Jacobin Radio The Dig: Who Moves America w/ Yael Bridge, Jeremy Flood, and Erick Stoll
Oct 16, 2026
Yael Bridge, documentary director of Who Moves America?, joins labor filmmakers Jeremy Flood and Erick Stoll to discuss the unrealized 2023 UPS Teamsters strike. They explore workers’ mixed reactions, the strike’s potential impact on organized labor, everyday workplace organizing, and the challenge of making and funding films that center working-class voices.
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Organizing Includes Ambiguous Outcomes
- The strike’s collapse revealed organizing’s ordinary ambivalence, rarely shown in triumphant activist stories.
- Young Teamsters had to process losing a chance to exercise power after investing emotionally in collective action.
Veterans Wanted To Model Striking
- UPS workers reacted differently to the canceled strike, reflecting varied finances, politics, and relationships to the union.
- Veterans of the 1997 strike wanted younger Teamsters to experience the radicalizing power of collective action.
Workers Judged The Contract Differently
- Contract quality and strike participation were separate questions for UPS workers.
- Activists felt a missed opportunity, while many rank-and-file members valued a solid agreement and an end to uncertainty.