Facing Reality 4 Social Justice

 “Meet the Union Printers” was a radio series produced by Local 16 of the International Typographical Union, the ITU, when it was on strike against the Chicago newspapers from late 1947 and into 1949. The strike started only a couple of months after the passage of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act which changed the labor relations rules that had become law during the depression. Liste...

Voices Louder Than Words was a presentation of poetry of the homeless recorded at a pubic event in Chicago in 1991. It incudes readings by the poets themselves as well as readings by others. It shows the depth of feelings and complexity of understanding of the homeless given the opportunity and encouragement to express themselves. It was first broadcast on the Chicago based radio program Labor Exp...

International union solidarity is an important part of the labor movement. There are numerous examples of working people and their organizations supporting working people in other parts of the world fighting the good fight. However, since at least 1900 the leadership if the American Federation of Labor has had an unholy  relationship with the U.S. government in international affairs.  Th...

Tish and Adam Turl are both from central and southern Illinois and connected to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Tish is working on a Masters of Fine Arts at SIU and Adam has a MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art in St. Louis. I’m glad you are able to join me today in Facing Reality 4 Social Justice as we talk to them about how they are using their imagination and their...

This is the last of a three part interview with Sudanese trade unionist - now in Britain - Khalid Sudahmed. He is a member of MENA Solidarity Network which covers issues of political and economic struggle throughout the Middle East North Africa region. More information on his organization can be found at the website https://menasolidaritynetwork.com. In this interview, produced by Lennox Apudo for...

This is the second of a three part interview with Khalid Sidahmed, a leading member of the MENA Solidarity Network. It's website is menasolidaritynetwork.com. The interview was originally produced and broadcast by Hudson Mohawk Magazine Radio in Troy, New York. In this episode, Sidahmed discusses the international players who have interfered in the Sudanese situation - why are they doing this and...

This is the first of three parts of an interview with Khalid Sidahmed on Hudson Mohawk Magazine Radio in Troy, New York at WOOC 105.3 FM. Khalid Sidahmed is from the MENA (Middle East North Africa) Solidarity Network. Here he gives us a radical perspective on the crisis in Sudan. Stick around after the interview for some Sudanese music which we took from Internet Archive. Hosted on Acast...

This is part 2 of a conversation with Nagesh Rao on the ongoing political crisis in Bangladesh. The Prime Minister has fled the country and a Board of Advisors is governing the country as various factions vie for support and try to find direction. This is a complicated and potentially very unstable situation. After the conversation, we will hear a song formed during the student rebellion that has...

Facing Reality 4 Social Justice interviews Nagesh Rao on the extraordinary flight from power of Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. Rao is from India and a professor of English who taught in the U.S. for several years before moving to Dhaka, Bangladesh. He will help us understand how student demonstrations exposed the political weakness of Hasina's long term rule in government. This episode...

The Asian Labour Review has done excellent work discussing the situation of working people in Asia - from the ground up. Their podcast series - Continent of Resistance (https://rss.com/podcasts/continentofresistance/) - gives us the sounds of organizing and struggle. Now they move to work with people to develop a program of training and learning to build a network of communicators who can build on...

This episode of Facing Reality 4 Social Justice is a wide-ranging interview with Kyaw Kyaw, a guitarist and lyricist and member of the Myanmar Punk Rock group, Rebel Riot. Their music is part of the culture of resistance to the country's military government as we'll hear with three selections from their newly released album - to...Dear Comrade. You can find their music at https://bandcamp.com . Re...

The official labor movement in the United States has traditionally been a friend of the state of Israel. But things are starting to change. A new generation of labor leaders and the horrendous attacks on the people and geography of Gaza have started to change the relationship. In today's episode of Facing Reality 4 Social Justice we talk to Sophia Gurule, a spokesperson for Labor for Palestine, a...

I’ll be talking to Peter Werbe about his book – Summer on Fire – a Detroit Novel. This novel details how a group of people around the alternative newspaper – Fifth Estate – reacted to the reality of an urban uprising happening around them. Summer in Detroit was hot in 1967. And people were anxious. War was raging in Vietnam and the body count was growing – and opposition to the war was growing rig...

Interview with Hector Rivera based on article he wrote for Tempest Magazine (tempestmag.org). How much is the change from Obrador to Sheinbaum also a change from the AMLO program - if at all? What are the headwinds the new government will face? What are the implications for the people of Mexico and their organizations? The interview will be followed by a song dedicated to a hero of the 1910-20 Mex...

Thanks for joining us today in Facing Reality 4 Social Justice as we look at an important piece of our continuous struggle for a decent life and we talk to Jonathon Thompson about an article he recently wrote for High Country News about the fight to protect public land – land set aside for the use of us the people – from land grabbers using an innovative technique – State’s Rights and the national...

France is in political turmoil. That's a good thing because it opens possibilities that didn't exist before. The New Popular Front Party (NPF) - a coalition of leftwing parties - is now the largest political force in France. But what does that mean? We have a conversation today with John Mullen, a Marxist and long term resident of France, who is also active in the NPF. He gives us an excellent des...

Carl Sandburg's poems are as relevant today as when they were written. Here are four poems from his 1916 series Chicago Stories which show his insight to the class and social distinctions he saw. He was a democratic socialist in his early days and that comes through in many of his works. This episode of Facing Reality 4 Social Justice is using four of his poems - Anna Imroth, Fences, All Day Long...

In 1936 the Spanish army decided on a coup to get rid of the leftwing government just elected. They were successful but only after a 3 year civil war that decimated the country. Unions and leftwing parties organized an armed resistance to the army and their fight became a battle cry against fascism. Their efforts were often not only against the military coup - but for social and economic change as...

Interview with Michael Sladnick who is on the ground in Myanmar and building support for the revolution against the Myanmar military government. This is our third conversation with Michael on this issue and he describes the regional and international context of the two year long fight for freedom and democracy. How does the struggle in Myanmar relate to the other fights for freedom in South East A...

In Carl Sandburg's poem Kalamazoo he describes the city as "convict gray, dishwater drab". But he also shows Kalamazoo as symbolic of America. The current upsurge against the U.S. government's financial and political support for Israel's destruction of Gaza has become part of this dynamic - the movement is seen in the major universities of our country but it has awoken also in mainstream America a...

Surrealism came from the social discontent that existed after WWI. Andre Breton wrote the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. It grew to a powerful artistic, political and philosophical movement that still has a strong intranational following today. Penelope Rosemont has been a guiding force in this movement since the 1960s. In this interview she discusses the origins of the surrealist movement, i...

Carl Sandburg wrote numerous poems during the 1916-18 period about war and the burdens of war falling on working people. We will look at four of these poems in this episode - Buttons, And They Obey, Wars, Grass - which are not specific to World War I but are about the relationship of those who fight and those who lead them. Sandburg was in the army during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and he co...

We’ll talk to Professor Annelise Orleck who became an unwitting celebrity on social media with a video of a sucker punch take down by a Hanover police officer. Possibly less well known is the sucker punch take down of Professor Orleck by Dartmouth as it forces her to keep off campus – unless of course she teaches her well attended classes at the university. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...

Percy Shelley, one of Britain's greatest poets, was tremendously affected by the events of 1819 when the British army and local militia attacked a peaceful demonstration of working people at St. Peter's Field in Manchester. 18 died and hundreds were wounded. This event was called the Peterloo Massacre - a nod to the army helping to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo four years earlier. Shelley was alread...

This is a second interview with Michael Sladnick on the current situation with anti-regime groups in Myanmar. It starts with a discussion of the ongoing battle between the military government forces and resistance forces for control of the important economic and trade city of Myawaddy. It continues as a very insightful discussion of grassroots movements in the country and the problems they face. I...