vancouver, British Columbia.

Music:
Thee Oh Sees- Ship
Thee Oh Sees- Minotaur
Alex Riccio- Interstitial

Turn This World Inside Out: The Opposite of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture w/ Nora Samaran

Full transcript at laborwaveradio.com/jarrodshanahan

We explore the life and legacy of Noel Ignatiev through conversation with Jarrod Shanahan, a life-long comrade of Noel's and co-editor along with Noel Ignatiev on the journal Hard Crackers. 

Noel Ignatiev passed on November 9, 2019 at the age of 78. He was a dedicated antiracist leftist who edited the journals Race Traitor and Hard Crackers and wrote the widely influential book How The Irish Became White. The enduring legacy of Noel Ignatiev's life and thought may best be summed up by the slogan printed on the cover of Race Traitor: "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." 

We discuss with Jarrod Shanahan Noel's theoretical contributions to analyses on whiteness and "white skin privilege" as well as his ideas on how small groups of radicals can change society through instigating "creative provocation," such as practiced by the Abolitionists against chattel slavery in the United States.

Jarrod Shanahan is an activist, educator, and researcher. His writing, which has appeared in outlets including Jacobin, Commune, Vice, and The New Inquiry, can be found at jarrodshanahan.com.

Read Jarrod's full article commemorating the life and legacy of Noel Ignatiev at Commune Mag:
https://communemag.com/noel-ignatiev-1940-2019/

Further links: 
Opening Space for the Radical Imagination III
https://www.imaginativespaces.org

Laborwave Radio
https://www.labowaveradio.com

Noel Ignatiev Works Referenced:

Black Worker, White Worker
http://www.sojournertruth.net/bwww.html

How The Irish Became White
https://www.routledge.com/How-the-Irish-Became-White-1st-Edition/Ignatiev/p/book/9780415963091

Race Traitor
https://www.routledge.com/Race-Traitor-1st-Edition/Ignatiev-Garvey/p/book/9780415913935

Hard Crackers 
https://hardcrackers.com/

CUNY Struggle
https://cunystruggle.org/

$7K or Strike
https://7korstrike.org/

Robin DG Kelley
“After Trump” forum
http://bostonreview.net/forum/after-trump/robin-d-g-kelley-trump-says-go-back-we-say-fight-back

CLR James and Johnson-Forest tendency
For a good introduction into this strain of socialist thought, see 
The Invading Socialist Society by CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya, 
https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1947/invading/index.htm

Endnotes 
https://endnotes.org.uk/about

Treason To Whiteness Is Loyalty To Humanity: The Life of Noel Ignatiev w/ Jarrod Shanahan

Full Transcript Available At:
laborwaveradio.com/asadhaider

What is the relationship between race and class, and which should be the primary focus for addressing on the level of political organizing? Questions such as these, argues our guest Asad Haider, miss the mark as they seek to make determinations about the world at the level of conceptual abstractions. 

Furthermore, he suggests, such questions slide into a muddled debate between advancing either universalist or particularist demands. The reality, he suggests, is that the abolition of white supremacy and the advancing of class struggle are by necessity universal programs beginning with particular demands. 

Asad Haider is an editor of Viewpoint Magazine and author of Mistaken Identity: Anti-Racism and the Struggle Against White Supremacy (Verso, Spring 2018).

Viewpoint Magazine:
https://www.viewpointmag.com/author/asad-haider/

Mistaken Identity:
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity

Race and Class in the Age of Trump w/ Asad Haider

A special audio reproduction of a live discussion with Boots Riley! Full transcript available at laborwaveradio.com/bootsriley

This event was organized by the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE 6069) and King Legacy Advisory Board (KLAB) to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and CGE's 20th Anniversary as a formally recognized labor union. 

Moderated by Andrea Haverkamp, Boots Riley discusses a wide range of topics including the left's move from organizing power at the point of production to a form of political protest as "spectacle," the role of radical and subversive art in modern culture, and the need to move beyond debates over violence and non-violence in our organizing.

Boots Riley on Power, Art, and the Radical Dr. King

Full audio and transcript available at laborwaveradio.com/micahuetricht

We spoke with Micah Uetricht, managing editor at Jacobin Magazine and co-author of the recent Verso title, Bigger Than Bernie: How We Go From The Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism. 


"Bernie's campaign, and the campaigns that have followed his, should show that there is also a way to do electoral politics that is actually spurring more class struggle, not tamping it down. Marxism is about both the objective conditions that you face, as well as the subjective efforts you can make to change the world. Good Marxism, in my opinion, always focuses on doing both of those things. What opportunities the objective conditions present to you, but also what you as an individual can do swimming outside the tides of history."

In Bigger than Bernie, activist writers Meagan Day and Micah Uetricht give us an intimate map of this emerging movement to remake American politics top to bottom, profiling the grassroots organizers who are building something bigger, and more ambitious, than the career of any one candidate. As participants themselves, Day and Uetricht provide a serious analysis of the prospects for long-term change, offering a strategy for making “political revolution” more than just a campaign slogan. They provide a road map for how to entrench democratic socialism in the halls of power and in our own lives.

Bigger than Bernie offers unmatched insights into the people behind the most unique campaign in modern American history and a clear-eyed sense of how the movement can sustain itself for the long haul.

Bigger than Bernie: The Road to Democratic Socialism w/ Micah Uetricht

May Day Amid A Plague with Sarah Jaffe
Full Audio & Transcript at laborwaveradio.com/sarahjaffe 
[edited for clarity, May 1, 2020]

Laborwave Radio in conversation with Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, which Robin D.G. Kelley called “The most compelling social and political portrait of our age.” She is a Type Media Center reporting fellow and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, the Atlantic, and many other publications. She is the co-host, with Michelle Chen, of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast, as well as a columnist at The Progressive and New Labor Forum.

She discusses labor organizing and worker militancy amid a plague on this troubled day of celebration, May Day. 

Preface
“We already know, because of the climate catastrophe that is breathing down on us, that we need to radically reshape the economy and do it quickly. Well now we've seen that we can. It turns out that we can survive on the work of so-called essential workers. I think what we’re seeing is the things that are staying open right now, the things that we need, are jobs doing the work of social reproduction. Nurses are working, and members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are picking tomatoes in Florida working. The people who deliver things to you, the logistics chain, Amazon warehouse workers who have been showing us all how to be militant lately, are working. That is social reproduction work. So much of the rest of the economy doesn't actually need to exist.”

May Day Amid A Plague w/ Sarah Jaffe

Full audio & transcript at laborwaveradio.com/natashalennard

Laborwave speaks with Natasha Lennard, author of Being Numerous: Essays on Non-fascist Life from Verso Books and contributing contributing writer at The Intercept. Her work covers politics and power and has appeared in Esquire, The Nation, and the New York Times opinion section.

Lennard discusses non-fascist life during the crisis of capitalism, intensified by a pandemic, and helps analyze this moment in terms of "accidents" and full surrogacy for each other. 
 
Preface:
"What would it look like if we were all surrogates for each other in all kinds of different ways. If we ushered ourselves through the world and held each other in our porousness, our wateriness, our undeniable and often conflictual interdependency. So I think this is the moment of undeniable interdependency becoming clear. What would it look like to live well by it?"

Non-fascist Life in Times of Crisis w/ Natasha Lennard

Bill Fletcher Jr is a long-time labor leader and author of multiple books, including Solidarity Divided: The Crisis In Organized Labor And A New Path Toward Social Justice (co-author Dr. Fernando Gapasin) and a new mystery thriller The Man Who Fell From The Sky.

We speak on the emerging demands on the AFL-CIO to sever ties with police unions, which Bill Fletcher Jr cautions could have the consequence of providing the right-wing with scripts to claim police are being victimized by the left, and enable Trumpists to more easily stoke reactionary fires. Fletcher suggests that our focus should be more on police repression, and having a reckoning with our own past within the labor movement that has a complicated record on racial justice. 

We also speak on the paradoxical quality of online technologies confining workers to more hours on the job rather than liberation from work, and the need for organized labor to go deeper and further in demanding emancipation. 

Two graduate employee unions in Oregon have joined the growing number of union locals to publish statements pressuring the AFL-CIO to disaffiliate with the IUPA (International Union of Police Associations). For transparency, the host of Laborwave Radio was involved and supportive in the process of one of these statements being produced. The statements can be read at this link:

Police, Technology, & Unions with Bill Fletcher Jr

Join in on the fun conversations by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave

Ellen Kress, former president of GTFF 3544 and current AFT-Oregon officer, and Andrea Haverkamp, president of CGE 6069, join Laborwave for a comradely discussion on chapters 3 & 4 of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey.

These chapters are full of exercises and advice for rookie organizers, which we discuss in detail, and talks STRIKES!!! We're introduced to another villain of the working class in the form of Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, and shown the bravery and heroism of teachers that battled him down and won in a massive strike during 2012. These chapters also present us with arguments about the possibility of reforming unions through challenging existing leadership and bargaining for the common good. 

Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together!

Music:
Thee Oh Sees- Maria Stacks

Ep. 3 Comrades Read Together w/ Ellen Kress & Andrea Haverkamp: No Shortcuts, chapters 3 & 4

David Graeber was an anthropologist, proponent of anarchism, and participant in many movement struggles of the past two decades including the Alter-Globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street. Among his popular authored books includes Debt: The First 5,000 Years, The Utopia of Rules, Bullshit Jobs, and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. He passed on September 2, 2020. 

We discuss his ideas and celebrate his memory in this conversation with comrades Tony Vogt, member of the IWW and co-founder of the Anarres Project for Alternative Futures, and Shane Capra, an organizer and participant in the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking and member of the IWW.

Our discussion covers topics of leadership and charisma, the tension between play and games, and falling in love with a ghost you cannot capture. 

Support Laborwave by becoming a patron at patreon.com/laborwave

Links:
Anarres Project for Alternative Futures 
anarresproject.org

Institute for Advanced Troublemaking
https://advancedtroublemaking.wordpress.com

In the Red Records
https://intheredrecords.com

Music: 
King Khan & BBQ Show: Shake Real Low

David Graeber: A Celebration & Discussion of Ideas w/ comrades Tony Vogt & Shane Capra

Sarah Jaffe, author, labor journalist, and one of the hosts of Belabored Podcast, joins Laborwave Radio to discuss her new book, Work Won't Love You Back published by Bold Type Books.

You’re told that if you “do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” But as Sarah Jaffe shows, “doing what you love” is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives.

We discuss the themes of the book, the downsides when punk rock is created by trust fund kids, and what love might look like in a world free of capitalist forms of work. 

Get a copy of the book at https://www.boldtypebooks.com/titles/sarah-jaffe/work-wont-love-you-back/9781568589398/

Find more work from Sarah Jaffe at 
https://sarahljaffe.com/

Become a Laborwave Radio patron to support this show at patreon.com/laborwave

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it helps our content reach new listeners. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/labo…io/id1536697871

Music from In The Red Records:
Thee Oh Sees- Adult Acid
Tyvek- Origin of What

Transcript at laborwaveradio.com/post/_work

Work Won't Love You Back w/ Sarah Jaffe

Laborwave Radio focuses on work and labor organizing from an anti-capitalist perspective. We're a part of the Channel Zero Network and Labor Radio Network.

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