Sanders or Warren? Populist-Progressivism or New Deal? Take Your Pick!
Political commentators regularly identify both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as populists. Labor historian Leon Fink dives into the debate over their roots.
posts and bio Leon Fink
Leon Fink is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the editor of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas.
Could Regional Reparations Help the Democrats Retake the Rust Belt?
States such as Ohio and Michigan have been hit with blight and economic downturn. Offering reparations to those hardest hit could be the key to winning in 2020.
Read more →Sleeping Giant: When Public Workers Awake
It was the radical African-American intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois, who famously called the mass disaffection and migration of southern slaves to Union battle lines in the Civil War a “general strike.”
Read more →Labor ends all business relations with FedEx
In recent months we have taken action to end the shipping of print copies of Labor by FedEx in any capacity.
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Solidarity? Whatever—Obama’s Forgotten Social Movement
President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address, progressive? Maybe. But only if you are one of the liberals who have forgotten this nation’s working class. A key feature of the president’s message was the absence of a single word: unions.
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Our Man in Rio: Leon Fink Reports on Inspiring Conference
From November 27 to November 30, 2012, I had the pleasure of attending the Second International “Worlds of Labor” conference—effectively the Brazilian labor historians’ national gathering—sponsored by the host institution, the Getulio Vargas Foundation, in Rio De Janeiro.
Read more →Remembering Al Young, by Leon Fink & Jesse Lemisch
Alfred F. Young, a pioneer of the “new labor history,” noted social historian of the early American nation, and a founding editor of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, died on November 6, 2012 at age 87. Many know him from his passionate and original investigation of the lives of working people,
Read more →LaborOnline
I write with exciting news of the takeoff of LaborOnline, a new blog that will deepen and extend the content of LAWCHA’s flagship journal, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas. As piloted by new Associate Editor Rosemary Feurer–and assisted by an all-star cast of designated blog contributors–LaborOnline will feature commentary on a host of issues, contemporary and historical, as well as “instant” dialogue and debate among readers and authors about the contents of the print journal.
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