This will be the first Labor Day since America rediscovered its working class — or, more accurately, one part of its working class. If there was any consensus in the aftermath of last November’s election, it was that elites had lost touch with working people.
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Several months ago the Communist party in Russia updated their visual propaganda by giving three of their most controversial icons—Lenin, Stalin, and Karl Marx—a makeover.
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Lane Windham’s new book, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide, was officially released on Labor Day by the University of North Carolina Press.
Read more →Happy Labor Day! I want to call our project — the East Side Freedom Library — to your attention. We are three years and two months old. Please check out our web page and our Facebook page, like us, spread the word.
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In case natural disaster, nuclear war, and unpredictable political leaders are not enough to keep us up at night, we remain under threat by an age-old specter: the menace of the “union boss.” Just this week a Newsmax headline screamed “Union Boss: Too Early for 2018 Targets,” while the Washington Times blared “Union boss Richard Trumka focused on retaking Trump’s Rust Belt states next year.”
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Before there were Labor Day barbecues and Labor Day sales, there was Labor–workers in the 19th century pushing for an eight-hour day and safe conditions as the U.S. economy was transforming itself from one of small enterprises to one dominated by industrial corporations.
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A new LAWCHA initiative to develop classroom and public knowledge of labor history
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The Midwest Labor and Working-Class History (MLWCH) colloquium met at the University of Memphis on June 2nd, 2017. The one-day event included academic papers and roundtables that addressed larger labor and working-class issues. This year’s theme, “Labor Mobilizations and Movements: From the Local to the Global,” attracted an impressive swath of academic scholars, public historians, and activists who addressed a range of historical and contemporary topics.
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This May I attended the commencement ceremony for a young cousin who was one of 117 graduates from an overwhelmingly black charter high school in a south suburb of Chicago. Launched in 2010, the school – which I will dub “South Charter High” – was the brainchild of black educators, and working-class and middle-class parents, a fair share of them former Chicagoans displaced from the city by urban redevelopment and a skyrocketing cost of living.
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Stuart Hall with Bill Schwarz, Familiar Stranger: a Life Between Two Islands. Duke University Press, 2017. 271pp, $29.95 pbk
Stuart Hall, Selected Political Writings: The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays. Duke University Press, 20917. 360pp, $27.95 pbk
1956: John Saville, E.P.
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