The Dig: The Militant '70s Labor Movement You Never Heard Of

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2018

⏱️ 107 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Everyone agrees that the 1970s were the beginning of the end of capitalism as we had known it since the New Deal. But historian Lane Windham makes it clear that it wasn’t for a lack of worker struggle in her new book, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide. In case studies of union fights in department stores, shipyards, offices, and textile mills, Windham explains that women and workers of color seized the civil rights victories of the 1960s to fight for economic rights in the '70s. Thank you to Verso and University of California Press. Check out The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East by Patrick Cockburn versobooks.com/books/2518-the-age-of-jihad and Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520295711 Support this podcast with $ at patreon.com/TheDig!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon.com and by Verso Books which has loads of great left-wing titles
0:09.0	Perfect for dig listeners like you. One that you might like is The Age of jihad, Islamic
0:16.2	State and the Great War for the Middle East by Patrick Coburn. The Age of
0:20.7	jihad charts the turmoil of today's Middle East and the devastating role the West has played in the region from 2001 to the present.
0:28.0	Beginning with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Coburn explores the vast geographical struggle that is the Sunnishia
0:35.2	conflict, a clash that shapes the war on terror, Western military interventions, the
0:41.0	evolution of insurgency, the civil wars in Yemen, Libya, and Syria, the Arab
0:46.4	Spring, the fall of regional dictators, and the rise of Islamic State.
0:52.4	As Coburn shows in arresting detail, Islamic State did not explode
0:56.3	into existence in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring, as conventional wisdom would have
1:01.0	it. The organization gestated over several years
1:04.7	in occupied Iraq before growing to the point where it could threaten the stability of
1:09.3	the whole region. Coburn was the first Western journalist to warn of the dangers posed by Islamic State.
1:16.0	His originality and breadth of vision make the Age of jihad the most in-depth analysis of the regional crisis in the Middle East to date.
1:25.4	The Age of jihad, Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East, by Patrick Coburn,
1:31.4	out now from Verso Books. Welcome to the Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and I'm
1:47.9	broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island. There are a few questions for which answers are so urgently
1:54.7	needed than that of why the American labor movement has been steadily
1:58.6	destroyed since the 1970s. Unions have delivered workers decent wages, access to health care, and a secure retirement.
2:08.0	And they have been a key force in narrowing, if far from eliminating, the obscene wealth divide that has always defined
2:15.2	this country's political economy. Mass unionization, which took root amongst the strike waves
2:20.6	in political reforms of the New Deal era, however, was for decades limited
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -2624 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jacobin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jacobin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.