Marybeth Seitz-Brown, organizer and former rank-and-file member with the NewsGuild of New York, joins the show to discuss how deep organizing is necessary for building robust union democracy and pushing union members to tackle the biggest issues of the day. 

Building off her article, "The Left Needs to Engage Members If We Want to Win Big" in The Forge, Marybeth puts forward grounded advice on how to develop methods for ensuring union democracy is an active practice and organizing approaches workers with the expectation that their politics and activity can change over time. 

We discuss why it matters to view democracy as the practice of "governing by obeying," the need to expand the political imagination around what unions can fight for and win, and how deep organizing can build the structures within our unions necessary for accomplishing the above. 

Read the article at https://forgeorganizing.org/article/left-needs-engage-members-if-we-want-win-big

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 

Music:
Mika Miko- Turkey Sandwich

Union Democracy and Working Class Power Require Deep Organizing w/ Marybeth Seitz-Brown

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

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

Hamilton Nolan joins the show to elaborate on his article "Get Rid of No Strike Clauses and Stop Begging" written for In These Times.

Nolan argues that the right to strike is the only thing that gives working people power. He identifies the weaknesses of organized labor within a paradigm of collective bargaining where surrendering the right to strike is the norm, and argues that in order to turn the tide of union power in the US it is necessary for rank and file union members to commit to reclaiming the strike and eliminating no strike clauses from their contracts.

Read the article at https://inthesetimes.com/article/no-strike-clause-labor-peace-union-contracts 

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

Get Rid of No Strike Clauses and Stop Begging

Gabriel Winant, historian and author of The Next Shift, joins the show to discuss the decline of union power in the face of speed-ups and an expanding framework of labor relations. 

Our conversation focuses on worker rebellion, the political failure alongside economic gains for organized labor in the postwar era, and the lessons we can learn from the defeat of the New Deal.

He draws attention to the period known as the "great exception," where unions experienced their high-water mark in power and organization, and problematizes some of the common claims about this era. Particularly, Winant shows how the present regime of privatized healthcare was embedded in the struggle over shop floor power in the postwar United States.

Get a copy of Winant's book, The Next Shift, at https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238091

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

A Defense of Wanting to Shoot the Foreman: On Speed-Ups and Union Decline

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

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

Shop Talk: Are They An Organic Leader or Bootlicker?

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.


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

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

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.

In our interview, Fletcher Jr discusses the need for "social justice unionism" in a post-Janus United States. Workers are becoming 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? 

We discuss all of these topics and more in this episode of Laborwave. 

More Info:
Bill Fletcher Jr
http://billfletcherjr.com/

A Conversation With Bill Fletcher Jr
http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/conversation-bill-fletcher/

Women Are Leading The Wave of Strikes in America. Here's Why.
~Tithi Bhattacharya
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/10/women-teachers-strikes-america

Contact Laborwave Revolution Radio @
laborwavenews@gmail.com

Interviews

State of Unions after Janus w/ Bill Fletcher Jr

adrienne maree brown was one of the keynote speakers at Opening Space for the Radical Imagination II, a two-day conference on April 19-20 2019 in the occupied lands of the Kalapuya people.

Her keynote address covered her recent title, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.

For more information on adrienne maree brown visit:
adriennemareebrown.net

Also check out more about Opening Space for the Radical Imagination: 
oregonimagines.com

You can get a copy of Pleasure Activism at
https://www.akpress.org/pleasure-activism.html

Music by John Dwyer:
Transmute by Damaged Bug
Cool Death by Thee Oh Sees

Pleasure Activism w/ adrienne maree brown @ Opening Space for the Radical Imagination II

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

In 2018 Oregon voters, particularly teachers and public workers, propelled the Oregon legislature to supermajority Democratic control. But instead of delivering on the promises of protecting union workers and funding public services the Democrats, despite their supermajority in the legislature, have cut public pensions and capitulated to Republicans on a number of bills revealing the extent to which neoliberal ideology dictates the policy-making of Oregon Democrats. 

In response, Paige Kreisman has launched a bid for District 42 of the Oregon legislature and openly proclaims herself to be a socialist with a platform to support working-class Oregonians. 

She is endorsed by the Portland Democratic Socialists of America, and independents For Progressive Action (Our Revolution, Clackamas County). Paige is the electoral and legislative co-chair for Portland DSA, and a board member for Portland Tenants United. She is a disabled veteran, and the first trans woman to run for the state legislature in Oregon. Paige is calling for an Oregon Green New Deal, campaign finance reform, housing justice, and to defend Oregon's public employees and unions. Learn more about Paige's 100% people powered campaign at Paige2020.com.

Music by Thee Oh Sees. 
Website at laborwaveradio.com

Democratic Socialism In The Oregon Legislature w/ Paige Kreisman

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

Transcript available at laborwaveradio.com/hollylewis

Join our online book club @ laborwaveradio.com! 

We speak with Holly Lewis, assistant professor at Texas State University and author of The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection published by Zed Books.

The Politics of Everybody examines the production and maintenance of the terms 'man', 'woman', and 'other' within the current political moment; the contradictions of these categories and the prospects of a Marxist approach to praxis for queer bodies. Few thinkers have attempted to reconcile queer and Marxist analysis. Those who have propose the key contested site to be that of desire/sexual expression. This emphasis on desire, Lewis argues, is symptomatic of the neoliberal project and has led to a continued fascination with the politics of identity. By arguing that Marxist analysis is in fact most beneficial to gender politics within the arena of body production, categorization and exclusion Lewis develops a theory of gender and the sexed body that is wedded to the realities of a capitalist political economy.

Boldly calling for a new, materialist queer theory, Lewis defines a politics of liberation that is both intersectional, transnational, and grounded in lived experience.

Towards A Queer Marxist Future with Holly Lewis

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

We discussed the legacy and experiences of Occupy Wall Street with two movement participants Marina Sitrin and Vanessa Zettlers, contributors to the recent title Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis published by Pluto Press.

Our conversation touched on the ways to recover the real history of OWS and overcome "historical forgetting," the mechanics of OWS through forms of direct democracy such as assemblies and working groups, and the lessons learned from this movement including the need to better anticipate "the fist of the state."  

In The Red Records, an independent music label based in Los Angeles, has provided Laborwave permission to use music from their artists on the show! This episode featured the following In The Red artists:

Tyvek- Real Estate and Finance, off their 2016 album "Origin of What"
Osees-Don't Blow Your Experiment, from their upcoming album "Panther Rotate" from Castle Face Records. 

Links:
Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid During Covid-19 Crisis published by Pluto Press
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343167/pandemic-solidarity/

They Can't Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy published by Verso Books
https://www.versobooks.com/books/1433-they-can-t-represent-us

Laborwave Radio is an independent podcast fully sustained by our patrons. Become a rank-and-filer, committee member, or strike captain and help support our show at patreon.com/laborwave

Reflections on Occupy Wall Street w/ Marina Sitrin & Vanessa Zettler

Sustain Laborwave Radio by becoming a patron at patreon.com/laborwave 

Laborwave spoke with workers at No Evil Foods about the company's union busting strategy against a unionization campaign organized by employees. Megan, John, and Max discuss in detail the tactics of No Evil Foods union busting, including a marathon series of captive audience meetings totaling 14 hours, illegal firings, and censorship, and how workers should prepare for aggressive anti-union campaigns conducted by bosses. We also delved into a conversation about "solidarity unionism" and the IWW as a viable alternative to conventional union recognition campaigns. 

This episode includes never heard before leaked audio from captive audience meetings owners of No Evil Foods forced their employees to attend! 

Despite being a "progressive" company producing vegan meat alternatives and naming their products in socialist language like "comrade cluck," No Evil Foods prioritizes profit over people and demonstrates a no-holds-barred approach to union busting.

Workers have compiled an extensive catalog of information, interviews, and resources for the union busting that took place housed at the website https://www.moevilfoods.com/

Additional resources mentioned in the show:
Confessions of a Union Buster by Martin Jay Levitt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-0gxca-VxM

Thanks to John Dwyer and In The Red Records for use of music!
Thee Oh Sees- Acid Wash
The Spit- Shitty World

The Union Busting Playbook & How to Fight It as Told by Workers at No Evil Foods

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.

Laborwave Radio

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks