When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers

This week on the Labor Heritage Power Hour:
Historian Robert W. Snyder joins us to discuss When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers, a powerful collection of oral histories from the frontline workers who kept NYC alive during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviewed by Tim Sheard—veteran nurse, labor organizer, and Hard Ball Press publisher—we explore the trauma, courage, inequality, and solidarity that defined the era, and the urgent need to preserve these memories.

Then, historian Peter Cole takes us to the Philadelphia waterfront with Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. Recorded at the 9th annual Reuther–Pollack Labor History Symposium, hosted by the WALS Foundation, Cole tells the story of one of the most important—and too often forgotten—Black labor leaders in American history, who led an interracial, militant IWW union decades before the Civil Rights Act.

Broadcast on November 20, 2025 on WPFW 89.3FM in Washington, DC and stations across the country on the Pacifica network.

Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman.
The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

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