Episode 84: Shaun Richman Wants to Know Who the Rats Were

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews labor historian Dr. Shaun Richman.

Shaun is a program director at SUNY Empire State College, and he recently completed his PhD in American Studies. But before that, he spent more than a decade as a union organizer and representative. That experience inspires much of his writing, including two books, magazine articles, and op-eds in numerous outlets. His first book was Tell the Bosses We're Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century. His second book, which came out in 2025, is We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912-1953. In addition to being an enthusiastic labor historian, Shaun has a personal connection to this history, as a onetime member of one of the union's featured in the narrative. We talked about how that perspective shapes his work, how he found his way to writing history after years as a labor organizer, and why he's determined to write books that other labor organizers will want to read.

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For links to the books we talked about and a complete transcript, visit draftingthepast.com. Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

· Shaun's website: https://shaunrichman.com/

· Shaun Richman, Tell the Bosses We're Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century

· Shaun Richman, We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers' Union, 1912-1953

· Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist

· Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs

· George Orwell, A Collection of Essays

· Michael Harrington

· Ahmed White, The Last Great Strike: Little Steel, the CIO, and the Struggle for Labor Rights in New Deal America and Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers