Description: “THE GREAT ESCAPE: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America” tells the story of one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern American history and how the traffickers were finally held to account. Saket Soni was the co-founder of The New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice in the post-Katrina years. Today he’s the founder and director of Resilience Force, a project that comes directly out of his experience working with the men in this book. The U.S. is experiencing a labor shortage, and climate catastrophe will increase the need for disaster recovery workers. How can we build the resilient workforce we need, with the rights and equity workers deserve? Join Laura and Saket for this urgent conversation on the future of labor.

Guest:  Saket Soni, Author, THE GREAT ESCAPE: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America; Founder & Director, Resilience Force
Full research and reading list to further delve into the conversation is available here on at https://Patreon.com/theLFShow

The Laura Flanders Show

Saket Soni: How Trafficked Workers Pulled Off “The Great Escape”

Laura speaks a little on why winner takes all media isn't helping voters.

Don't Trust The Money Media

Laura describes how the history of Irish immigration to the United States shows the way lines drawn for deciding immigrants "merit" are blurry.

The Merit in Merit-Based Immigration is Political

Laura’s F-Word on why Donald Trump’s new budget isn’t about cuts -- it’s about conversions. The budget wants to convert public dollars into private funding for military research and spending, for the only government apparatus that never gets audited.

Trump's Budget is Socialism for the Rich and Corporates

We’re based in beautiful downtown Oakland, CA which is a port city in the San Francisco Bay. Massive container ships travel across the Pacific and end up here. From miles away you can see the enormous white cranes that pull giant, uniformly-sized metal boxes off the ships. People say the cranes are the inspiration for the AT-AT walkers in The Empire Strikes Back, but that’s not true; it’s just a good story to tell as you pass by on the bridge. The port was the driving economic force in Oakland for many decades. Not so much anymore. Those big containers have something to do with it. When people started shipping things in standardized containers all kinds of inefficiencies in global shipping that had existed for hundreds of years were eliminated and the world changed forever. This the backdrop for the story that Alexis Madrigal is telling in his new eight-part documentary podcast series on global capitalism, trade, and big-ass ships. It’s called “Containers.” We're featuring episode #3 in the series.

254- Containers

In this special May Day segment of Rustbelt Abolition Radio, we speak with acclaimed scholar Robin D.G. Kelley to explore the critique of racial capitalism, the history of class struggle across the color line, and the abolitionist horizon.

We release this episode on May Day, or International Workers Day, celebrated annually by millions across the world in commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Square massacre and the ongoing global struggle for a world without capitalist exploitation and racial domination. 

Robin D.G. Kelley is a professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. Kelley’s intellectual work spans the far reaching histories of the black freedom movement, African American history, culture, music, and aesthetics, and the politics of the black radical imagination. His books include Africa Speaks, America Answers!: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, among many others.

To Make Our World Anew: May Day special ft. Robin D.G. Kelley

You've gotta wonder, protests, congress, hunger strike, deaths? What's it gonna take before Americans notice what's happening?

Laura Flanders Show

Hunger Strike Against Inhumane Detention of Immigrants

A commentary from Laura on monuments - where are the monuments to the motley crew and our antiracist predecessors?

Anti Racist Rebellions Deserve Their Own Monuments

Laura Flanders is a best-selling author and the host of Laura Flanders and Friends (formerly The Laura Flanders Show), a syndicated weekly program airing on Public TV in which she talks to creative thinkers and change-makers from the worlds of politics, arts and the new economy. In her weekly commentary, The "F" Word,  she tells you what she thinks. The "F" Word is heard on the Progressive Voices Channel on Tune-In and is made available free to radio stations who appreciate an upbeat, radical perspective.  lauraflanders.org

Saket Soni: How Trafficked Workers Pulled Off “The Great Escape”

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