The Young Turks - WORKERS RISE UP! TYT's MAY DAY SPECIAL

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Ana Kasparian, John Iadarola, Sen. Nina Turner, and Francesca FIorentini go through the history of International Workers Day, and discuss how the labor movements of the past influenced workers rights today.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome, welcome to our May Day special. I'm Anna Kasparian, joined by Nina Turner and John Ida Rola to talk about labor, the history of labor in the country, what May Day really means. and I'm really, really happy we're doing this. How are you guys doing? I'm live.

Good. How are you both? I mean, considering the endless cycle of terrible news, as good as I can, I guess, but at least we get to focus on something that doesn't get focused on nearly enough in the press in America, and that is the history of labor, what May Day really means. And I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the Haymarket Affair and the Haymarket martyrs, which is, you know, really where May Day started. But before we do that, I just wanted to kind of go to both each of you and talk about the education you experienced in regard to this particular issue, if any at all, right? The Haymarket Affair, when you guys

were in school, did you learn anything about it? Let me start with Senator Turner. Yeah, hi, and not really. Right? When I got to college a little bit, but in high school, zero. College a little bit in my American history courses. What about you, John? Yeah, so I don't want to, I don't want to accidentally besmarch my teachers because I feel like on average I had amazing, incredibly hardworking teachers who went above and beyond, especially considering some of the brats they had to deal with, including me. So I didn't really get serious about schooling until late, high school, early college.

So it's possible I like slept through something. But that said, I don't like if if I had to choose, I was taught at all about it or not, my money would go on not one damn time for one damn moment. Right. Or not even specifically about that event or the debate about it or the history about it or the current state, like almost almost really nothing about labor. struggles in general. Exactly. You know, and I feel like I was in school for years, but like a good bunch of years, but I don't remember literally anything, actually. So look, it's not about whether

you had good teachers or bad teachers, right? I think that the lack of curriculum on issues pertaining to labor is by design. And even when it comes to something like the Haymarket Martyrs, there was this intentional effort by reactionaries to kind of rewrite history and make it seem as though that incident wasn't about labor. It was about police and how incredible police are for putting their lives on the line to keep us all safe. So the revisionist version of that event, I think, is fascinating. But we're here to tell you the truth about what actually happened and who the Haymarket Martyrs were. and what they fought for, right? Because when it comes to some of the rights workers have in this country, they date back to the late 1800s.

They date back to the workers who put their lives on the line to ensure that we have something like the eight hour work day. Now look, a lot of those labor rights have been shipped away at as a result of labor power diminishing in this country. But it is important to understand our history and what people went through to ensure that we have lives outside of work, essentially. Okay? So let's rewind. Let's go back to, you know, the Haymarket Affair and what actually happened. So the Haymarket Affair happened on May 1st, 1886. That was the beginning of it. And it centered around workers who took to the streets hundreds of thousands of workers who took to the streets to demand an eight-hour workday. Now, as you can imagine, police didn't respond so well to these protesters. The biggest protests happened in Chicago. So on May 1st, 1886, hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers went on strike and marched to demand the eight hour work day, a day of action called by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor unions, the precursor to the American Federation of Labor.

But two days later, police shot several striking workers at the city's large McCormick Reaper works as they scuffled with scabs. Now, after that shooting happened, you have calls for demonstrations, right, to call out the police brutality, the police violence toward the workers. So the soon after that on May 4th, around 2,500 workers gathered at Haymarket Square to listen to speeches. Now, the event was peaceful. And so the city's mayor told the police, there was about 175.

police, he tells the cops, listen, stand down. This is a peaceful gathering. There's no issue here. So don't needlessly, you know, cause problems. But they didn't listen and they decided to needlessly cause problems. So as the last speaker was wrapping up, the police like go in and they start trying to forcefully disperse the crowd. At some point someone throws, and until this day, we don't know who it is, but someone throws an explosive device into the crowd. And police start shooting indiscriminately, seven police die, three workers die. Till this day, historians agree that one of the cops died as a result of the explosive device. We don't know for sure how the other police died. In fact, there are some historians who argue that

they could have died from other police officers shooting their weapons. So I guess by friendly fire. Anyway, the crazy thing about this is the business community, a immediately jumps in and they say that the real martyrs here were the police and they start erecting monuments to celebrate the police, okay? But wait till you hear what happens to the monument. It's a pretty incredible story, but so far I'm curious what you guys think. So John, you've had some reactions already. Oh, you know, it's amazing.

I love little details like, you know, curiously, the business community decided to join an, oh, were they opposed to the workers? Did they use this as an opportunity to point out that they're violent and irrational and you should never associate with them. That is, that is weird. But also, like so much of this is deeply fascinating. And by the way, while, you know, we've done specials before, we've done shows for May Day before, every year I go back over the history or whatever, I believe that this is actually the year

where I like went and found the most because I, it really is fascinating. Not only what happened then, but the the ways that people disagree about it and the cycles that happen over the next few decades about all the different dueling minds. and where they are and when they're destroyed and it's just fascinating. But all of it is so, it just feels like so many other events too. Like it's easy to hear this happened in 1883 or whatever and you're like, it sounds like it could happen today. Well, it sounds, it sounds like Occupy Wall Street.

It sounds like a lot, it sounds like the cops trying to break up social justice or like rallies in 2020. Like it sounds like a lot of cases where people finally come together to draw attention to an issue. And then suddenly, it's not about that issue anymore. Everyone, everyone, please focus on the fact that they're rowdy and the cops are trying to stand between you and a gas station being burned down. Like we're still doing this same exact thing. The media is a little bit more sophisticated and the cops have deadlier weapons, but yeah. Well, in their propaganda, yeah. In their

propaganda, there's no question. But it reminds me a lot of recent events too. Absolutely. Even though it's 150 years ago. I totally agree with that. I mean, it's it's It's incredible how far back into in this country's history you can find examples of police squashing efforts by workers specifically, calling attention to the injustices of our system. And that's something that you do, Senator Turner on a regular basis, both on this show and the campaign trail. So I wanted to open up the conversation to you and kind of get your thoughts on this. Yeah, I mean, you could be telling that story in the 21st century. things changed the more they stay the same, unfortunately, and even bigger than the police.

I mean, at least in this case, as you laid out, the mayor said, hey, things are going peacefully, don't go in. And the rogue officers decided to go in anyway. And they caused this. They were the spark for the murders and people being trampled and that kind of thing. But even if we take the police out of and just think about what workers are enduring right now, that over 60% of

workers, you know, can't, you know, cannot afford to do anything but work that they're one paycheck away from ruin, one health scare away from ruin and how workers all over this country, at least over the last five years, have really been standing up for their collective bargaining rights. And we have places like Amazon and Starbucks who are just flat out trying to start labor unions. So that same revolutionary, we're gonna fight for our rights, we deserve better than what we're getting. We deserve to be at the the collective bargaining table to stand up and fight for better wages, better work conditions, and better benefits, it is rippling right now in the 21st century. And if anything gives me hope

about what we're seeing right now among solidarity and workers, it is the new rising, I call it, of workers in the 21st century. And they definitely are tracing the footsteps of workers from our past. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. I mean, you see the incompetence, and the corruption of Congress, the lack of inaction when it comes to the power the executive branch has to materially improve people's lives. And it's just so depressing and so discouraging. But what always gives me hope is learning from the country's history, right? Learning from how labor organized and essentially made government bend to its will.

I mean, you know, we talk about Roosevelt as if he, and Roosevelt was among the best presidents in this country's history when it comes to helping people economically. But I think it's really important to understand he didn't just do it out of the kindness of his own heart. There was a tremendous amount of pressure coming from organized labor, which led to the New Deal, which led to these policies that improve the lives of American workers. And I think that part of the equation gets left out of the media conversation about these policy decisions because it makes Americans think that all they need to do is cast a ballot. And that's it. That's all that matters. That's the political engagement that makes all the difference, except it's not. If you don't have an organized outside pressure campaign like we did in the past with organized labor, well, there's really no way of holding these elected lawmakers accountable other than sure, you can vote them out. But as we've learned, with the corruption of the media, that is incredibly hard to do. Yeah. Yeah, I think you rightly point out that you would, you might have had something for Roosevelt if everyone just left him alone for four or eight or 12 years or whatever.

But you wouldn't got gotten what you got. Same, you know, when it comes to civil rights movement, even, you know, when there was legislative action and the president didn't actively stop it. It's not like that was his lifelong dream. And he was just going to do it. Everybody could have just hung out. It would have been cool. Have we, I'm not a presidential historian. address this to the smartest members of our audience as well as Michael Shore, has there ever been a president who came in rare in to fight for something good and just did it? I can think of some ones who came in with some really bad motivations, and I can think of some presidents who've come in and done things that were good, if not as good as they could have been. Like the ACA was certainly better than what came before it, but you wouldn't have

just gotten that without pressure, even with the presidents who campaigned the most on changing things. So yeah, we're gonna talk later on in this hour about individual politicians. And this is just a preview of what I think about the value of individual politicians when it comes to stuff like this. And let me just add to that. I mean, even when Ace of Philip Randolph, one of the greatest unionists of the 20th century, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters, it was a union that he formed. It took a long time. It was a lot of hard work to form that union for black porters on the train before that, those black porters just work purely for tips. So don't get me started on the sub minimum wage and shout out to one fair wage that is fighting to change that.

But A's of Philip Randolph did the dance with President FDR and President FDR said to Aza Philla Randolph, make me do it. A lot of people remember the march on Washington in 1960s, but they forget the threat of Asoppila Randolph and some of his contemporaries to President FDR about marching on Washington. He was primarily focused on the treatment of African Americans when it came to federal jobs. And because FDR did not want to be embarrassed, we can't forget it was the backdrop of World War II. Aza, Philo Randolph was able to get some concessions, not all that he wanted, but some concessions from the president. So both the points that you are making, Anna, and John is right. The outside forces are usually what pushes any elected leader to do the right thing, even though they may come in there, raring to go. There are other forces,

is competing for their attention, their time as well. And so of good never speaks up and fights, evil, evil never takes a vacation. So I said good can never rest because evil never takes a vacation. But just one quick quote from Asa Philip Randolph that I think is very, I propose for this show for this moment that we find ourselves in as working class people. He once said a community is democratic only when the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possessed, are are afforded to the least of these, you know, and I'm paraphrasing, but that's A. Philarandolph, and that's where we find ourselves in the 21st century. Absolutely. You know, I want to move on to kind of discuss the growing labor militancy that

we're experiencing and whether that momentum is going to continue in just a moment. Before we do, though, I wanted to share a video from a show called America in color. It was, it used to air on the Smithsonian Channel. I think the show's been discontinued. But in the first season, they talked about the history of America decade by decade. And they had this incredible footage of Ford workers protesting after they had been laid off in the 1930s for obvious reasons. It was during the Depression. But the reason why I share this with you is because it's important to see what the police reaction to these protesters were.

And more importantly, what these protesters put on. on the line just to demand better treatment. So let's take a look at that. By 1932, sales are at rock bottom. And Ford has lost $75 million. He lays off two-thirds of his workforce. In response, the laid-off workers demand that Ford rehire them. On March 7th, 5,000 gather in Detroit and make their way to the ford plant in Dearborn. The only surviving footage of that fateful day was filmed by the Detroit Unemployed Council. At the city limits, violence erupts. Dearborn police spray tear gas and attack the men with clubs.

The protesters fight back with anything they can. Then Ford's private security gets the nod and opens fire. Four laid-off workers die that day. So people lost their lives to be part of that protest. And what stood out to me was just the similarity in the police response that these protesters dealt with and to the haymarket affair and the police violence that the workers experienced in that regard as well. And I want to fill you guys in on what ended up happening to some of those workers after

the incident where the cops were killed. But before I do, John, did you want to jump in? Yeah, and that was amazing footage. And imagine they said that there's only that one source for the footage, imagine. Just if they had not done it or, you know, it could have easily been taken. We know journalists are often harassed even in protests today. Whenever I see footage like that, or when we're talking about something, whether it's in like the 20s or the 30s or way back in the 1880s, I think, man, you know, when we think about how brutal the cops can be now, imagine what they were like that.

Oh, I mean with exactly, you're right, without the cameras we all have in our, in our pockets, without the evidence and accountability that we can now kind of like lean on. And even with all that evidence, you know, sometimes cases don't play out the way they should. And it ends in injustice anyway. But go ahead. Well, and finally, like that sort of footage, can you just imagine like I, maybe there are people who are watching this who learned about that sort of stuff in school. I know that like Michael Moore. had footage about that event in, was it his first document, Roger and me, I think it was his first documentary. I think so. But I didn't learn about anything like that in school. Like I didn't learn anything about the actual historic role of cops. What cops are actually there to do? Not every individual cop, but with the point of cops, why they were set up in the way.

They are there to enforce racial and class hierarchies. That's what they're there to enforce. They sometimes do other stuff that could be good or whatever, and they're good cops too. But that's what they're there to do and you don't learn it. anything about that, how often they have allied with business interests to put down protests, to put down social movements. And then, of course, you have at worst up even where private security forces are given the go ahead. And we see that in that footage, but we also know what happened at Standing Rock. Like, again, the linkages between this stuff we're watching

an archival footage and our very recent lived experience is not, it's not that different. Yeah, and I wanted to tell you about what happened to some of the workers after that Haymarket incident where seven cops died. So the business community was out for blood. So not only did they fundraise $10,000 to build a police monument to honor the cops, they also fought pretty hard to ensure that some of the workers who organized the protests would be prosecuted. And many of them were. So according to the reporting over at Jacobin, eight of the city's most outspoken anarchists, Albert Parsons, August spies, Adolf Fisher, George Engel, Lewis Ling, Samuel Feldon, Fielden, Michael Schwab, and Oscar Neeb were put on trial for murder of the seven police officers.

The judge sentenced Neib to 15 years in prison, but the others were actually condemned to execution. Luckily, well, I mean, this is, in my opinion, not enough. Illinois governor commuted the sentences of two of those condemned individuals, but the rest were executed. Workers were executed over this, okay? That was the outcome of the hay market affair. And that history, I think, in my opinion, is intentionally kept away from most Americans. So the point where most people either don't know about the hay market affair or they have like a twisted revisionist history in their minds of what actually transpired. Final words on this, from Senator Turner. I'm curious what you think.

Yeah, I mean, that's why it's important that we do shows like this so that people can be either educated, reeducated, learning this for the first time. Hopefully people will go out and do their own research. But we got to look. I mean, John brought up a very good point about how law enforcement is used in this country really to suppress and oppress based on race and based on class. And so how law enforcement is socialized that they must come in there and crack heads and be in 100% control and that the people who they are policing have no rights that they have to abide by, that they are not in fact at that moment treated as equal human beings. They're treated as people who have to be controlled. And that is exactly what the power structure wants. It wanted it

in the 1800s, the 1900s, still in the 2000s, still going through that same thing. And so we need a transformation, if you will. We need to transform policing in America. especially when it comes to the racial dynamics, but certainly you cannot leave out class. So this is a wonderful, wonderful show that we're doing, educating people so that they can go and research even further. And in the 21st century, we certainly have no excuse as to why we can't edify and enrich ourselves.

We don't have to wait to be in a classroom. Now we got to check sources because anybody and their mother and their mother's mother can put something on the internet. Let me put that out there with the asterisk. However, we do have opportunities to really, really learn and to go deeper. So I'm really happy that we're doing this show and that we're going so far deep or giving people a little primer of what happened with the Haymarket affair. Absolutely. I agree with you. Final question for you though, you know, with the emergence of conservatives taking over school curriculum and outlawing certain types of curriculum, especially anything that they want to label CRT, even though it's not CRT.

How do we fight back against the intentional misinformation that's being kind of like baked into the educational system, right? Because if it was bad before, it's getting worse considering the political, basically exploiting education for political purposes. Yeah, you were reading my mind as John, as you posed that question, John and myself, did you guys learn this? Do you remember any of it? And I'm thinking to myself, even though we do have more opportunities to learn, we have governors like the sanctimonious there trying to stop it and banning books. And, you know, the party that believes in freedom and liberty only wants you to have so much freedom and so much liberty as dictated by them. And then we have to get to parents. We have to go to community meetings. We have to take the public,

the public square, if you will, is not just in the social or the virtual place. We gotta get back to old fashioned having these conversations with people so that they can see what is happening to not only hurt us right now, but it also hurts our children if they don't have the full story. We gotta be, we have to be adult enough or mature enough to take American history, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And what is it about the good that we can make better? What is it about the bad and the ugly that we can, you know, do differently moving forward to make a confession, to confess our sins. This country was not founded on the most humanitarian plane.

And that's, that's being kind. I'm being kind by saying that we know that it wasn't. And there's nothing wrong with telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help us God about this country. And my last point, because I know I won't be with you for the next half an hour is the onslaught of child, labor, laws or the skellent back of child labor laws in the United States of America is both a sin and a shame. And we cannot call ourselves a civilized society if we are not protecting our young and vulnerable and our elders. And it is being eroded by these very Republicans who claim that they care about justice.

So so far, 10 states have proposed or passed legislation to roll back child labor protections in the past two years and eight states just this year, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. So all I'm saying, America, we got a lot of work to do to both protect the history that we're talking about. Now, the gains that have been made by people sacrificing their lives and their livelihoods, protect the gains. And then now we got to go back and stop people from undoing those gains while we're trying to make advancements. Yep, that's well said and you're 100% right about that. Nina Turner, thank you so much for joining us for this incredibly important

special. It was a pleasure to have you and keep fighting the good fight. Everyone check out Nina's show. Nina, tell everyone where they can find the show you're doing. It was good to be here with both of you and I'm gonna go on live and watch the rest of the show, but unbossed on the independent network known as TYT, but you can catch us at 4 p.m. E.T. p.m. E.T. Time and 1 p.m. Pt. Just go to unboss. Just YouTube it. Google it unbossed, baby. Check us out. Thank you so much. Have a great night. You too. All right, everybody. We're going to take a brief break. And when we come back, Francesca Fiorentini will join us for the second half of our May Day special. Stick around. So we've always had a level of bias in news.

Here's the issue. The issue is to not deceive individuals as if you don't have some level of opinion with your news commentary. And that's what TYT has never done. They've always been authentic in their approach to progressive ideology and their news analysis and political breakdown. And I think that's how you actually win the heart and soul of individuals who are consuming information from you because now they see themselves in you. All right, well, the Young Turks' special election day coverage dropping. An amazing power panel. Look at this battle. We'll talk about power. It's like a smart destiny child.

We're all too strong. We spent a revolution. Yes, another one. Aren't you excited? Wow. And then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, everybody. You know, this is where it started in a lot of ways. Why is he lying?

Because these are acts that you can commit with impunity. Most of us are usually in boxer shorts underneath. I went with the pants today. This is the first ever power panel with Donald Trump as president. We have elected the top Twitter troll in the country. We have stopped pretending that race is not an issue in this country. Now, keep in mind, racism had gone away until Barack Obama brought it back. They want to protect life so much that they want to ensure that insurance companies don't cover your maternity care.

You don't see a lot of news coverage in the mainstream media of the peaceful Black Lives Matter protest that happened throughout the country. Black Americans are hurting. Minorities in this country are hurting. We always talk about starting from the bottom up. But the problem is the bottom up is always the least amount of power. No one cares about them. And until someone actually cares about them, then we'll do something about it. Please, for God's sake, America, understand, acknowledge, and work towards getting to a new reality. where black lives actually matter. I don't know. Welcome back to TYT's May Day Special, Senator Dina Turner had to go.

But Francesca Fierintini joins the panel, which I'm super excited about. What's up, Francesca? How you doing? What's going on? I mean, I'm good, I hope all the libertarians around the nation and the world are working an extra four hours today in protest. of the socialist and the anarchist and the communists that fought very hard for an eight-hour workday. So I hope they're continuing. I hope they work on the weekends. And we know they're bringing

back child labor. So there's that. But yeah, just own us libs. Own us libs by working and giving your boss more of your money. They won't. They won't. I want to mention just something briefly about that. I also wanted to throw in because I don't remember if you explicitly said it. But also one of the facts about Haymarket is that many of the people who had been gathered on that day were immigrants too. That's right. So thank you for bringing that up because obviously we have limited time. I couldn't get to every detail of that story. But that's actually a relevant part of the story because since those were mostly immigrant workers,

the international community had been and has been celebrating May Day in solidarity with workers. Way more than we do. Way more than we do. In fact, like people are becoming more and more aware of what actually happened, like the history of Haymarket and all of that. But what was really interesting is you had like a reporter from Uruguay come into the United States looking for like a monument celebrating the actual Haymarket martyrs. And he was like shocked to find that the only monument that existed was a police monument. There were a few Confederate ones too, which was even more shocking. But there is one now in Chicago, however. I did visit it. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. It's cool. But yeah, no, that's it's really, I love that it just one thing internationally when it comes to like having, you know, I mean a lot of things, a progressive movement like on the cusp of everything, like that it started here, that it started in the US and then it spread elsewhere. And of course here, as you guys talked about, it's been suppressed. Our history obliterated and everyone else remembers. So around the world. In the last segment, Francesca, we were talking about what gives us hope. And I mean, I definitely feel that seeing workers organize at places like Amazon, Starbucks, all of that gives me a little bit of hope considering how ineffective Congress is, how much corruption is baked into our political system. But I'm starting

to grow a little bit concerned because what has helped to support that labor or, you know, help support labor organizing in that way, has been the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board under the leadership of Joe Biden. So while I have endless critiques of the Biden administration, one of the good things to come out of the administration has been the NLRB, which of course he appoints people too. I'm worried that in the near future should those, should the leadership of the country change and then the leadership of the NLRB change that it'll be increasingly difficult for labor to organize. Is that something that you've thought about?

Are you concerned about it? What are your thoughts? I mean, I think you're really right on in terms of this has been the one spot that actually was sort of unexpected. You know, a lot of the campaign promises were complete have been, you know, he threw his own agenda under the bus, to build back better are not words that the Biden administration even utters at this point. But the NLRB is absolutely that like, oh, okay, wow, this, this was something.

something unexpected. Someone who's squarely throwing down with labor, let's leave the pro act aside. I'm super concerned what happens. I think, you know, let's be real, the momentum was killed when he asked Congress to preemptively break the railway worker strike. Bingo. You know, that's when it that's when the rubber hit the road, right? Or the, you know, whatever, the steel hit the tracks when it was like, okay, put your money where your mouth is, what are you going to do about it? And he sided with industry. And so if and when we have a president like Biden and the labor movement that can actually hold him accountable, we have to make it so politically toxic to side with

industry, to side with the capitalists in situations like that. And I don't think we're there as a movement. And I say we sort of a little bit from the outside admiring just all that activity that you mentioned, I don't think those strategically, we have enough power in Washington yet. I agree with you on that, absolutely. Yeah, I'm going to hold my thoughts about the hours to later on when we talk about the future. But yeah, let's transition to report cards. Yeah, let's do that.

Yeah, I mean, spoiler that we're not going to. But so my assignment was to compile some report cards of politicians. And I want to explain to you why I didn't do it. And I hope that you accept this more than my teachers did when I would do a version of this. Your dog ate it? Sure. So when I knew that that's what I was gonna do, I was already like I had a kind of bad feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking, well, there are not a lot of politicians that seem to

be really good on this. Not based on my internal chronometer, but I thought, okay, I'll do what you do and I'll research it. And there are many different ways that you can rank and rate politicians based on their supporter opposition to the goals of organized labor. And there are many places that do this. And so I dove into it. And I quickly realized that at least for me,

doesn't mean anything. Most of those ratings are kind of like the pro-life ratings. It's based on how often you voted for or against bills that have to do with it. Here is the issue though. In your recent experience, how many awesome important labor-related bills have you seen Democrats putting forward and then voting on? Like occasionally there have been a couple, but the vast majority of what should be done is not put forward. They vote on things. Nominees and stuff like that and nominees are given as much weight as major pieces of legislation. And so produces a list of people that I'm sure would be allies given the opportunity, but have not been

passionate advocates. They haven't been the ones leading on this. If you just look at the voting, Biden probably comes out looking okay from his time in the Senate. But he is also the guy that as we pointed out, like willingly, like proactively buckled when it came to the biggest chance that was given to him during his first term to show that he was on the side of workers. To the extent that he put on his picket walking shoes, it was only to walk on, as Francesca pointed out, his own promises that he'd made about being an ally for labor. And so, sure, we can look at people and we can, we can rate the ones that have voted for more nominees or whatever. But that is not what I think organized labor is looking for. They are looking

for active on the ground support and support that translate their desires into legislation. And that is still so rare that it would feel like kind of a pointless exercise. We can I can talk about some of the people that are most maybe viciously opposed to workers' rights, although honestly, I think that the most corrosive effects on the power of workers isn't really individual politicians, it's more the media, it's the discourse. So anyway, it just didn't feel right. Yeah, I mean- That's why I didn't do my homework, basically. Yep, that's a great, I used to do that too, like, the assignment actually is kind of biased,

and I don't believe in it. But you know, you just touched on something that's so important, because, you know, you're focusing on legislation, not being introduced, not being voted on that would improve the lives of workers. But let's also take a step back and look at the entire system, right? Not just Congress, but also our judicial system. And oftentimes when we talk about the Supreme Court and why these conservative Supreme Court justices were nominated in the first place and why they ended up on the federalist society list is because of their conservatism as it pertains to social issues. And to be sure, they are conservatives on social

issues. But I don't know if that's really the reason why they ended up on that federalist society list. I think they ended up on that federalist society list because they have made a commitment to constantly supporting corporate power over worker power. And so you've really really do have this entire system of checks and balances set up in such a way that it works against the best interests of the worker, right? Which is why it's so incredibly important to have an outside pressure campaign of organized labor to effectively fight back against the systemic issues here. Yeah.

You get what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's difficult and it takes a lot of work, but it's important to know what we have in front of us, like the work that needs to be done. Because I think if you are under the assumption that all you need to do is vote for the right people and then you could take a step back, you're wrong. Obviously, there have been some pretty great candidates who luckily got elected into Congress. That's clearly not enough. Francesco, what do you think? Yeah, well, John tried to punt his homework over to me. No, I included you. It was for both of us. In fact,

the fact that I didn't bring you up until this point was protecting me. Sure, whatever. He tried to copy off my paper. And no, no, but we were looking, I guess, at the best and the worst. And, you know, Ed Markey is the first senator to have allowed his allowed, whose staff unionized. Yeah. Which is huge, right? I mean, this is sort of like we hear just, it starts in at home. It starts in Congress itself. And we've heard. from, you know, like even people that you like, right? Like Representative Katie Porter apparently is pretty toxic to work for. Amy Klobuchar is toxic to work for.

There's others who's there's someone else who is like, oh, that sucks. You know, there's like all these stories. And okay, a union helps that, you know. So I think that's really important is to how people are, if they're walking the walk and not just talking to talk. And then, of course, I came on, came across Teamsters president, Sean O'Brien, just being like, I don't know, completely disrespected by Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, if you guys remember that.

And there's a fun little back and forth between there. And I think Mark Wayne Mullen had like a landscaping company or something and he, and Sean O'Brien called him like, basically he was like, you're enriching yourself, you're just, you're just out to make money for the team for yourself. I remember that now, yeah. That was incredible. He was like, you're out of line like, you know, Sean O'Brien. And that is something that was really interesting.

You know, we did this, you know, spoke to Alex Press of Jacobin about the upcoming UPS strike, because that could be huge. And Teamsters is massive. And these aren't just delivery drivers. These are also warehouse workers. And that's coming this summer. And they have a lot, you know, Sean O'Brien as a new leadership of the Teamsters set, you know, has basically promised to be more militant and not cut deals with, you know, bosses. And the other part of that is, you know, like Starbucks workers, like other, I think like, you know, I'm trying to think like REI workers, basically any retail workers who are like front facing. UPS drivers are also incredibly, you know, visible to the public. So they have this kind of baked in sympathy from the public, even if it

means you're not going to be in your packages on time in August, you know, and, you know, Teamsters generally make fairly good money, but it's still like there's a whole situation of them undercutting, you know, the former bus is undercutting half the workers and da-da-da-da. But that I think, it's going to be a hot labor summer, again, is what I'm trying to tell you. And screw Senator Mark Wayne. Mark Wayne Mullen. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, look, we talked about Amazon delivery drivers. I mean, most of them are working for third-party companies that get contracted by Amazon. But one of those companies we talked about just last week, and they voted to unionize

because even though it's a third party that has a completely different employer, Amazon ends up dictating what the terms of their employment happen to be and what their working conditions are like. But in covering that story, we compared the non-unionized delivery drivers at Amazon to the workers over at UPS. And while UPS workers certainly deserve this pay and more, they get paid significantly more than the non-unionized delivery drivers for Amazon. I bring that up because when you have organized labor, you have some leverage in constantly fighting to improve your conditions, improve your pay, get a better labor contract. And so solidarity with the UPS workers, who cares if our packages are a little late.

What's important is that people who work so hard get to live lives of dignity and get the respect and the pay and the working conditions they deserve, period. Yeah, so just briefly, I mean, the issue is when you say, you know, who cares if the package is a little bit late, the issue is that if the packages are a little bit late, then, you know, the media that everyone consumes is going to be blasted in them in the face of this is unacceptable, that you should turn on people working in other industries. I mean, they're not going to say it in explicit terms like that, but they'll talk about inflation. They'll talk about a rise in prices, they'll talk about delay in services, they'll talk about shortages of certain things. And that's from just sort of the natural sort of issues that crop up. One of my concerns, you know, going into what looked like it was going to be this major strike involving the train, you know, like freight transportation, was would people be willing

to see delays in a wide variety of products, an increase in prices? And our media is always there to pounce. And to make us see each other, not as fellow workers, but as a different sort of thing. You have a different color, color, you work on the coast rather than out here. You're in a city or rather than rural. It's designed to fragment us, to segregate us so that we can't pool our resources. Our power are, you know, like soft power resources. That's why they do it.

They're very effective at it. They've been doing it for hundreds of years. Well, I'm going to do something that's kind of rare, which is give Shank a lot of credit. Because what he's trying to build here is a real competitor to the mainstream media bubble that intentionally pits, you know, working Americans against each other. It's important to have independent media that can counter that narrative. And that's what he's been working on for so long. And there's growing pains that come along with it. There are resource issues that come along with it.

But he's still chugging along and working hard to make it happen. You're right, I mean, media and the disinformation that is spread, especially as it pertains to labor issues, is so toxic to what we want to see in this country, which is better working conditions, better pay for workers. And more importantly, to kind of roll back some of what employers have done to chip away at labor rights, right? including, you know, this emergence of mandatory overtime, which some workers have fought back against, forcing people to work on weekends. You know, we didn't get weekends out of nowhere. That was something that was fought for by labor. We didn't get the eight hour workday out of nowhere. That was something that was fought for by labor. People literally lost their lives for that. And so to lose these rights little by little, to have employers chip away at what was fought so hard for in the past is depressing.

But we need to cut through the media narratives and provide some coverage that actually accurately describes what labor is going through in this country. Did you have something you want to say, John? Oh, sorry, Francesco. Go ahead. No, I just wanted to jump in and just say that I think part of the problem with the media coverage specifically is because we've created, we've humanized the economy as if it's a person that's like gonna die and is sick and all the economy or the almighty invisible hand of the economy and everyone sort of thinking like they're like a, you know, a robber barren, you know, like capitalist with a top hat on and a large mustache. Like it's so it's like people aren't that anymore. And like all of our financial, news, all of our economic news is always through the lens of the worker, of the boss class and of the capitalist. And it's like, yeah. So you sort of like get your like, oh yeah, see in fact, you know, the supply chain. And we got to bring up interest rates and all this BS that actually is none of the workers' fault. And is all the capitalist class fault for, you know,

the bottlenecks in the supply chain, the over reliance on China. The fact that there's like four shipping companies and three rail companies that transport everything, right? And then, but then it all the burden falls on the workers to when, you know, to be squeezed whenever there's inflation. So it's just like it's this reframing and it's also like, you know, you only hear working people on mainstream news when it's an election and you go to like a random diner and like, You're like, hi, miss, could you just say some racial, racially questionable things into the microphone? Totally. It's just like, and then, and it's all thank you, and then we're done.

And you never actually talk to working people. Yeah. 100%. Yeah, well, we've talked often, like it was probably a year, maybe it was five years ago. I don't know, times a closed loop. Isn't it weird that there are multiple business channels, but all of them are explicitly pro business, pro business in, like pro CEO, pro stock market, pro, pro. And not only that, I mean, Americans have been conditioned to believe that their power is only exercised through consumerism, right? Like, we have been conditioned to think of ourselves as consumerists, right?

Like, that's where your power is, what you can buy, how much of it you can buy. And so that sets the stage for the media to come in and do this crappy coverage of potential labor strikes and essentially pit their audience against these strike. workers. Yeah. You know, because it's like, oh, they're threatening your consumerism. Your packages might be late. But really take a step back and think about what a strike means, not just for the worker striking, but for you at the workplace, right? Put yourself in the position of the workers who are striking. Ask yourselves if you'd be okay getting zero paid time off in the year because zero sick days. Zero sick days because your employer wants to keep the workforce as slim as possible to maximize profits for shareholders,

that is what's currently happening with the rail companies right now. So anyway, I just have to say we're on the precipice also of a potential other, another strike in a very different industry, which is the Writers and Writers Guild of America, which maybe did vote to go on strike, should an agreement not be reached. And that will start tomorrow. And look, it's every single industry there it is you know it used to be a very different world for writers um but the proliferation of online content the proliferation of streaming the fact that studios are trying to cut costs the advent even of AI right you know all of these things are making that job even more precarious they call them micro mini rooms where it's like okay we're gonna do the same amount of episodes

but in like a week's time you know just really squeezing them at every point in turn so that you know, we can all sit there and watch succession and stuff, our gullets like we love to, but but it's like, you know, we don't want succession written by AI. We want the people who write a show like that and all shows to be adequately compensated. But again, it's just the way that the boss class and CEOs try to precarize, make precarious jobs that you could live on. Right. And now you cannot live on them. Yeah, that's such a good point. So we've got a few more minutes left. Let's hear from our audience and then we will wrap up. Time flew. Sure, let's do it. Okay, so let's see. I believe we have some members comments here.

Oh, Jam says, it's almost never mentioned, but a lot of workers died in strikes and protests to win the concessions. Many of us take for granted today. There were occasionally full on military style battles fought. Oh yeah, no, like in Appalachia and everything, there's like, yeah, full on wars basically being fought. But with the interesting, like you even saw it in that that Ford footage. It's they get attacked by all these cops and the private security and they use whatever means they can to defend themselves. But they're wrong to do that. Even though they're being attacked by people with guns, they're automatically the bad guys in that case, even though they were being peaceful up until that point. It's weird how that works out historically.

Okay, let's see. Sexy Speed racer says, well, to be fair, we do have a specific Labor Day here in the USA. Today is the Labor Day for the rest of the planet. But we also have so military holidays, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, so having two separate days to support the ordinary worker is just fine with me. It isn't fine with me. I've been calling for at least 12 labor days a year. Why should we accept that, why? So they fought to get an eight hour work day. They fought to get two weekend days. Why are we supposed to believe that, oh, then good, we're good for all of eternity. Why? Yeah, no, it's time for the four day work week That's it. Four days. Yeah, four days or moving towards it. One four day week each month.

And then in two years, you add another one. It's gradual. It's reasonable. We can collaborate on this. But anyway, just the idea that like the same people in the media who would have been against the weekend or the eight hour work week will now, except they would never say that they were against that. Now they'd seem crazy. But if you bring up making it seven and a half hours rather than eight, they will laugh you out of the building. Or more likely, you would have never been allowed in the first place. All right, this was fantastic. Thank you so much to Francesca, to Senator Nina Turner, and to John for joining me for this

special May Day special. And I hope we do it every year. And I hope every year we learn something new through it. And any final words before we wrap up, guys? No, no. Support other workers. Absolutely. And solidarity forever, that's it.

And I think for anyone who's watching this and you know, you want to be part of the labor movement, you want to help in any way, I think a good place to start is to talk to your friends and family about the haymarket affair, what labor went through and how many lives were lost in fighting for the rights that we currently enjoy as workers in this country, and just spread the word about labor, try to counteract the misinformation that we in the corporate press day in and day out, I think that that would actually really help in helping Americans understand the importance of showing solidarity toward workers when they strike, when they decide to take action. And that solidarity really does go a long way. Anyway, thank you to everyone who's watching. Thank you for supporting not only this show, but workers across the country and across the world. We're going to keep covering these stories. We're going to keep shedding light on them. And we really appreciate your support for allowing us to do it. Have a great night. We'll see you soon.