Labor Heritage Power Hour

Hilary Peach’s Thick Skin

Broadcast on January 18, 2024Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
Writer and recording artist Hilary Peach worked for twenty years as a transient welder, travelling across Canada and the United States, working in pulp mills, chemical plants, refineries, and generating stations. In 2022 she released a memoir about this time, Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood; our interviewer is Susan Eisenberg, a poet, visual artist, oral historian and former electrician. On today’s installment of our “Story Behind the Song” series, Joe Jencks tells us how he came to write his labor classic “Rise As One”. Joe is a 25-year veteran of the international folk circuit, an award-winning songwriter and celebrated vocalist, and a member of A.F.M. Local 1000, the North American Traveling Musicians Union.On Labor History in 2:00: the year was 1915; on this date, the most popular labor song in the United States was completed in Chicago.Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @AnvilPress @JoeJencksMusic @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

David Bacon’s “Working Coachella”

Broadcast on January 11, 2024Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
This week's show: Photojournalist David Bacon on “Working Coachella: Images of the farmworker community of the Coachella Valley”; Labor historian Julie Greene on Woody Guthrie’s New Year’s resolutions, plus, Labor History in 2:00.Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @photos4justice @WoodyGuthrieCtr @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

“We want everything”

Broadcast on January 4, 2024Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
This week's show: AFSCME president Lee Saunders on his favorite labor song; Labor’s Troubadour Joe Glazer on the song’s history; novelist Rachel Kushner on "We Want Everything," Nanni Balestrini’s classic novel about the Italian Fiat workers’ strike that led to a mass uprising; and folksinger Si Kahn launches a new feature, “The Story Behind the Song”.Plus Labor History in 2:00. Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @Kahn75Si @Heartland_Labor @AFSCME @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

Bayard Rustin, leader and lover

Broadcast on December 28, 2023Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
This week's show: Elise talks with two young activists -- Pride@Work’s Jarel Sanders and the A. Philip Randolph Institute’s Denicia Montford Williams -- about the new film “Rustin”, which tells the story of charismatic gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.PLUS: selections from the DC Labor Chorus’ annual holiday “Favorite and Sacred Songs” concert and Labor History in 2:00. Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @jarelyboy @prideatwork @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

SFMT’s “A Red Carol”

Broadcast on December 21, 2023"People always think this story is about you,” Bob Crachit tells Scrooge in the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s “A Red Carol” on today’s show. “But it ain’t about you, it’s about us - and how we let ourselves get infected with your ideas, your greed, your lies, it’s you steppin’ over the hungry and homeless and us following your lead, it’s us lettin’ you turn our government into a casino, listenin’ while you say day after day that profit is the new god, and us not standin’ up and shouting "NO!"'
“It ain’t about you," Cratchit says. "It’s about us.”
Click here to support the San Francisco Mime Troupe and here to support WPFW’s jazz and justice in the New Year! Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @SFTroupers @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

Rudolph the Union Reindeer

Broadcast on December 14, 2023Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
This week's show: Kathleen Newman, a working-class studies scholar and professor at Carnegie Mellon, joins us to talk about work, capitalism, and the working class in holiday classics like Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer, A Christmas Carol and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. In our second segment, Part 2 of our interview with author Steven Silvia, his new book is The UAW's Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants. PLUS: Remembering AFL founder Sam Gompers and civil rights activist Ella Baker, and the R.J. Phillips Band celebrates the lives of Joe Hill, Mother Jones and Bill Haywood. Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod @_kathymnewman

More Perfect Union

Broadcast on December 7, 2023Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
This week's show: More Perfect Union’s Senior Writer Sean Morrow on the power of social media, Stephen J. Silvia on The UAW's Southern Gamble and Michael Zweig on “Class, Race, and Gender”.(NOTE: Sean Morrow will host this month’s Bread and Roses on Tuesday, December 12, 7p at the Takoma Busboys and Poets; FREE; click here for tickets)And, on Labor History in 2:00: The year was 1869. That was the day black workers met in Washington, D. C. to found the Colored National Labor Union.Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @MorePerfectUS @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

Liz Shuler’s favorite labor song

Broadcast on November 30, 2023Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
On today’s show, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler joins us to launch a brand-new feature called “My Favorite Labor Song”, and then we’ve got a preview of the DC Labor Chorus’ upcoming holiday concert, and in our final segment, Radical Songbook host Michael Funke’s “Making Cars Medley” of songs in honor of the UAW’s historic Stand Up Strike. Plus, Labor History in 2:00 on Louisa May Alcott’s “Work: A Story of Experience”. Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. @wpfwdc @aflcio @LizShuler @tmorello @UAW #1u #unions #laborradiopod

“There is no hierarchy of oppression”

Broadcast on November 23, 2023Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
Kevin Cummings has been a member of the Machinists Union for 35 years; he’s also a Native American who traces his lineage to both the Lumbee and Cherokee peoples, which means that Kevin Cummings has spent his life fighting for rights, whether it was his fellow workers or his Native brothers and sisters.
On today’s show, we talk with Kevin about those twin struggles, as well as his unexpected post-retirement career as a singer-songwriter. Today’s music: I Cried Today, Stolen Angels, Angels Here Among Us, Someday, all written and performed by Kevin Cummings and recorded for the Labor Heritage Power Hour. Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Shepsu Baker. @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod @MachinistsUnion @fire_council

Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA

Broadcast on November 16, 2023Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant
Virginia Anderson, Curator of American Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art
walks us through the BMA’s brand-new exhibit, Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA, which explores the importance of women artists
many of whom are unknown today, yet who captured the human faces of industrial and domestic labor and its inherent racial, gendered, and class inequities while they used their art to support important reforms led by the era’s growing communist and socialist movements.
Singer-songwriter Si Kahn finds poetry in the many names for the third shift, that overnight work period that is the bane of existence for so many.
And, on Labor History in 2:00…the year was 1938. That was the day that the National Federation of Telephone Workers was founded in New Orleans, Louisiana.Produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Mike Nasella & Kahlia Chapman. Graphic: Miners, by Elizabeth Olds@wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod @artbma