Laborwave Radio

A special audio reproduction of a live discussion with Boots Riley! Full transcript available at laborwaveradio.com/bootsriley This event was organized by the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE 6069) and King Legacy Advisory Board (KLAB) to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and CGE's 20th Anniversary as a formally recognized labor union. Moderated by Andrea Haverkamp, Boots Riley discusses a wide range of topics including the left's move from organizing power at the point of production to a form of political protest as "spectacle," the role of radical and subversive art in modern culture, and the need to move beyond debates over violence and non-violence in our organizing.

Full Transcript Available At: laborwaveradio.com/asadhaider What is the relationship between race and class, and which should be the primary focus for addressing on the level of political organizing? Questions such as these, argues our guest Asad Haider, miss the mark as they seek to make determinations about the world at the level of conceptual abstractions. Furthermore, he suggests, such questions slide into a muddled debate between advancing either universalist or particularist demands. The reality, he suggests, is that the abolition of white supremacy and the advancing of class struggle are by necessity universal programs beginning with particular demands. Asad Haider is an editor of Viewpoint Magazine and author of Mistaken Identity: Anti-Racism and the Struggle Against White Supremacy (Verso, Spring 2018). Viewpoint Magazine: https://www.viewpointmag.com/author/asad-haider/ Mistaken Identity: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2716-mistaken-identity

Full transcript at laborwaveradio.com/jarrodshanahan We explore the life and legacy of Noel Ignatiev through conversation with Jarrod Shanahan, a life-long comrade of Noel's and co-editor along with Noel Ignatiev on the journal Hard Crackers. Noel Ignatiev passed on November 9, 2019 at the age of 78. He was a dedicated antiracist leftist who edited the journals Race Traitor and Hard Crackers and wrote the widely influential book How The Irish Became White. The enduring legacy of Noel Ignatiev's life and thought may best be summed up by the slogan printed on the cover of Race Traitor: "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity." We discuss with Jarrod Shanahan Noel's theoretical contributions to analyses on whiteness and "white skin privilege" as well as his ideas on how small groups of radicals can change society through instigating "creative provocation," such as practiced by the Abolitionists against chattel slavery in the United States. Jarrod Shanahan is an activist, educator, and researcher. His writing, which has appeared in outlets including Jacobin, Commune, Vice, and The New Inquiry, can be found at jarrodshanahan.com. Read Jarrod's full article commemorating the life and legacy of Noel Ignatiev at Commune Mag: https://communemag.com/noel-ignatiev-1940-2019/ Further links: Opening Space for the Radical Imagination III https://www.imaginativespaces.org Laborwave Radio https://www.labowaveradio.com Noel Ignatiev Works Referenced: Black Worker, White Worker http://www.sojournertruth.net/bwww.html How The Irish Became White https://www.routledge.com/How-the-Irish-Became-White-1st-Edition/Ignatiev/p/book/9780415963091 Race Traitor https://www.routledge.com/Race-Traitor-1st-Edition/Ignatiev-Garvey/p/book/9780415913935 Hard Crackers https://hardcrackers.com/ CUNY Struggle https://cunystruggle.org/ $7K or Strike https://7korstrike.org/ Robin DG Kelley “After Trump” forum http://bostonreview.net/forum/after-trump/robin-d-g-kelley-trump-says-go-back-we-say-fight-back CLR James and Johnson-Forest tendency For a good introduction into this strain of socialist thought, see The Invading Socialist Society by CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya, https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1947/invading/index.htm Endnotes https://endnotes.org.uk/about

First time for Laborwave, an audio essay from our show host Alex Riccio originally published by the Institute for Anarchist Studies (anarchiststudies.org). Imagining A Better Utopia: Seizing Spaces of Revolutionary (Re)production "Victories against the boss are transformative for workers. They cultivate a sense of new possibilities and openings previously viewed as impossible. The task, then, is to expand the arenas where victories take place. In this way, what may begin as a victory against landlords and project for cooperative housing contains the potential of enlarging its imaginative capacities to become the pathway where a recognition is made that cooperative houses on colonized lands is insufficient, and nothing less than a global revolution against settler-colonial capitalist heteropatriarchy will do. " Laborwave Radio is a proud sponsor of the Opening Space for the Radical Imagination III Read about the gathering and the current Call for Presenters at oregonimagines.com Essay text available at https://anarchiststudies.org/imagining-a-better-utopia-seizing-spaces-of-revolutionary-reproduction/

The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF 3544) has authorized a strike to begin on November 4, 2019 at the University of Oregon. More than 1,000 workers authorized the strike after 11 months of intense negotiations with university management. Lola Loustaunau, a graduate employee and member of GTFF, discusses the strategy GTFF has adopted for their collective bargaining efforts, the reasons the strike has been authorized, and the broader experience these negotiations have had on fellow workers and union members. She also provides personal insights into how public universities are using a post-Janus environment as an opportunity to try to discipline and destroy higher ed unions, and for these reasons along with many others unions need to recommit to a vision of fundamentally transforming society and ending exploitation. We also had a brief interview with Erin Kanzig, VP of Bargaining for the Coalition of Graduate Employees (CGE 6069) about their current collective bargaining efforts and their goals in bargaining. More info: GTFF 3544 http://gtff3544.net CGE 6069 https://cge6069.org/bargaining

In 2018 Oregon voters, particularly teachers and public workers, propelled the Oregon legislature to supermajority Democratic control. But instead of delivering on the promises of protecting union workers and funding public services the Democrats, despite their supermajority in the legislature, have cut public pensions and capitulated to Republicans on a number of bills revealing the extent to which neoliberal ideology dictates the policy-making of Oregon Democrats. In response, Paige Kreisman has launched a bid for District 42 of the Oregon legislature and openly proclaims herself to be a socialist with a platform to support working-class Oregonians. She is endorsed by the Portland Democratic Socialists of America, and independents For Progressive Action (Our Revolution, Clackamas County). Paige is the electoral and legislative co-chair for Portland DSA, and a board member for Portland Tenants United. She is a disabled veteran, and the first trans woman to run for the state legislature in Oregon. Paige is calling for an Oregon Green New Deal, campaign finance reform, housing justice, and to defend Oregon's public employees and unions. Learn more about Paige's 100% people powered campaign at Paige2020.com. Music by Thee Oh Sees. Website at laborwaveradio.com

Calls for a general strike in the United States have become a common phenomenon. Activists and organizers have encouraged general strikes to accomplish goals ranging from climate justice to reproductive justice, and these inspired appeals to massive disruption signal in some respects a desire for fast and dramatic social change. But what is a general strike and how effective are they in accomplishing social change on a societal scale? And can such strikes be imported into the United States? These questions and more are discussed in our conversation with Marianne Garneau. Marianne Garneau wrote the recent article for Organizing Work "You Say You Want A General Strike?" which takes a measured assessment on the effectiveness of generals strikes as they occur in Europe. Marianne Garneau is a labor organizer and editor of Organizing Work, an online platform focused on workplace organizing and strategy. Read the article at: http://organizing.work/2019/08/you-say-you-want-a-general-strike/

What role have universities in the United States played in the making and continuation of settler-colonialism, white supremacy, and more recently neoliberal capitalism? Have universities been the unwilling victims of the corporatization of higher education, or have they been active agents in their own neoliberal transformation? And how true are common narratives that universities once experienced a golden age of progressive knowledge production and shared governance in a post-WWII United States? All of these questions and more are discussed in this episode with our guests Eli Meyerhoff and Zach Schwartz-Weinstein. Meyerhoff and Schwartz-Weinstein also open up the conversation to discuss potential alternatives to modern universities in their exploration of abolitionist university studies, inspired by abolitionist movements against slavery and prisons in the US. Abolitionist university studies poses a left-wing critique of universities that traces their lineage to the making of racial capitalism and settler-colonialism in the US, and seeks to move beyond current university configurations toward more liberatory modes of education. Suggested further reading for this episode include: Abolitionist University Studies: An Invitation by Eli Meyerhoff, Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, Abbie Boggs, and Nick Mitchell https://abolitionjournal.org/abolitionist-university-studies-an-invitation/ Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World by Eli Meyerhoff https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/beyond-education (get a copy for 30% off using code MN85410- expires December 31, 2019) Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities by Craig Steven Wilder https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ebony-and-ivy-9781608193837/ Eli Meyerhoff is academic staff at Duke University and author of the recent book, Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World published by University of Minnesota Press. He has worked for the Social Movements Lab and participated in two separate unionization efforts to organize graduate student workers at the University of Minnesota. Zach Schwartz-Weinstein is an adjunct most recently at Bard Prison Initiative. He served on the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC) at NYU where he participated in a 7-month strike during 2005-2006. Swartz-Weinstein currently researches food service, maintenance, and clerical workers at US universities and is working on a book about a series of strikes conducted by Yale food service workers in the late 1960s throughout the 1970s.

Laborwave spoke with Nora Samaran about her recent publication, Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture, printed by AK Press. Our conversation ranged from topics of trauma, violence, rape culture, numbness, entitlement, and gaslighting along with care, nurturance, healing, empathy, attachment, and systemic change. Turn This World Inside Out tackles all of these subjects along with dialogues on white supremacy, transphobia, settler colonization, and the power of turning our gifts for healing toward societal change. Get a copy from AK Press at: https://www.akpress.org/turn-this-world-inside-out.html Read Nora Samaran at: https://norasamaran.com/ Nora Samaran is a white settler from a working class immigrant family background. She was a member of the No One is Illegal-Vancouver collective from 2005-2008, and the Media Democracy Day-Vancouver collective from 2008-2010. Her essay ‘The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture’ went viral in February 2016 and has grown into a book, Turn This World Inside Out, out with AK Press in June 2019. She teaches at Douglas College in Coast Salish Territories, also known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Music: Thee Oh Sees- Ship Thee Oh Sees- Minotaur Alex Riccio- Interstitial

We reproduce highlights from interviews in our second season of Laborwave. More episodes from Laborwave will be released in the late summer of 2019. Highlights include clips from our interviews with: Marianne Garneau on the Women's Strike. Garneau explains why it is necessary to have specific targets tied to specific demands within a larger strategic plan in order to be effective in any struggle for working class improvements, and how all of these features are absent from the IWS, so far. Shane Burley on Lessons from the Burgerville Workers Union. In addition to lesson from BVWU's victories we discussed the need to rethink labor organizing under late capitalism, where workers no longer self-identify with particular forms of industry and precarious labor is the norm. BVWU's successes in some ways points to the need to re-embrace as Shane says, "19th century unionism" in the 21st century. Hillary Lazar on Border Politics and Antifascism. Our interview focused on Hillary Lazar's essay, Connecting Our Struggles: Border Politics, Antifascism, and Lessons from the Trials of Ferrero, Sallito, and Graham published in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (n.30). The piece focuses on the lost history of anarchist editors and supporters of the periodical Man! who were swept up in an anti-immigrant and anti-anarchist political reaction during the early part of the 20th century in the United States. The piece uses this case study to explore connections and continuations of anti-immigrant policies of today and how such policies bolster the repression of political dissent. adrienne maree brown on Pleasure Activism. How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own. AK Thompson on Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt. Our clip focuses on his essay discussing leftist critiques of Avatar and how they failed to also use the limitations of the movie and its popularity as opportunities for radical organizing. Bill Fletcher, Jr. on Social Justice Unionism.Fletcher Jr discusses the need for "social justice unionism" in a post-Janus United States. Workers are becoming increasingly atomized in the US, and the state continues to rollback any investments into the reproductive labor that stitches society together. The moment, as Fletcher Jr states, that organized labor can seize for victory is almost over. We might not get another moment. What role do teachers strikes, worker-owned businesses, and housing cooperatives play in seizing this current moment? How do the rank and file push labor leadership to understand that we cannot continue doing "business as usual" despite not being knocked out by Janus right away?