Working People

We talk with Naomi Burton and Nick Hayes, the young socialist brains behind Means Media, the Detroit-based leftist media cooperative that produced the viral campaign video for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and is about to launch a "Netflix for the left."    Additional links/info below... Means Media website , Twitter , and Facebook page SIGN UP FOR MEANS TV !  Meagan Day, Jacobin , " "Trust the Rich Le...

We chat with Rick Sturgill, a retired coal miner and electrician from Letcher County in South East Kentucky. Rick is a straight shooter, he calls things like he sees them. And, having spent most of his life around coal, he has a lot of sobering things to say about working in coal and about the far-reaching effects the coal industry has had on cities and towns in Appalachia, on politics and the env...

We talk with Katy Slininger about her latest piece for Popula magazine, " Alienated Labor ," in which she explains--in heartbreaking detail--why it became impossible for her to continue working for the postal service once she got pregnant.    Additional links/info below... Katy's Twitter page   Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org ) Lobo Loco, "Malte...

We talk with Jared Sacks and Buka Okoye, two members of the Columbia grad union (GWC-UAW Local 2110 Graduate Workers of Columbia) about graduate student-workers' fight for more transparent, democratic representation.    Additional links/info below... Jared Sacks, Columbia Spectator , " What Is "Open Bargaining" and How Will it Transform Columbia? " Graduate Workers of Columbia website , Twitter ,...

We chat with Evan Montgomery, a third-generation grain farmer on the North Dakota side of the Red River Valley. Evan is also a trained musician--he has a degree in music, he sings classical music--and we talk all about his life growing up on the farm, getting into music, and finding a way to strike a balance and pursue both of those passions at once. We also talk about this year's "harvest from he...

Carl Slone is a coal miner who lives in Whitesburg, Kentucky, a town of about 1,200 people. He's never protested before. But when he saw a local establishment publicly shaming poor people in his community, he decided to do something about it.    Additional links/info below... Tweet about Carl's protest     Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org ) Lobo L...

We talk with DSA member and Jacobin staff writer Meagan Day about her recent article " The 'Skills Gap' Was a Lie "   Additional links/info below... Meagan Day's Jacobin author page     Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org ) Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"    

Faculty have been on strike at Wright State University for over two weeks now, and things are coming to a head. In this special episode, we check in with Doctor Noeleen McIlvenna, a professor of early American history at Wright State and Executive Committee member of the AAUP-WSU.  We talk about the strike and how the university's underhanded attempts to undercut the union fit into the larger hist...

We talk to journalist Ross Barkan about his recent article in Gothamist , " Amazon's NYC Campus, Donald Trump's Rise, & NY's Prison Boom All Share A Common Ancestor "    Additional links/info below... Ross Barkan's Twitter     Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org ) Lobo Loco, "Malte Junior - Hall"

Represented by UNITE HERE Local 11, workers at hotels in Southern California have been taking bold and necessary actions to secure a contract that addresses workers' serious concerns: from receiving fairer wages that can actually allow workers to keep up with high costs of living, to mitigating the constant threat of sexual harassment and abuse workers in these hotels face every day, especially co...

Working People is back for Season Two! In this #RedForEd special, we talk to Trevor, Jesenia, and Danielle, three teachers and members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) who are currently joining their brothers and sisters in a historic strike across the LA Unified School District.   Additional links/info below... UTLA Twitter and Facebook   UTLA website   WeArePublicSchools. Org   Sarah Jaffe,...

2018: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, General Motors workers in the U.S. and Canada learned of the company's announcement that it would be idling five plants and cutting around 14,000 jobs. In this urgent, multi-episode series, we will be talking to workers at plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. In the fourth and final part of this series, we speak with activists, workers, scholars, and writer...

2018: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, General Motors workers in the U.S. and Canada learned of the company's announcement that it would be idling five plants and cutting around 14,000 jobs. In this urgent, multi-episode series, we will be talking to workers at plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. In Part IIII, we talk to Cory Weir and Rebecca Keetch, two workers at the award-winning GM plant in...

2018: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, General Motors workers in the U.S. and Canada learned of the company's announcement that it would be idling five plants and cutting around 14,000 jobs. In this urgent, multi-episode series, we will be talking to workers at plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. In Part II, we talk to Lilly and Sean, Tier 2 and Tier 3 workers at the GM plant in Hamtramck, and...

2018: On the Monday after Thanksgiving, General Motors workers in the U.S. and Canada learned of the company's announcement that it would be idling five plants and cutting around 14,000 jobs. In this urgent, multi-episode series, we will be talking to workers at plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. In Part I, we talk to Rochelle Carlisle, Tommy Wolikow, and Nanette Senters, three GM workers from...

In this episode, we talk to Em, an Alaskan native who is now living and working in Jackson, Wyoming. Em is a fellow Millennial, and we talk about some of the funny and awful things that so many people in our generation have in common, like student debt, working multiple crappy jobs at once, and being stressed out from the time we're in elementary school because we're told we have to pile on more c...

In this episode, we round off our special two-week series on sex work by talking to Kai, a sex worker and DJ in Atlanta, Georgia. Kai is a wonderful, funny person and, in our chat, he shares some really important insights about different kinds of sex work, how sex workers take care of themselves and each other, and about the disastrous real-life implications the SESTA-FOSTA bills have for sex work...

In Part II of our bonus episode in this special Working People series on sex work, we chat to the amazing Alex Andrews, an organizer, former sex worker, and co-founder of SWOP Behind Bars, part of the Sex Workers Outreach Project. SWOP Behind Bars "is a national social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of people who face discrimination from the criminal justice system due t...

In Part I of our two-part bonus episode on sex work, we chat to the wonderful Kaytlin Bailey, comedian, writer, activist, sex worker, and host of The Oldest Profession , a fantastic, funny, and unapologetic podcast about the lives of sex workers throughout history. Ever since she was in elementary school, Kaytlin has spoken her mind and questioned the validity of social norms, and we talk about ho...

In this episode, we begin our special two-week series on sex work by talking to the fabulous Ceyenne Doroshow. No description can really do Ceyenne justice, but she is, among other things, a performer, an activist and organizer, a community-based researcher, and a powerful public figure in the trans and sex workers rights' movements. She is the author of the book Cooking in Heels , and the Founder...

In Part I of our special two-part BONUS EPISODE on labor, class, and higher education, we chat to Trevor Griffey, writer, historian, and Labor Studies lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles and California State University, Dominguez Hills. Trevor breaks down the insidious, decades-long effort to devalue academic labor at the administrative, legislative, and cultural level, and we ta...

In this episode, we talk to John Buckley, a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Michigan. John is a member of the lecturer's union at U of M, the Lecturers' Employee Organization (LEO), and was on the bargaining team throughout the effort to negotiate a better contract with the University in 2017/18. We talk about the precarious situation of so many academic workers and what it...

In this episode, which is a little longer than our typical episodes, we talk to Vickie Shannon Allen, a native Texan and a warehouse worker at an Amazon fulfillment center, where she sustained an injury on the job. Vickie's struggle with Amazon to get the medical treatment she deserves is ongoing. As we discuss in the interview, it has been hell for her, and we are asking listeners to help us shar...

In our first BONUS EPISODE of the season, we chat to Rob Larson, writer and professor of economics at Tacoma Community College, and take a deep dive into his new book, Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom . We also talk about Eugene Debs and the "Real America," Jeff Bezos's twitchy eye, pick-up basketball, and how workers can pull together to fight off and fight back against the depres...

In this episode, we chat with Sara, a DACA recipient and telemarketer in Las Vegas. Sara is not the kind of person you can put labels on—you definitely can't put her in any one box. And that seems to have been written into her life story from the beginning. We talk about what it was like growing up in Southern California, moving between cities with different demographics, different cultures—cities...