Laborwave Radio

We spoke with members of the Angry Workers, a political collective, about the insights from their recent PM Press title, "Class Power on Zero Hours." The Angry Workers spent the last six years working in a London backyard mostly among food and manufacturing workers, and they've chronicled their experiences as well as their efforts to organize alongside these workers in an expansive book. We speak about these experiences as well as the lessons learned from the ground, and the need to develop revolutionary forms of organization internationally. You can contact the Angry Workers at angryworkersworld@gmail.com or on their Twitter @angryworkers or Facebook @angryworkersworld https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1164 Music on this episode is provided thanks to In The Red Records! Ty Segall & Mikal Cronin- Drop Dead Baby https://intheredrecords.com/collections/the-ty-segall-band/products/ty-segall-mikal-cronin-reverse-shark-attack Support our show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/laborwave

On Election Night comrades of the show got together to play games, talk politics, and ease election anxiety (as much as that was possible). Here's a short clip of our four-hour hangout where we discussed Emma Goldman's position on women's suffrage and state politics, the Black Rose Anarchist Federation article on Voting or Abstention, and a recent Contrapoints video discussing the subject of voting for the lesser of two evils. Comrades heard here include Andrea, Kali, and Tali. Laborwave will continue putting videos and hangouts such as these on our YouTube, and you can access all of our content and help sustain our show at patreon.com/laborwave Links to the articles we discuss: Emma Goldman- Woman Suffrage https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1911/woman-suffrage.htm Black Rose Anarchist Federation- Vote- Or Don't: On Abstentionism https://blackrosefed.org/vote-or-dont/ Contrapoints- Voting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Vah8sUFgI

David Graeber was an anthropologist, proponent of anarchism, and participant in many movement struggles of the past two decades including the Alter-Globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street. Among his popular authored books includes Debt: The First 5,000 Years, The Utopia of Rules, Bullshit Jobs, and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. He passed on September 2, 2020. We discuss his ideas and celebrate his memory in this conversation with comrades Tony Vogt, member of the IWW and co-founder of the Anarres Project for Alternative Futures, and Shane Capra, an organizer and participant in the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking and member of the IWW. Our discussion covers topics of leadership and charisma, the tension between play and games, and falling in love with a ghost you cannot capture. Support Laborwave by becoming a patron at patreon.com/laborwave Links: Anarres Project for Alternative Futures anarresproject.org Institute for Advanced Troublemaking https://advancedtroublemaking.wordpress.com In the Red Records https://intheredrecords.com Music: King Khan & BBQ Show: Shake Real Low

We discussed the legacy and experiences of Occupy Wall Street with two movement participants Marina Sitrin and Vanessa Zettlers, contributors to the recent title Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis published by Pluto Press. Our conversation touched on the ways to recover the real history of OWS and overcome "historical forgetting," the mechanics of OWS through forms of direct democracy such as assemblies and working groups, and the lessons learned from this movement including the need to better anticipate "the fist of the state." In The Red Records, an independent music label based in Los Angeles, has provided Laborwave permission to use music from their artists on the show! This episode featured the following In The Red artists: Tyvek- Real Estate and Finance, off their 2016 album "Origin of What" Osees-Don't Blow Your Experiment, from their upcoming album "Panther Rotate" from Castle Face Records. Links: Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid During Covid-19 Crisis published by Pluto Press https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343167/pandemic-solidarity/ They Can't Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy published by Verso Books https://www.versobooks.com/books/1433-they-can-t-represent-us Laborwave Radio is an independent podcast fully sustained by our patrons. Become a rank-and-filer, committee member, or strike captain and help support our show at patreon.com/laborwave

We spoke with Amir Fleischmann of the Graduate Employee Organization, a union at the University of Michigan, about their latest strike leveraged to fight the university's reckless reopening plans amid a pandemic. Amir provides a play-by-play of the strike, the events leading up to it and the larger context in which it occurred, and how their union was able to raise expectations and demonstrate the organic links between worker justice and social justice. We discuss the demands of the strike, including demands to disarm and defund campus police, and take a look at the strike's mechanics and how workers were able to make their presence felt even during measures of social distancing as well as the power they were able to build among their own membership and in coalition with campus and community organizations. Laborwave Radio is an independent podcast sustained exclusively through our patrons at patreon.com/laborwave If you enjoy the show, please share our content across social media, like and comment, and join our patreon as either a rank-and-filer, committee member, or strike captain. All patrons receive custom-made gifts from our resident artist including original stickers, illustrated zines, and Laborwave tees. Music by: Damaged Bug- Transmute

Join in on the fun Discord conversations by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave Andrea Haverkamp, president of CGE 6069, joins Laborwave to discuss chapters 5 & 6 of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey; "If We Can Change the White House, We Can Change the Hog House!" Our conversation highlights the importance of connecting our movement histories to fight against the consistent bracketing of social movements as self-contained and insular phenomenons, making the role of staff transparent and accountable for developing the leadership of the rank-and-file, and also pose some hard questions for the IWW asking why is it so prone to the "one-man organizing show" written about in Organizing Work and what prevents its own policies and structures from being consistently implemented? Chapter 5 analyzes the strategies of UFCW's multiple union campaigns at Smithfield Foods, where in their third round after 10+ years they finally won a union through a deep organizing model that brought in community allies under a banner of social justice to win. Chapter 6 examines the "mobilizing model," with promise, of Make the Road New York, an immigrants rights organization with more than 15,000 dues-paying members. McAlevey argues key ingredients for their success include "high-touch" participatory democracy and power over staff afforded by MRNY members. This and more in our penultimate episode of Comrades Read Together: No Shortcuts! Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together! Organizing Work, Beware the One-Man Organizing Show https://organizing.work/2019/07/beware-the-one-man-organizing-show/ Music: Thee Oh Sees- Bloody Water

Joining Laborwave is Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, to discuss his piece on Identity Politics and Elite Capture published by the Boston Review. "If elite capture boils down to the way power and resources tend to be distributed within groups, and not simply across groups, then it is a fully general problem of politics in a world that distributes power and resources unjustly and unequally. Elites get outsize control over the ideas in circulation about identities by, more or less, the same methods and for the same reasons that they get control over everything else." We discuss how elite capture is on display in the op-eds of Andrew Yang and calls for better representation within mainstream media, its manifestations in current discourse around "cancel culture," and the prospects for revamped social movements, especially in organized labor, to elevate politics to a level that transcends the capture of elites. http://bostonreview.net/race/olufemi-o-taiwo-identity-politics-and-elite-capture Music: Damaged Bug- Sold America Transcript available at https://www.laborwaveradio.com/post/olufemitaiwo

Join in on the fun conversations by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave Ellen Kress, former president of GTFF 3544 and current AFT-Oregon officer, and Andrea Haverkamp, president of CGE 6069, join Laborwave for a comradely discussion on chapters 3 & 4 of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey. These chapters are full of exercises and advice for rookie organizers, which we discuss in detail, and talks STRIKES!!! We're introduced to another villain of the working class in the form of Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, and shown the bravery and heroism of teachers that battled him down and won in a massive strike during 2012. These chapters also present us with arguments about the possibility of reforming unions through challenging existing leadership and bargaining for the common good. Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together! Music: Thee Oh Sees- Maria Stacks

Join the conversations around this book in our Laborwave Discord by becoming any type of patron of the show at patreon.com/laborwave !!! This is our second episode of Comrades Read Together where we're discussing, chapter by chapter, the book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. We follow up our conversation tackling the introduction and chapter 2 with a review of the book by Nick Dreidger, contributing writer to Organizing Work! Dreidger asks the tough questions about the political horizons achievable under a labor relations framework, and whether it's possible for "business unions" to break out of such constricting frameworks. He also argues that McAlevey's ultimate aims in labor organizing leads us down the path of left electoral politics, where the power that has been built by workers through these deep organizing methods are undercut by the top-down system of politics available within the electoral realm. We also talked about the IWW approach, why it succeeds and why it fails, and speak about the prospects for independent radical unions. Read his full review, No Shortcuts, But to Where? at https://organizing.work/2019/12/no-shortcuts-but-to-where/ We're continuing with this series by reading chapters 3-4 and engaging with folks on our Laborwave Discord!

Become a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave Andrea Haverkamp, President of CGE 6069; Sarah Pishioneri, labor organizer based in Oregon; and Alex Riccio, labor organizer based in Philadelphia; have a comradely discussion about the first two chapters of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey. Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together! We cover the main arguments put forward in the introduction and chapter two concerning theories of power, the difference between advocacy, mobilizing, and organizing strategies, and whole-worker organizing. We also hiss and boo at the villains taken on by McAlevey named Andy Stern, former president of SEIU, and Saul Alinsky, overall weak-sauce organizer pushing a mostly advocacy and mobilizing approach to social change where organizers pretend to be neutral support with no agendas or positions. This and more in our first Comrades Read Together!