The History of the Black Workers Alliance

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i will add a link to the logic magazine interview that you mention in the show note so listeners can check it out. But now, the period of your research in looking at the organizing by thes i b m workers really kind of ranges from my guest, the 19 sixties through to the 19 nineties, right? Those seem to be the main, the main period when this is happening, particularly the seventies and the eighties. What were the main issues that workers were dealing with in that period and organizing against? For this project, i was limiting myself to just trying to find the history of the b w a, the black workers alliance,. And also, they were pretty explicit

Paris Marx is joined by ann haeyoung to discuss IBM worker organizing in the 1970s and 1980s against racism and apartheid, and how those stories are important to informing tech organizing in the present.

ann haeyoung is a media artist interested in technology and labor. She is also a former tech worker and organizer, and a graduate student at UCLA.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

ann wrote about IBM organizing for Wired, and put together a four-part series on her research for Tech Workers Coalition.
Science for the People published an article about tech worker organizing in the 1960s and 1970s.
Logic Magazine spoke to Joan Greenbaum about the early days of tech worker organizing.
Tech Won’t Save Us is looking for a producer.

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