Shows
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 63 - Lessons from 100 Years of Black Labor ActivismAt a live event at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, CUNY SLU Assistant Professor of Labor Studies Cameron Black moderated a lively panel discussion of Cedric de Leon’s new book, Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity (University of California Press, 2025). The panel also included author and activist Bill Fletcher Jr. and Tamara Lee, Associate Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University
2025-12-0853 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 62 - Introducing New Labor Forum Editor Chris MaisanoAt a live event at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large Micah Uetricht interviews the journal's new Editor Chris Maisano, who introduces himself, offers some thoughts about the current state of the labor movement, and discusses his article "Does 'Left-Conservatism' Have a Future?" from the Fall 2025 issue of New Labor Forum.
2025-10-1641 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 61 - Labor Against AuthoritarianismIn this episode of Reinventing Solidarity, we feature a keynote address from National Education Association president Becky Pringle from a conference titled "Labor and the Crisis of Democracy," hosted by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and co-sponsored with the Cornell University Worker Institute. Pringle takes stock of the attacks on workers, free speech, and basic democratic rights, but argues, “Unions were built for this moment” of fighting back.
2025-09-1837 min
Crossing the ChasmCrossing the Chasm with Nina Stender (on Worker Owned Cooperatives)Welcome to Crossing the Chasm. On today’s episode, I am joined by Nina Stender who leads the rapid response cooperative development project at the Democracy at Work Institute. An expert in worker owned cooperatives, Nina has educational and professional experience on cooperatives. On today’s show, Nina describes worker owned cooperatives, how they are organized and operated, and outlines the important role they play in communities. I hope you enjoy the conversation!Democracy at Work Institutehttps://institute.coop/ Rapid Response Cooperatives Sales and Client Developmenthttps://insti...
2025-07-2850 min
Laura Flanders and Friends: Solutions-Focused Progressive Perspectives on Politics, News, and CultureCountering an Authoritarian Takeover with the Labor Movement: Alex Han & Tarso Ramos [Episode Cut]In a candid discussion with Laura, veteran union organizer Alex Han and U.S. Right Wing expert Tarso Ramos explore how workers are uniting against rising authoritarianism.- Watch the episode released on YouTube July 4th 5pm ET; PBS World Channel June 6th, and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode) and airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast July 9th.Description: The United States is moving towards authoritarianism, but there is still a window of o...
2025-07-0928 minLaura Flanders and Friends: Solutions-Focused Progressive Perspectives on Politics, News, and CultureCountering an Authoritarian Takeover with the Labor Movement: Alex Han & Tarso Ramos [Rewind-Uncut Conversation]In a candid discussion with Laura, veteran union organizer Alex Han and U.S. Right Wing expert Tarso Ramos explore how workers are uniting against rising authoritarianism.Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.DESCRIPTION: The United States is moving towards authoritarianism, but there is still a window of opportunity to reverse course. What could improve the chances of re-balancing p...
2025-07-0734 min
CUNY TV's City WorksSpecial: Labor & The Crisis of Democracy (Part 1)On part one of a special episode of City Works, host Laura Flanders visits the recent conference at CUNY SLU and speaks to labor leaders from around the country about the urgent threat of authoritarianism in America, and their fight to stop it.
2025-06-1125 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 60 - Intersectional Organizing: Building Solidarity in the Labor and LGBTQIA+ MovementsThis episode brings together Joanna Wuest, Brittani Murray, and Jaz Brisack to discuss how queer organizers build community within their workplaces to support civil rights and social justice movements and share strategies for building power to defend workplaces and vulnerable communities, as we witness increased attacks on the rights and safety of LGBTQIA+ people, especially transgender individuals, at the same time as an unprecedented assault on all workers’ rights.
2025-06-0955 minLaura Flanders and Friends: Solutions-Focused Progressive Perspectives on Politics, News, and CultureLabor Movement v. Fascism: Worker Organizers & Labor Educators Are Under Attack [Special Report]Authoritarianism on the rise: Educators and unionists share strategies for resistance and victory, citing historical examples of successful labor movements, at a conference hosted by CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and Cornell Worker Institute in New York City this past May.This show is made possible by you! To become a sustaining member go to LauraFlanders.org/donateDescription: Labor organizing is critical to any anti-fascist movement, but labor unions and worker education are feeling the impact of brutal Republican attacks and cuts. How are workers and educators responding? In this special report, fr...
2025-06-0432 min
Laura Flanders and Friends: Solutions-Focused Progressive Perspectives on Politics, News, and CultureA Turning Point in History? Worker Organizers Take a Stand: Alex Han & Tarso Ramos [Bonus Interview]In a candid discussion with Laura, veteran union organizer Alex Han and U.S. Right Wing expert Tarso Ramos explore how workers are uniting against rising authoritarianism.Description: America is moving towards authoritarianism faster than ever before, signaling a “turning point” in our history. But what will it actually take to reverse course? What could improve the chances of a winning multiracial democracy? The answer is worker organizers, and joining Laura to discuss grassroots resistance are Tarso Ramos and Alex Han. Han is a legacy union organizer and the Executive Director of In These Times, the long-running Chica...
2025-06-0334 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 59 - Jaz Brisack on Union Organizing TodayNew Labor Forum’s Micah Uetricht speaks with labor organizer and former Starbucks barista Jaz Brisack about the Starbucks campaign, the practice of salting, and their new book Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World.
2025-05-0542 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 58 - Interrogating the Entrepreneurial Work EthicHistorian Erik Baker talks to New Labor Forum's Micah Uetricht about the sanctified place of the entrepreneur in American history, and why the entrepreneurial work ethic is at the core of how the Right hopes to remake workers and citizens.
2025-04-0948 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 57 - Can Federal Workers Beat DOGE?Episode 57 - Can Federal Workers Beat DOGE? by CUNY SLU
2025-02-2735 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 56 - Class Dealignment and the Two-Party SystemNew Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht speaks to the Center for Working-Class Politics's Jared Abbott about Democrats losing working-class voters, why it matters, and the prospects for reversing it.
2025-02-1049 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 55 - New Directions in Labor PoliticsUnderstanding what labor must do under a hostile new presidential administration requires reflection on unions’ successful political strategies in recent years, the nature of contemporary capitalism, the role of political education in labor, and much more. Bob Master moderates a recent and wide-ranging panel discussion on these issues at CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies.
2025-01-061h 03
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 54 - An Interview with the UAW's Jonah FurmanIt's been a new day in the United Auto Workers since the election of Shawn Fain as president in 2023, with the union carrying out an aggressive organizing and political program that has established the UAW as a major presence in American life. New Labor Forum's Micah Uetricht spoke to Jonah Furman, a top aide to Fain, about the union's strategy, its various wins and losses among nonunion auto manufacturers in the American South, its relationship to the Democratic Party under President Joe Biden, and the impact of a Donald Trump presidency on the union and labor as a whole.
2024-12-061h 10
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 53 - Labor, Big Tech, and A.I.: The Big PictureWhat does the rise of artificial intelligence mean for workers and organized labor? And just what is AI, anyway? New Labor Forum editor-at-large discusses these questions and more with labor reporter Alex Press and technology reporter and editor Ed Ongweso, Jr.
2024-11-041h 14
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 52 - Free Trade, Repressed WorkersHow free was the imposition of the free trade model in the late-twentieth century? Not very, suggests political scientist Adam Dean’s research. The neoliberal trade model that has come to dominate the globe was imposed through repressive measures against the trade unions that opposed it in country after country. Dean talks to New Labor Forum’s Micah Uetricht about this history and what it means for the future of trade policy across the globe.
2024-10-041h 06
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 51 - The Emergency Workplace Organizing CommitteeTimes change, in society, politics, and economics, but the labor movement rarely does. Which makes the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) a rare bird in US labor. New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht speaks to EWOC organizer Megan Svoboda about the project's origins in the coronavirus pandemic and how it has grown to a major national organization to aid workers in any industry, anywhere in the United States to take collective action and, frequently, to unionize.
2024-08-3041 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 50 - Queer Working-Class Politics and the U.S. Labor MovementWhy are unions essential to LGBTQ liberation? Why is union organizing that advocates for all workers essential to uplifting queer workers? And why is queer advocacy so commonsense to many of today’s unionized workers? Political scientist Joanna Wuest explores these questions and more in a conversation with New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht for our podcast Reinventing Solidarity.
2024-06-1440 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 49 - Worker-to-Worker Organizing Goes ViralAs innovative new union organizing campaigns have taken off around the country in recent years, Rutgers labor scholar Eric Blanc argues that we can see the emergence of a new organizing model that has the potential to meet the moment. He calls it "worker-to-worker organizing," a concept he explored in his Winter 2024 New Labor Forum article "Worker-to-Worker Organizing Goes Viral" and in his forthcoming book We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big (University of California Press). New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht spoke to Blanc about the model's constituent parts, the role of young...
2024-05-0945 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 48 - The Child Care Facilitated Enrollment Project for Working FamiliesAt a time of crushing childcare costs in New York City and around the country, the labor-backed Child Care Facilitated Enrollment Project is one bright spot for working-class families. New Labor Forum editor-at-large Micah Uetricht spoke to United Federation of Teachers vice president for Academic High Schools and chair of the New York Union Child Care Coalition Janella Hinds and Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi, representing the 28th assembly district in Queens in the New York state legislature, about the program.
2024-04-0230 min
This Week In College Viability (TWICV)This Week In College Viability (TWICV) for February 19, 2024Here are the stories and commentary in the February 19 TWICV Get your 2024 Private College Viability App here. Select from a version for executives, one for faculty & staff, and one for students and families. Special promotions are now available for each.Do you want to sit in on one of my free webinars on how to use the College Viability Apps? Click here to reserve a spot.FAFSA delay responses: Good one at SLU. Mundane responses elsewhereWebster U wants to re-direct restricted donations to unrestricted. Not going over well.UNC Greensboro Faculty Oppose Academic Cuts – Faculty p...
2024-02-1921 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 47 - "The 2023 UAW Strike: A Turning Point in Labor History?"The United Auto Workers achieved a real breakthrough in their 2023 strike against the Big Three automakers. For this episode, our new editor-at-large Micah Uetricht interviews longtime labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein about his piece in the Spring 2024 issue of New Labor Forum assessing the wins in the contract, the corruption scandals and subsequent new union leadership victory that led to the strike, the UAW's prospects for riding this momentum into organizing nonunion automakers like Volkswagen and Tesla, and more.
2024-02-1350 minCUNY TV's City WorksOut With the Old: Reimagining the Way People Work and EarnOn this episode of City Works, Laura Flanders interviews CUNY SLU's Kafui Attoh and Cameron Black and Georgetown’s Katie Wells about some remarkable transformations in the labor market that are reimagining the way people work and earn a living.
2024-01-0126 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 46 - "Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World"In the work of creating a more just and sustainable world, which strategies hold the most promise for overcoming the enormous obstacles inherent in 21st century capitalism? A recent book, Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce, tackles this question head on. Based on interviews with leading activists, the authors draw vital lessons from organizations and movements – including the New Georgia Project, Make the Road, the Fight for 15, Occupy Wall Street, and the Gay Men's Health Crisis – that have achieved substantial victories. Here, we present the book’s authors in conversation with MacArthur fellow...
2023-12-2840 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 45 - Logistics Workers Rise: UPS, Amazon, and Long-Haul TruckingIn this episode we examine the recent threatened strike and massive contract victory of the Teamsters as that union took on UPS, the nation’s largest unionized private sector employer. In September 2023, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke about the strike weapon and labor’s resurgence at a large public forum hosted by the School of Labor and Urban Studies. Following his talk, he engaged with a panel of prominent labor activists and scholars. We feature highlights from O’Brien’s keynote address and his animated exchange with one of those panelists, the labor organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey.
2023-11-0641 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 44 - "The New Terrain of Veterans Affairs"This episode focuses on a discussion of publicly funded and operated health care in the United States. If this might seem a pipe dream with no national precedence, the authors of the recent book, Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs, suggest it’s not. They describe the current system of VA Healthcare as a model for excellence and equity, worthy of support among public health care activists. Our Veterans, reviewed in the spring 2023 issue of New Labor Forum, offers a broad examination of Veterans Affairs, as well as essential information about the co...
2023-08-3134 minCUNY TV's City WorksSpecial: Rebuilding Labor’s Power for the 21st CenturyOn this special one-hour edition of City Works, new developments and new strategies from organizers, union leaders and labor scholars who participated at the recent SLU conference, “How Workers Win: Rebuilding Labor’s Power for the 21st Century”.
2023-08-0757 min
Democracy in Color with Steve PhillipsSteve to the Class of 2023: Rise and Take ControlIn a personal and moving conversation with Sharline, Steve shares the winding, yet connected roads that led to his first keynote speech at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies’ fifth commencement ceremony.
Steve discusses the art and poetry that inspired his speech and the childhood memories that resurfaced as he wrote. In his advice to the graduates entering the workforce at one of the most critical times in our country’s history, he shares key lessons from his time in political and labor movements to his time spent writing How We Win the Civil...
2023-07-1342 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 43 - "The Strike: Labor's Most Powerful Weapon"CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies faculty member Stephanie Luce speaks with trade unionists Judy Gonzalez and Bob Master about the conditions which make the strike labor’s most powerful weapon. Drawing on recent experience with the New York State Nurses Association strike at Montefiore and Mt. Sinai hospitals, Gonzalez details the preparatory work of the union that contributed to victory. And Master describes the manner in which his union, the Communications Workers of America, has over the years successfully drawn on the CWA’s long history of militancy.
2023-06-0348 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 42 - "Independent Unions: The Allure of a Failing Strategy"This episode offers a provocative assessment of independent unionism as a strategy for building worker power in the U.S. In conversation with New Labor Forum Consulting Editor Joshua Freeman, Erik Loomis discusses his spring 2023 article for the journal, titled Independent Unions: The Allure of a Failing Strategy. Chronicling the besieged, ill-fated experimentation with independent unionism since the late 1800s, Loomis elucidates his doubts about the prospects for this strategy against today’s corporate behemoths.
2023-04-2838 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 41 - "Labor Power and Strategy"This episode tackles the big labor organizing questions of the day: What is the relative strategic importance of organizing workers at the commanding heights of the 21st century economy, like the docks for example, versus organizing workers whose solidarity is strong, yet whose structural power within the economy is weaker, like those at Starbucks? And in a society teetering on the precipice of authoritarianism, what should be the scope and mission of labor organizing today?
2023-03-3159 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 40 - "The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives"In this episode, Adolph Reed, Jr. describes Jim Crow as a result of decades of post-emancipation contention between freed slaves, white farmers and laborers, and the ruling class of white planters and merchants. As an outgrowth of that contestation in various precincts of the South, Jim Crow’s rules and applications varied often significantly by locale. In his new book, The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives, Reed describes his own interaction with these shifting, very often treacherous, rules as a way to explore power alignments that shaped Jim Crow and continue to shape its afterlives.
2023-03-0337 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 39 - "Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism"Author Rick Wartzman describes Walmart’s decade-long effort at reforms in response to ubiquitous criticism. Low-wage labor was a chief focus of that criticism and of Walmart’s self-transformation. Partly as a result, the average Walmart worker now earns an hourly wage just above $17 an hour. While this well exceeds the minimum wage, it still means that the average full-time worker earns just under $32,000 a year. Milkman and Wartzman explore what this and other reforms suggest about the systemic failures of capitalism in the 21st century.
2023-02-0339 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 38 - "Making Hope and History Rhyme"Over the past half-century, labor activists Marilyn Sneiderman and Stephen Lerner have been responsible for spurring major strategic advances in union organizing and movement building. Here, they discuss their recent New Labor Forum article, titled "Making Hope and History Rhyme: A New Worker Movement from the Shell of the Old". Describing the present moment as one of unparalleled peril and opportunity, they draw crucial lessons for the new crop of activists who have emerged in the current wave of strike action and unionization around the country.
2023-01-0649 min
The ProgressiveEpisode 37 - Why We Need Debtors' Unions Podcast: Reinventing Solidarity (LS 28 · TOP 10% what is this?)Episode: Episode 37 - Why We Need Debtors' UnionsPub date: 2022-12-02Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationA dramatic increase in national consumer debt began in the mid-1980s and currently stands at 16.5 trillion dollars, making it a key feature of capitalism in the 21st century. Average household debt today in the U.S. – mortgages, car loans, student, medical, and credit card debt – now exceeds $96,000 and is therefore greater than the median household income. Andrew Ross discusses debt as...
2022-12-1326 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 37 - Why We Need Debtors' UnionsA dramatic increase in national consumer debt began in the mid-1980s and currently stands at 16.5 trillion dollars, making it a key feature of capitalism in the 21st century. Average household debt today in the U.S. – mortgages, car loans, student, medical, and credit card debt – now exceeds $96,000 and is therefore greater than the median household income. Andrew Ross discusses debt as a crucial labor and social justice issue and describes the groundbreaking work of the Debt Collective.
2022-12-0226 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 36 - The Worker-Led Upsurge: Amazon and StarbucksSolidarity against the odds is what workers managed to achieve at the JFK8 Amazon Fulfillment Center on Staten Island and at the Elmwood Avenue Starbucks in Buffalo, New York. In this episode, School of Labor and Urban Studies Distinguished Lecturer Heather McGhee gets lead organizers Chris Smalls and Michelle Eisen to recount each of their riveting stories. In captivating detail, they tell a 21st century tale of corporate union resistance, as well as a chronicle of the worker determination and ingenuity that found a way to overcome that resistance.
2022-11-0441 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 35 - Who Pays for Inflation?The fact that current inflation rates are higher than they have been in decades weighs not only on households and businesses, but has also shifted the political landscape. As we head into the 2022 midterms and then the 2024 Presidential elections, understanding the deeper causes of and available remedies to inflation is of paramount importance. In this episode, Samir Sonti and JW Mason offer their insights on questions posed by inflation: If strong demand has contributed to rising prices, what role have constraints on the supply side played? Why have interest rate hikes become the textbook response inflation? What other remedies should...
2022-10-0237 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 34 - Organized Labor and the Global Climate CrisisSean Sweeney, Director of SLU’s Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, speaks with journalist Laura Flanders about continued botched efforts by countries around the globe to meet the targets set forth in 2015 Paris Agreement. Pointing to worldwide policies that depend upon private investment, he describes why the profit motive has failed to deliver renewable energy at scale, affordably, or with the urgency demanded by the climate crisis. Much more promising, he suggests, is the Global Public Goods approach increasingly advanced by international unions and their allies.
2022-09-0527 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 33 - "Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing"This episode offers a discussion of Andrew Ross’ recent book, Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing. Ross shares his firsthand account of the burgeoning and largely overlooked housing emergency in our nation’s suburban and rural hinterlands. Reporting from Florida’s Osceola County, he describes families and people of all ages who cram themselves into dilapidated motels or literally pitch their tents in the woods. Adding to these dire circumstances, the people Ross comes to know find themselves also reckoning with psychological trauma, poverty, and nihilism. This compelling interview also examines the causes of the housing catastrophe and suggests what i...
2022-06-2438 min
Leftist Teen Drama#16 - Immigrant Communities, Gunshots, and PTSD: ‘On My Block’ Tackled The Everyday Reality of Growing Up with Gun ViolenceIn the fictional neighborhood of Freeridge, Los Angeles, four Black and Brown kids get to solve a mystery in the midst of their largely immigrant community rife with gun violence and poverty. Maria and her guest Xiomara Loarte discuss all four seasons of ON MY BLOCK (2018-2021), which doesn’t shy away from showing all the everyday realities of growing up with gun violence, from Ruby’s PTSD to the immigration system and prison industrial complex to the teens’ game guessing the caliber of gun shots that ring out in their neighborhood.
For this episode, we recommend you fir...
2022-06-192h 02
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 32 - The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First CenturyJournalist Laura Flanders speaks with Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta, the authors of The Future We Need, Organizing for a Better Democracy in the 21st Century. The book and this conversation explore the great democratizing power of collective bargaining, with potential applications even beyond the workplace in the yet mostly untried realms of housing, public safety, education, healthcare, and environmental justice, to name just a few. In this moment of national democratic peril and the upsurge in worker organizing, these bold new ideas hold both special urgency and possibility.
2022-06-1143 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 31 - "100 Percent Democracy"Commentators far and wide have been sounding the alarm for American democracy. The question of who can vote and who ends up voting is central to this democratic crisis. In a landscape of defensive battles to protect the right to vote and herculean efforts to turn out the vote, comes a new book: 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting. Written by Miles Rapoport and E.J. Dionne, the book makes an assertive argument that voting should be mandatory in the U.S., as it already is in 26 countries around the world. With SLU’s Heather McGhee, author Miles Rapoport discusses th...
2022-05-0635 minCUNY TV's City WorksA People's Guide to NYC & Wall Street's Grip on PensionsOn this episode of City Works, Laura Flanders speaks with Professor Penny Lewis about her new book, A People’s Guide to New York City. And an SLU digital event explores what role worker pension funds can play in building a progressive economy.
2022-05-0327 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 30 - Fueling Financialization: Organized Labor, Pension Funds, & Worker PowerIn 2021 the pension assets of U.S. workers stood at 35 trillion dollars and amounted to fully 62 percent of all global pension assets. For almost half a century, this money has fueled the growth of the asset management sector, the likes of BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity Investments to name only a few. New Labor Forum author Benjamin Braun casts a critical eye on the investment practices of collectively bargained Taft-Hartley pension funds which have contributed so significantly to the rise of a bloated financial sector. He also discusses efforts to redirect labor’s capital to the benefit of workers and to in...
2022-04-3039 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 29 - Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern IndiaIn this episode, we turn to India’s two-millennia-old caste system that has often been compared to our own structures of racial oppression. A recent book, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, provides a sort of memoir of caste viewed through the experiences author Sujatha Gidla’s Dalit family. Speaking with New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large Kafui Attoh, Gidla says she drew motivation and courage to write this personal account by witnessing individual and collective acts of resistance of African Americans. A resident of the U.S. since age 26, Gidla completed the writing of the book...
2022-04-0825 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 28 - Reimagining Elder Care: Workers & the 'Care Grid' in an Aging NationNearly alone among industrialized nations, the U.S. leaves the elderly, the infirm, and their loved ones to fend for themselves in the complex tangle of what passes for a system of elder and long-term care. Our speakers describe the human toll of this for-profit system that is simultaneously unaffordable for those who need care and unsustainable for the low-wage workers who provide it. As social justice visionaries, our speakers also outline bold policy solutions currently being advanced by coalitions that are reimagining elder and long-term care.
2022-03-0338 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 27: "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together"Progressive commentators in the U.S. have long debated the primacy of race vs. class in our political and economic life, and therefore its role in organizing strategy. McGhee sees this as a false debate. The stories she tells illustrate the concrete ways in which racism and our deep economic divide go hand in hand. She argues that, at every turn, racism undermines class solidarity and makes it possible in the richest country on earth for so many people lack a living wage, a pension, access to quality healthcare, childcare, and a sustainable environment.
2022-02-1845 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 26 - NYC Labor And The New MayorLess than a month into the new mayoralty in the City of New York, we assembled a panel of leading journalists to delineate Eric Adams’s vision for the city, especially as it pertains to working people. Only the second black mayor in the city’s history, Adams was also the son of a housekeeper, a graduate of the public schools, and for two decades the member of a municipal union. Our host, historian and emeritus faculty member Josh Freeman, asked the assembled reporters whether these facts are likely to impact the administration's approach to municipal labor relations, and more broa...
2022-02-0757 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 25 - "Winter After The Strike"The poetry of our guest, Gregory Pardlo, is some of the finest, engaged work written in the U.S. today. He brings us the striking air traffic controller, permanently replaced, selling off everything but his house, his young son outside that house speaking to snowflakes. He conjures up the glory and the grace of girls jumping Double Dutch. And he tells of an impoverished old man who asks to hold the hand of a recovering alcoholic so that together they might toss a coin into a fountain and wish for something else. And Pardlo’s work helps us imagine what th...
2022-01-1437 minCUNY TV's City WorksOrganized Labor and the Global Climate CrisisOn this episode of City Works, host Laura Flanders speaks to the director of CUNY SLU’s International Program for Labor, Climate and Environment, Sean Sweeney, who recently attended the COP26 Climate Change Conference in Scotland.
2022-01-0426 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 24 - Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late CapitalismThis episode draws on New Labor Forum’s cutting-edge Books and the Arts section edited by Samir Sonti. Here, the book in question is PORN WORK: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism, by Heather Berg. Reviewer Whitney Strub discusses with Berg her insights into work and workers in the 12 billion-dollar porn industry. Workers laboring and organizing in this industry, Berg notes, have largely been dismissed and even scorned by organized labor and the Marxist Left. I trust our listeners will find what Berg says revealing about the priorities and predispositions of porn workers, as well as failures of labor and the le...
2022-01-0147 minCUNY TV's City WorksChallenging Monopoly and BezosismOn this episode, Zephyr Teachout and SLU's Samir Sonti talk about a renewed public interest in breaking up industrial monopolies. And Laura Flanders talks to columnist Christopher Mims about his new book “Arriving Today", and the global supply chain
2021-12-0726 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 23: "Bridging the Divide: Working-Class Culture in a Middle Class SocietyClose attention to the qualities of working-class culture is in short supply in this era of ubiquitous distain for the working-class. This measure of respect is one of the chief contributions of Jack Metzgar’s new book, Bridging the Divide: Working-Class Culture in a Middle-Class Society. In this episode, Metzgar discusses with New Labor Forum Consulting Editor Joshua Freeman what he views as the distinct values of working-class vs. middle-class cultures. Anyone committed to a resurgent working-class and concerned about the decades-long alienation of segments of the working-class from progressive politics will find Metzgar’s observations and arguments of great inte...
2021-12-0337 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 22 - Challenging Monopoly: Antitrust Reform, Workers Rights, & Economic DemocracyThroughout much of U.S. history, anti-trust movements – joined by farmers, laborers, abolitionists, and small businesspeople – were a force to be reckoned with in American politics. Then, in the late 1970s, anti-monopoly fervor subsided and remained dormant for the next 40 years. The tides have now begun to change, with the appointment of leading anti-trust experts in to the Biden administration, and a growing number of labor and grassroots organizers once again taking aim at monopoly power. This history and the present urgency of anti-trust organizing is the subject of episode 22 of Reinventing Solidarity.
2021-11-1241 minCUNY TV's City WorksA Tale of Two Cities Revisited: NYC's Mayoral TransitionOn this episode of City Works, the de Blasio administration is reexamined in a “Tale of Two Cities Revisited” panel discussion held by SLU, and by guest Deepak Bhargava, who talks about the progressive agenda and its prospects under the next mayor.
2021-11-0226 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 21 - What Are Unions Fighting for at COP26?This episode airs as COP26, the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference, gets underway in Glasgow, Scotland. Our guest, Roz Foyer, General Secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, notes that this year’s Conference takes place during a time of growing awareness of market-driven forces’ failure to deliver the scale of energy transition that scientists agree is necessary to sustain life on this planet. She and Sean Sweeney also observe that people across the world have witnessed the necessity of large-scale government action to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Both realities have given rise to worldwide calls for a similar, Global Publ...
2021-10-2948 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 20 - Labor In The Age Of FinanceSamir Sonti interviews Sandy Jacoby, author of Labor in the Age of Finance: Pensions, Politics, and Corporations from Deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank. Jacoby’s book and this conversation offer insights into some of the strategic choices organized labor has made since the 1990s in the face of burgeoning corporate power and its own diminished membership rates. With union density in the private sector hovering around 6 percent and a labor law regime that enables employers to resist unionization, many unions have sought other forms of leverage. Those strategies have focused on both legislative reform, Dodd Frank for example, and union pension shareholder ac...
2021-10-2234 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 19 - Occupy Wall Street: Ten Years LaterOn September 17th, 2011, approximately a thousand people massed in lower Manhattan at the towering edifices of the “Vatican of capitalism.” This movement, known as Occupy Wall Street, called attention to the obscene inequality and devastation of 21st century capitalism on full display in the wake of the fiscal meltdown. Already by that October, in cities around the world, millions had occupied their own symbolic Wall Streets. Although the encampment in Zuccotti Park was relatively short lived, many have argued that this protest movement changed the language and perhaps the focus of our politics, making “the 99%” part of the lingua franca. On the t...
2021-10-0424 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 18 - State of the UnionsIn the first episode of the 2021-22 season, Paula Finn holds a conversation with Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce assessing the U.S. labor movement’s current strength as relates to union density, or the percentage of workers represented by unions. The basis for their discussion is Milkman’s and Luce’s recent State of the Unions Report, which compares national union density trends to those in New York State and New York City. This year’s study sheds important light on the impact of COVID-19 on employment rates, revealing some surprising, disparate effects of the pandemic nation-wide vs. in New York...
2021-09-1726 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 17 - Reckoning with Race and Class on the Road to Social DemocracyThis episode features a debate regarding the role of race vs. class in efforts to advance a Social Democratic politics. It draws on a panel which was part of a day-long conference held in April 2021 considering Joshua B. Freeman’s landmark book, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II. Longtime social justice activist Deepak Bhargava and historian Touré Reed concur that race and class identity is, as Deepak put it, “the axis on which the Social Democratic project will turn.” They part ways, however, on whether organizing that springs from and emphasizes racial oppression can propel a movemen...
2021-06-0337 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 16 - A Public Energy Response to the Climate EmergencyDiscussing three important articles from the spring 2021 issue, New Labor Forum columnist Sean Sweeney hosts a conversation with Sinead Mercier and Dominic Brown on the role of publicly owned energy in halting the climate crisis. Mercier offers as a model the Republic of Ireland’s creation in the 1920s of the fantastically successful state owned and operated Electricity Supply Board; Brown describes advancements made in post-Apartheid South Africa to dramatically expand public access to the state-owned energy system, presently curtailed by measures to privatize the country’s utility; and Sweeney asserts the importance of the AMLO government’s efforts to guard...
2021-05-1836 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 15 - "The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry & the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America"New Labor Forum Books and Arts Editor Samir Sonti hosts a conversation with Gabriel Winant, author of the recent book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America. Examining the vast expansion of the health care sector of our economy over the past half-century, Winant traces its development to a combination of factors, including deindustrialization, union decline, an aging population, and a shredded social safety net. It is this historical process, Winant argues, that ushered in a burgeoning low-wage health care workforce disproportionately represented by women and people of color , who...
2021-05-0329 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 14 - "Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat"Across the political spectrum, there’s a widely held view that the decades-long increase in immigration to the U.S. has put U.S. workers in competition with new immigrants for scarce jobs and has led to depressed wages and working conditions. Ruth Milkman’s important and timely new book, Immigrant Labor and the New Precariat, upends this notion, arguing that it gets cause and effect wrong. Instead, she contends that immigrants have tended to fill jobs already badly degraded, thanks largely to deregulation and de-unionization. In an interview with Samir Sonti, she speaks about the particular industries in which this...
2021-04-1728 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 13 - "Work Won't Love You Back"This episode features New Labor Forum columnist Sarah Jaffe in conversation with New Labor Forum Consulting Editor, Ruth Milkman. They discuss Jaffe’s new book, "Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone", which examines a trend among today’s employers to rely, or even insist upon, workers’ emotional dedication to their jobs, the proverbial labor of love. From the school teacher to the non-profit worker and the un-paid intern, Jaffe argues that living up to this expectation exacts a heavy toll.
2021-04-0532 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 12 - Lessons from the Frontlines of Fights for Democracy and Black LivesThe past year has been a perfect storm of reckoning with racial violence and white supremacy, assaults on the basic practices of democracy, and a pandemic that yet again laid bare the fundamental inequities of the American economy. This episode features an interview with two exciting social justice leaders who are part of innovative and bold national efforts to address these crises and win campaigns for racial and economic justice. This discussion explores solidarity as it is being advanced and reinvented, particularly by emerging leaders of color.
2021-03-1221 minCUNY TV's City WorksThe Biden Administration and the Working ClassLaura Flanders chats with Dorian Warren Felicia Wong to discuss the Biden administration's connection to the working class. Plus, highlights from the SLU public forum entitled "The First 100 Days: Policy Priorities for Labor and Social Justice Movements."
2021-03-0226 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 11 - Black-Led Antiracist Unionism: The Legacy of Ben Fletcher & I.W.W.This episode shines a light on the political and intellectual contributions of Ben Fletcher, one of the most important, yet least well-known African American labor activists of the twentieth century. Peter Cole’s recently re-issued book, Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly, goes a long way toward bringing Fletcher out of the shadows, enabling contemporary activists and scholars to learn from his work to build a militant, multi-racial union among Philadelphia dockworkers during the early 1900s. In his conversation with New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large, Kafui Attoh Peter Cole paints a picture of Ben Fletcher, a man wh...
2021-02-2633 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 10 - Seismic Shifts: Organized Labor & Covid's Impact on the EconomyBarely one week into the Biden Administration, CUNY faculty member and New Labor Forum Consulting Editor Joshua Freeman interviews Heidi Shierholz, Senior Economist and Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute and Mark Levinson, Chief Economist at the Service Employees International Union. Their discussion examines the marked distinctions – in cause, repercussions, and evolving policy responses – between the current economic crisis and previous fiscal crises.
2021-02-1631 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 9 - The First 100 Days: Policy Priorities for Labor & Social Justice MovementsIn this latest episode, Professor Deepak Bhargava speaks to Judith Browne Dianis, Executive Director of the Advancement Project, and Dorian Warren, President of Community Change, about progressive priorities for the first 100 days of the Biden administration. They discuss top legislative priorities and movement organizing strategies necessary to achieve consequential legislation and executive action.
2021-01-3033 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 8 - The Poetry of Border Crossing: A Conversation with Javier ZamoraThis episode brings poetry to the crucial task of reinventing solidarity. New Labor Forum Editor Paula Finn hosts a conversation with award winning poet Javier Zamora, who at nine years old left his home in El Salvador and made his way, as an unaccompanied minor, through Guatemala and Mexico and across the Sonoran Desert to reunite with his parents in California. In this interview, Zamora reflects on this experience and on the role of poetry in movements for social justice, and reads poems from his book Unaccompanied.
2021-01-0831 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 7 - Public Health, Private Equity, And The PandemicAs the coronavirus surges across the U.S. during this holiday season, the biblical “no room in the inn” has become “no room in the hospital.” This is especially true in rural regions in the Midwest, South and Southwest, where hospital closings imperil whole communities. Today’s podcast explores one of the factors which has exacerbated this crisis: the speculation in health care networks by private equity firms. In his fall 2020 column for New Labor Forum and in this episode of Reinventing Solidarity, Max Fraser examines the profiteering by these firms that has contributed to the proliferation of “health care deserts.” He...
2020-12-1827 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 6 - A Global Public Goods Approach to Combatting Climate ChangeFrom Durban, South Africa, New Labor Forum columnist Sean Sweeney interviews human rights and environmental leader Kumi Naidoo. In 2009, Naidoo became the first African head of Greenpeace, then went on to serve as Secretary General of Amnesty International, from 2018 to 2020. In his interview with Sweeney, Naidoo rebukes successive U.S. administrations for their failure to play a useful role in halting climate change. He also reproaches leaders in the global South who suggest they should be given a pass on environmental destruction as they seek to increase living standards and develop their economies.
2020-12-0433 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 5 - Economic, Racial, and Immigrant Justice: A Progressive Congressional Agenda In 2021This episode benefits from the exciting public programming we do at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Since the corona virus surged last spring, we’ve been hosting a series of virtual forums on the subject of Covid capitalism. These talks examine what the pandemic has come to reveal about contemporary capitalism, the chronic racial and economic inequality faced by millions of Americans, and the prospects for structural change. A conversation featuring Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal marked a high point in these discussions and forms the basis for today’s podcast. Jayapal discusses her trajectory from grassroots organizer to stra...
2020-11-1425 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 4 - Confronting COVID: Workers on the FrontlineThis episode airs on the eve of the 2020 elections, with nearly everything hanging in the balance – from our nation’s ability to withstand the COVID-19 pandemic to our already constricted democracy’s ability to survive the authoritarianism of the Trump Administration. On both questions: the need to strengthen our democracy and overcome the devastation of the coronavirus, labor unions have a major role to play.
2020-11-0227 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 3 - Making It Real: Resilience Work and the Green New DealToday so many of us live with deep anxiety about the peril of climate change and the fact that so little progress has been made to halt it. This podcast is both a reckoning with and an antidote to such despair. Sean Sweeney discusses with Saket Soni his Resilience Force initiative. In Florida and New Orleans, the Resilience Force has begun to create living-wage jobs for formerly low-wage, precarious workers, who carry out restoration and mitigation efforts in response to increasingly frequent and severe weather events.
2020-10-1630 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 2 - COVID Capitalism: The Political Economy of the COVID PandemicSamir Sonti probes Leo Panitch about the character of the advanced capitalist economies through which the Covid-19 pandemic spread so rapidly. What has the pandemic revealed about the toll of neoliberalism on the poor and working-class, on migrants and people of color? And what about the organizations and parties that claim to protect them: namely organized labor, social democratic parties and our own Democratic Party?What signs are there that broad-based social struggle may be in the process of a revival in response to the grim realities that the pandemic has laid bare?
2020-09-2930 min
Reinventing SolidarityEpisode 1 - Which Side Are You On: The Labor Movement and #BlackLivesMatterIn this inaugural episode, David Unger and Kafui Attoh look squarely at the tragedy of police violence against people color, and at the unions that represent and negotiate contracts on behalf of the police. What role has organized labor played in supporting the Black Lives Matter movement? What role should it play? And what’s the rightful relationship of the labor movement to the police and their unions?
2020-09-2127 minCUNY TV's City WorksBLM and Police UnionsCan police unions work in any meaningful way with labor and BLM movements? Laura Flanders talks with Terry Melvin, Executive Director of the Racial Justice Task Force of the AFL-CIO, and David Unger, SLU labor educator.
2020-09-0726 min