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Belabored: What’s Joe Biden’s Agenda for Labor?  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ February 19, 2021

Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute digs into the PRO Act and other labor policies currently on the table.



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Belabored: Labor Unloved with Sarah Jaffe, Kenzo Shibata, and Micah Uetricht  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ February 5, 2021

Belabored co-host Sarah Jaffe talks about her new book, Work Won’t Love You Back.



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Belabored: Stopping the Spread of Prop 22  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ January 22, 2021

California’s Proposition 22 locked in a second-tier status for gig economy workers. In the state and around the country, they’re still organizing for something better.



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Belabored: Going Union at Google  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ January 8, 2021

Alphabet Workers Union member Alex Hanna talks about Google’s labor politics, how a minority union can mobilize through direct action, and the future of organizing in the tech industry. 



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Belabored: How the Pandemic Changed Our Working Lives  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ December 18, 2020

Rebecca Dixon, Bill Fletcher Jr., and Jane McAlevey look back on 2020, a tumultuous year for workers.



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Belabored: Renewing Unions in the Age of Finance, with Alice Martin and Annie Quick  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ November 27, 2020

A new book, Unions Renewed, suggests that labor needs to update its playbook for a new period of capitalist development.



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Belabored: Labor at the Ballot Box  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ November 13, 2020

While the presidential race ended with a narrow victory for the Democrats, the electorate revealed how sharply divided it is—what does it all mean for labor?



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Belabored: Trump’s Broken Promises  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ October 30, 2020

Trump and Pence claim that industrial jobs are “booming” under their leadership. In Lordstown and Indianapolis, local labor organizers tell a different story.



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Belabored: Essential but Excluded, with Nadia Marin-Molina  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ October 16, 2020

Community and labor groups are campaigning for equal benefits for undocumented immigrants and other workers excluded from the coronavirus relief packages.



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Belabored: The Senate Fiddles While America Burns, with Rebecca Dixon  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ October 2, 2020

The Democrats in the House just passed a new stimulus bill, but what are its odds of passing the Senate? Rebecca Dixon of the National Employment Law Project breaks it down.



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Belabored: Is it Safe to Go Back to School?  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ September 18, 2020

Three education workers talk about school reopening, and their struggle to protect their health and that of their students.



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Belabored Podcast #205: Wildcat Sports Strike Wave, with Dave Zirin  

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ September 4, 2020

The athletic strikes may have been short-lived, but they made a huge impact, disrupting the pretense of normalcy that sports entertainment normally helps viewers create.



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We need to imagine new structures of care to cope with the current crisis—and the next one.

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Austin Frerick, who launched a bid for Iowa’s third congressional district on an antimonopoly platform, dropped out when party leaders made it clear that they preferred his better-funded opponents. Photo courtesy of Austin Frerick.

Early voting locations in the Indianapolis metro area in 2016, via IndyStar.

An Eritrean refugee in Khartoum. Photo by John Power.

Khartoum as seen from the river Nile. Photo by John Power.

Common migration routes from East Africa to Europe. Route information adapted from the International Organization for Migration, August 2015, by Colin Kinniburgh. Countries party to the Khartoum process are shaded in orange (note: not all shown on this map).

At the 1936 International Conference of Business Cycle Institutes, sponsored by the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, Vienna. Ludwig von Mises is seated in the center with mustache and cigarette. Gottfried Haberler also pictured, at right. (Source)

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat from Nebraska, ran for president on a fusion ticket with the Populist Party. This cartoonist from a Republican magazine thought the “Popocratic” ticket was too ideologically mismatched to win. Bryan did lose, but his campaign, the first of three he waged for the White House, transformed the Democrats into an anti-corporate, pro-labor party. Cartoon from Judge (1896) via Library of Congress

Sketch for a 1976 poster by the New York Wages for Housework Committee (MayDay Rooms / Creative Commons)

Keith Vaughan, “Drawing of a seated male nude,” 1949. Courtesy the estate of Keith Vaughan / Creative Commons.

Political strategist Jessica Byrd. Courtesy of Three Points Strategies.

Stacey Abrams, Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia. Photo courtesy of David Kidd/Governing.

A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of Nara Milanich)

A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of Nara Milanich)

A drawing made for the author by a five-year-old girl in detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (Courtesy of Nara Milanich)

Mayor Bill de Blasio inaugurates a new bus line in the Bronx, September 2017 (New York City Department of Transportation / Flickr)

Luxury condominium towers under construction in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 2013 (Michael Tapp / Flickr)

Hydrocarbons from the Williams Central compressor, photographed with a FLIR thermal imaging camera and a normal digital camera, Brooklyn Township, Pennsylvania, 2014. © Nina Berman/Marcellus Shale Documentary Project 2014.

Composite of drilling rig image from Rome, Pennsylvania and hundreds of images taken by a Hop Bottom, Pennsylvania resident of the volume of truck traffic passing in front of a neighbor’s home over four days of the operation of a nearby shale gas well pad. © Nina Berman/Marcellus Shale Documentary Project 2015.

The nightmare situations preppers imagine are already happening—to people whose wealth and status don’t protect them. Above, Hurricane Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico, October 2017 (Agustín Montañez / National Guard)



From the music video for “Unforgettable,” by French Montana, featuring Swae Lee (FrenchMontanaVEVO / Youtube)

Wizkid performing at Royal Albert Hall, London, September 2017 (Michael Tubi / Alamy Live News)

The cover of L’antinorm, published by the Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR), February 1973. The subtitle reads “Workers of the world, stroke yourselves!”

Jair Bolsonaro, at a debate about violence against women in Brazil’s chamber of deputies, September 2016. Photo by Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil.

Jair Bolsonaro, at a debate about violence against women in Brazil’s chamber of deputies, September 2016. Photo by Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil.

The front page of the Canard, February 28, 2018. Courtesy of Le Canard enchaîné.

Selling drugs in the shadow of an abandoned factory, North Philadelphia. Photo by George Karandinos.

Bundle of $10 bags of heroin. Photo by Fernando Montero Castrillo.

On a dilapidated Havana street, an elderly man searches through the garbage. February 2018, Havana, Cuba. Photo by David Himbert / Hans Lucas Studio.

A state employee reads the newspaper at the reception of the Defense Committee of the Revolution (CDR). March 2016, Havana, Cuba. Photo by David Himbert / Hans Lucas Studio.

A street vendor selling tropical fruits in front of a Benetton shop in Old Havana. May 2017, Havana, Cuba. Photo by David Himbert / Hans Lucas Studio.

At the University of Bristol, February 28 (Bristol UCU / Facebook)

Students rally in support of the lecturers’ strike, February 23 (Bristol UCU / Facebook)

Part of a much larger painted banner in Bristol, February 28 (Bristol UCU / Facebook)

AMLO mural in Mexico City, 2007 (Randal Sheppard / Flickr)

MORENA supporters at a rally in Itzapalapa, Mexico City, April 2015 (Eneas De Troya / Flickr)

Audience members waiting for the program to begin at a MORENA rally, March 2016 (Eneas De Troya / Flickr)

MORENA supporter leafletting against energy reforms, 2013 (Eneas De Troya / Flickr)

Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the campaign trail during his previous presidential run, May 2012 (Arturo Alfaro Galán)

Courtesy of Robert Greene

At a protest against the alleged Pizzagate conspiracy, Washington, D.C., March 25, 2017 (Blink O’fanaye / Flickr)

The Kurds

[W]hen we refer to all Kurdish fighters synonymously, we simply blur the fact that they have very different politics. . . right now, yes, the people are facing the Islamic State threat, so it’s very important to have a unified focus. But the truth is, ideologically and politically these are very, very different systems. Actually almost opposite to each other. —Dilar Dirik, “Rojava vs. the World,” February 2015

The Kurds, who share ethnic and cultural similarities with Iranians and are mostly Muslim by religion (largely Sunni but with many minorities), have long struggled for self-determination. After World War I, their lands were divided up between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. In Iran, though there have been small separatist movements, Kurds are mostly subjected to the same repressive treatment as everyone else (though they also face Persian and Shi’ite chauvinism, and a number of Kurdish political prisoners were recently executed). The situation is worse in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the Kurds are a minority people subjected to ethnically targeted violations of human rights.  

Iraq: In 1986–89, Saddam Hussein conducted a genocidal campaign in which tens of thousands were murdered and thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed, including by bombing and chemical warfare. After the first Gulf War, the UN sought to establish a safe haven in parts of Kurdistan, and the United States and UK set up a no-fly zone. In 2003, the Kurdish peshmerga sided with the U.S.-led coalition against Saddam Hussein. In 2005, after a long struggle with Baghdad, the Iraqi Kurds won constitutional recognition of their autonomous region, and the Kurdistan Regional Government has since signed oil contracts with a number of Western oil companies as well as with Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan has two main political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), both clan-based and patriarchal.

Turkey: For much of its modern history, Turkey has pursued a policy of forced assimilation towards its minority peoples; this policy is particularly stringent in the case of the Kurds—until recently referred to as the “mountain Turks”—who make up 20 percent of the total population. The policy has included forced population transfers; a ban on use of the Kurdish language, costume, music, festivals, and names; and extreme repression of any attempt at resistance. Large revolts were suppressed in 1925, 1930, and 1938, and the repression escalated with the formation of the PKK as a national liberation party, resulting in civil war in the Kurdish region from 1984 to 1999.

Syria: Kurds make up perhaps 15 percent of the population and live mostly in the northeastern part of Syria. In 1962, after Syria was declared an Arab republic, a large number of Kurds were stripped of their citizenship and declared aliens, which made it impossible for them to get an education, jobs, or any public benefits. Their land was given to Arabs. The PYD was founded in 2003 and immediately banned; its members were jailed and murdered, and a Kurdish uprising in Qamishli was met with severe military violence by the regime. When the uprising against Bashar al Assad began as part of the Arab Spring, Kurds participated, but after 2012, when they captured Kobani from the Syrian army, they withdrew most of their energy from the war against Assad in order to set up a liberated area. For this reason, some other parts of the Syrian resistance consider them Assad’s allies. The Kurds in turn cite examples of discrimination against them within the opposition.

Barber Shop Quartet Contest - WPA
Barber Shop Quartet Contest - WPA
Salut au Monde - Federal Dance Theatre - WPA
Adult Education Project - WPA
NYC Dept. of Parks Water Carnival - WPA

Proclamation of the reclaiming of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes, November 1969 (National Parks Service)

Entrance to Alcatraz in 2008 (Babak Fakhamzadeh / Flickr)

Letter from the Indians of All Tribes to the National Council on Indian Opportunity, January 1970 (National Parks Service)

Sign on Alcatraz during occupation, 1969–60 (National Parks Service)

Members of the People’s Guard on motorcycles, 1920. Courtesy of Eric Lee.

Armed group of the Menshevik People’s Guard, 1920. Courtesy of Eric Lee.

Eleven-year-old Liza Greenberg, daughter of David and Suzanne Nossel. Photo by Todd Gitlin.

Protest against neoliberalism in Colombia, 2013

In a scene from HBO’s The Deuce, streetwalker Ruby presents an officer with a property voucher to avoid arrest. Courtesy of HBO.



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