Working People

Latest Episodes:

cOrE vAlUeS (w/ MacKenna Alvarez) May 05, 2020

Show notes

Happy #TeachersDay! To celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Week, we are putting this special bonus episode on the main feed: Another Alvarez joins the Working People universe! Max and his sister, MacKenna, a middle-school teacher in NYC, talk about the politics of charter schools and the disconnect between their touted CORE VALUES and how they treat their workers and students.

Additional links/info below...

Frank Adamson, Björn Åstrand, and Linda Darling-Hammond (eds), Stanford University Press, Global Education Reform: How Privatization and Public Investment Influence Education Outcomes

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Bandana Splits, "Back to School"

Adam Ryan (Target Workers Unite) May 01, 2020

Show notes

Our Season Three finale: we talk with Adam Ryan, a Target worker in Virginia and liaison for Target Workers Unite, one of the groups that has been organizing the coordinated strike actions planned for May 1st, 2020. We talk about Adam's life, his path to becoming a leftist and getting involved in labor organizing, and we talk about the conditions that Target employees have been working under even before the Covid-19 crisis began.

Additional links/info below...

Target Workers Unite Facebook page and Twitter page
Target Workers Unite Strike Fund (please donate!)
Amazonians United New York City Twitter page
Whole Worker United Twitter page
Gig Workers Rising Twitter page
Lauren Kaori Gurley, VICE, "Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart Workers Organize a Historic Mass Strike"
Daniel A. Medina, The Intercept, "As Amazon, Walmart, and Others Profit Amid Coronavirus Crisis, Their Essential Workers Plan Unprecedented Strike"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Cletus Got Shot, "Take Out the Fascists"

Mini-cast: ICE Is the CIA Now, Apparently (w/ Ken Klippenstein) Apr 25, 2020

Show notes

This is a clip from our bonus episode with Ken Klippenstein, DC correspondent for The Nation, about the Covid crisis and the scary powers our government has granted itself to deal with it. Subscribe on Patreon.com/WorkingPeople to listen to the full episode!

Additional links/info below...

Ken's author page and Twitter page
Ken Klippenstein, The Nation, "An Internal Pandemic Document Shows the Coronavirus Gives Trump Extraordinary Powers"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

"We Are Essential," Pt II (Voices from the Covid-19 Crisis) Apr 20, 2020

Show notes

Part II: The Covid-19 crisis and the current economic crash have broken our world apart. These are the voices of the people living, working, and fighting through it.

Additional links/info below...

Change.org petition: Stand with Sprouts Farmers Market Workers: COVID-19 PPE for Workers & Customers Now!
Farmworker clip from UFW member Maria - video
No Rent Michigan Facebook page
Connecticut Workers Crisis Response Facebook page
BeauJon McNally, Black Rose, "Labor Organizing During Covid-19: A University Janitor's Account"
Debt Collective website and Twitter page
Gig Workers Rising website and Twitter page
Saatvik Ahluwalia Twitter page
Jules Taylor Twitter page
Kenzo Shibata Twitter page
Vanderbilt Graduate Workers United website and Twitter page
Half-Price Books Layoffs Twitter page

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Lia Nadja, "Soy Como El Espacio"
Scott Holmes, "We Used to Paint Stars in the Sky"

"We Are Essential," Pt I (Voices from the Covid-19 Crisis) Apr 11, 2020

Show notes

The Covid-19 crisis and the current economic crash have broken our world apart. These are the voices of the people living, working, and fighting through it.

Additional links/info below...

Clip from We the Unhoused by Theo Henderson: "All in the Same Boat"
Clip from Rustbelt Abolition Radio: "Bruce X Parker"
Southern Solidarity — Solidarity for the Unhoused in New Orleans
Food Finder website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Alex (Instacart worker) PayPal address: alex.covidfund@gmail.com

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Life of an Owl in Alaska, "Sheffield"
Return to Normal, "The Observer"

Workers' Book Club: A Serf's Journal (w/ Terry Tapp and John Tormey)) Apr 06, 2020

Show notes

The second installment of the Workers' Book Club is finally here, and it's a doozy! Our friend John Tormey, a track laborer and writer from just outside Boston, interviews working-class Kentucky artist, writer, and radio host Terry Tapp about his latest book from Zero Books, A Serf's Journal: The Story of the United States' Longest Wildcat Strike.

Additional links/info below...

Terry's website and Facebook page
Terry Tapp, Zero Books, A Serf's Journal: The Story of the United States' Longest Wildcat Strike
John's Twitter page
John Tormey, The Baffler, "Known Assailants"
Working People, "Mini-Cast: Known Assailants (w/ John Tormey)"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Maya Angelou reading 'Workers' Song'
Birds of Paradise, "Dying"
Flection Big Sky, "She's Out of Sight"

Mini-cast: #InstacartStrike (w/ Vanessa Bain) Mar 29, 2020

Show notes

This Monday (March 30) Instacart shoppers around the country will walk off the job to demand hazard pay and basic protections for working during the Covid-19 crisis. In this urgent mini-cast, we bring our friend, gig worker, and organizer Vanessa Bain back on the show to talk about the strike.

Additional links/info below...

Working People, Season 3, Episode 6: Vanessa Bain
Gig Workers' Collective website
Gig Workers' Collective, Medium, "Instacart Emergency Walk Off"
Gig Workers' Collective, Medium, "Instacart's "Response" is a Sick Joke — The Strike is Still On"
Lauren Kaori Gurley, Vice, "Instacart's Gig Workers Are Planning a Massive, Nationwide Strike"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Make Love, Not Stonks (w/ Tom Sexton) Mar 27, 2020

Show notes

We're briefly coming back from hiatus to check in with an old friend and offer some thoughts on our breaking world.

Additional links/info below...

Tom's Twitter page
Gary Rivlin, The Intercept, "A Giant Pile of Money: How Wall Street Drove Public Pensions Into Crisis and Pocketed Billions in Fees"
Eric Levitz, NY Mag, "American Capitalism Can No Longer Afford to Let Workers Retire in Dignity"
Kathleen Elkins, CNBC, "A Brief History of the 401(k), Which Changed How Americans Retire"
Peter F. Drucker, Harvard Business Review, "Reckoning with the Pension Fund Revolution"
The Economic Policy Institute, "The Productivity Pay Gap"
Kim Kelly, The Nation, "This Is a Horror Story: How Private Equity Vampires Are Killing Everything"

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Cletus Got Shot, "Don't Ya Blame Me, Son"

(Unlocked) BONUS EPISODE - Candace Wolf Mar 20, 2020

Show notes

We talk to activist and oral historian Candace Wolf about her self-published book of interviews with workers all over the world, Shifting the Universe, and about working people's birthright to tell their stories.

Additional links/info below...

Candace Wolf, Shifting the Universe: Spoken Histories of Work & Resistance

Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)

Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"
Lea Thomas, "Talk Like the Trees"

Working-Class Politics: Phara Souffrant Forrest Mar 13, 2020

Show notes

In the newest installment in our ongoing series Working-Class Politics, we talk with Phara Souffrant Forrest, a union nurse, tenant activist, and democratic socialist running for Assembly in New York's 57th District.

Additional links/info below...