Convergence

Throughout this season of Black Work Talk, we've explored how Black workers have shown up in many of the big labor wins that happened in 2023. This season finale brings the full picture into perspective as Carlos Jimenez, head of the special projects division of the AFL-CIO, joins host Jamala Rogers to analyze the history of labor fights that got us…

Rashaad Pritchett and Theresa Mtles of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) join hosts Bianca Cunningham and Jamala Rogers for this episode of Black Work Talk. They delve into the challenges faced by Black healthcare support workers, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rashaad and Theresa recount their experiences of being on the…

In this episode, United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz joins Bianca and Jamala to discuss the challenges she has faced as the first woman of color to head this powerhouse union, and a leader who took over during the COVID-19 pandemic. When she advocated for educators and students in 2020, she faced immediate backlash. The interview…

BWT co-hosts Bianca Cunningham and Jamala Rogers take time this episode to explore a few of the crises and challenges shaking the world and the Left in this moment. The recent demands by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and a few other national unions for a ceasefire in Gaza suggest an opening for a worker-led movement for peace. Bianca and Jamala discuss…

Fifty-six percent of people in the US who self-identify as Black call the South home. Today's guest, Shafeah M'Balia, explains why and how we need to focus organizing strategies on Black workers in southern states. Shafeah is a lifelong activist and organizer with Black Workers for Justice and Muslims for Social Change. In this episode Shafeah talks…

After the second-longest strike in Hollywood history, members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) voted to ratify a new contract in October 2023. Their 146-day walkout brought wins on some of the most pressing issues they were fighting for. These included new standards governing the use of AI for producing content and the distribution of residuals…

Within this moment of labor upsurge, the National Black Worker Center (NBWC) exists to build the collective leadership of Black workers. NBWC is "a Black worker power building and worker’s rights advocacy organization that leads with militant joyfulness and Black movement culture." In addition to the national center, 11 local centers operate around…

Around 340,000 members of the Teamsters Union who work for UPS came within days of walking off the job in July 2023 in what would have been the one of the largest strikes in US history. In August, they voted 86.3% in favor of ratification of a new five-year contract with the company. The contract provides provisions like a $21 per hour minimum wage…

Black Work Talk’s third season goes to the source of the energy for this current wave of labor activism, looks at how this surge impacts Black workers, and offers a fresh vision for what’s next. Listeners will hear conversations with rank-and-file workers from unions including the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, and the Writers Guild of America.…

Black Work Talk comes full circle: This is the last episode of this iteration of Black Work Talk, and host Steven Pitts talks with Bill Fletcher Jr, who was the show’s first guest in November 2020. Their wide-ranging conversation started with some historical reflection on Black worker organizing and leadership, beginning with the National Negro Labor…

Carroll Fife didn’t want to run for office, but a movement candidate dropped out of the race to represent Oakland’s District 3 on the City Council. As Fife searched the community for others to step up, people turned to her. “They said, ‘Because you are a servant of the work we are doing together, and you know how to do this, it makes sense for you …

“Where people live is changing very rapidly. When most of us say we organize locally, usually we mean in the central city,” said San Diego-based Kyra Greene, Executive Director of the Center on Policy Initiatives.  “But more and more, as we’re seeing all over the country, it means going out to these suburban communities where our people are being…

As a writer, activist, strategist and political educator, Linda Burnham has developed a nuanced understanding of the complex path to building more power in this country. In this episode of BWT, she talked with co-hosts Steven Pitts and Lauren Jacobs about the new book she co-edited, Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections. …

Just before the tenth anniversary of the landmark 2012 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike, new CTU President Stacy Davis Gates sat down with Black Work Talk co-hosts Steven Pitts and Sheri Davis. They started off with the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), which Gates co-founded in 2008, and reflected on the new politics and leadership practices…

This is the second of two episodes drawn from “Black Labor Struggles Over Time,” the Black Work Talk panel at the 2022 Labor Notes conference. Panelists Jerome Scott (Project South and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers), Stacy Davis Gates (Chicago Teachers Union), Susan DeCarava (NewsGuild of New York), and Chris Smalls (Amazon Labor Union)…

At the June 2022 Labor Notes conference, Black Work Talk presented a panel of organizers spanning generations and geographies: Jerome Scott of Project South and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union; Susan DeCarava, president of the NewsGuild of New York, and Chris Smalls of the Amazon…

Burnout nearly took Erica Iheme out of the labor movement twice. “Our organizing culture excludes the most impacted,” Iheme said on the July 7 episode of Black Work Talk. In her work with Jobs To Move America, she’s about changing that to allow people to bring their full selves to the work—and practice an organizing model that brings community partners…

For more than a century, Black women’s organizations—whether explicitly working-class or not—have fed what Dr. Danielle T. Phillips-Cunningham calls “comprehensive labor resistance.” The Washing Society organized the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike of 1881. The National Council of Colored Women’s Clubs, with chapters in every state, organized around…

“Black feminism is the political idea that all forms of oppression, which are global and persistent, are interconnected and structural: white supremacy, racism, heterosexism, ableism, class disparities,” said Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, referencing bell hooks. “All of those systems of oppression are connected, and we experience them simultaneously. We…

In this episode of Black Work Talk, Steven Pitts and his co-host, Toussaint Losier, talk with Mariame Kaba. Mariame is one of this country’s leading abolitionist thinkers and practitioners. She has founded several projects organizing around abolitionist principles including Project NIA. Many of her writings on abolition are collected in a recent book,…

In this episode of Black Work Talk, Steven Pitts and his co-host, Toussaint Losier talk with NTanya Lee, National Secretary of LeftRoots, a national organization of social movement organizers and activists. We began by reviewing the landscape of the Black Left today and continued by discussing the distinctions between the Black Left and Black Lives…

When thousands of people occupied the park across from New York City Hall in 2020 to demand defunding of the police, “it turned into a huge mutual aid project, and we had to look at what keeps a community safe,” Bianca Cunningham said. Cunningham, now a  campaign director at Action Center for the New Economy, reflected on her range of organizing…

Lester K. Spence parsed the nature of power in his wide-ranging conversation with Black Work Talk co-hosts Steven Pitts and Toussaint Losier. Spence is perhaps best-known for his work on neoliberalism in the Black community. “Neoliberalism turned cross-class solidarity in the Black community towards upper-class interests,” he said, but that is changing.…

In this fifth episode of Black Work Talk’s Season Two, Steven Pitts talks with Toussaint Losier, his co-host for the second mini-series of Black Work Talk on the Black Left. Toussaint is a professor in the African American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During this episode, we previewed the mini-series by presenting …

In this fourth episode of Black Work Talk’s Season Two, co-hosts Steven Pitts and Bill Fletcher talk with Will Jones. Will is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. His particular emphasis is understanding the relationship between race and class in the United States during the 20th Century. His 2013 book, “The March on Washington:…

In this third episode of Black Work Talk’s Season Two, co-hosts Steven Pitts and Bill Fletcher talk with Bert Bayou. Bert is DC Chapter Director of African Communities Together (ACT) and Vice President of UNITE HERE Local 23. ACT is an organization of African immigrants with chapters in Washington DC and New York. ACT provides services and…

In this second episode of Black Work Talk’s Season Two, co-hosts Steven Pitts and Bill Fletcher talk with April Verrett. April is president of SEIU 2015, a union of 400,000 long-term caregivers in California. April talked about the importance of Democracy Schools the union operated to engage members in basic political governance activities at the…

In this first episode of Black Work Talk’s Season Two, co-hosts Steven Pitts and Bill Fletcher talk with Rob Baril.  Rob is the president of SEIU 1199NE, a union of health care workers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Rob talked about how members of SEIU 1199NE have been fighting state officials in Connecticut for better working conditions during…

In this eighteenth episode of Black Work Talk, we end Season One as we began it with Bill Fletcher, long-time racial justice and labor activist.  We reviewed the events over the past 8 months: the insurrection; the determined GOP efforts to promote the Big Lie about the election and insist the adherence to the Big Lie would be a litmus test for GOP…

In this seventeenth episode of Black Work Talk, our guest today is Dawn Gearhart.  Dawn is the Director of Gig Economy Organizing for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.  Dawn is leading efforts to organize workers who utilize an app to connect with potential clients desiring domestic work services.  Prior to joining NDWA, Dawn organized taxi…

In this sixteenth episode of Black Work Talk, our guest is Michael Dawson. Michael is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he has written extensively about the intertwined nature of Black politics and Left politics. Currently, he co-leads the Race and Capitalism Project that seeks to understand how the racial and…

In this fifteenth episode of Black Work Talk, our guest is Lauren Jacobs.  Lauren is the Executive Director of the Partnership for Working Families – a national network of regional power-building organizations.  Lauren and I have been friends for over 15 years…I remember when she was a union organizer in Boston. I have always loved the way Lauren…

In this fourteenth episode of Black Work Talk, today’s Sheri Davis.  Sheri is the Associate Director of the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) at Rutgers University and the Senior Program Director – WILL Empower at CIWO. The purpose of WILL Empower is to develop the next generation of women in the labor movement - unions and worker…

In this thirteenth episode of Black Work Talk, Today’s guest is Maurice Mitchell.  Maurice is the National Director of the Working Families Party.  Since its inception, the Working Families Party has done a good job of navigating the complicated waters of combining Left political perspectives with building bases among working class people and maintaining…

In this twelfth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Barbara Ransby, professor of history at the University of Illinois-Chicago.  Barbara has written extensively on the Black Freedom Movement on topics ranging from Ella Baker and Eslanda Robeson to the current Black Lives Matter movement. Our conversation took place soon after the…

This eleventh episode of Black Work Talk was a joint effort with Dissent Magazine’s podcast, Belabored.  Belabored’s co-hosts, Michelle Chen and Sarah Jaffe, and Black Work Talk’s host, Steven Pitts were joined by historian Robin D.G. Kelley.  Robin’s book, Hammer and Hoe, details the organizing work in the Birmingham metropolitan area…

In this tenth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Maurice BP-Weeks, co-founder of the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE). ACRE sits at the nexus of the struggles for racial and economic justice. As such, they provide campaign assistance to local organizations and engage in national campaigns against corporate elites. …

In this ninth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Jesse Hagopian, an Ethnic Studies teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington.  The public schools in the United States have been near Ground Zero during this confluence of COVID, the recession, and the fight for racial justice and because of this, education has become …

In this eighth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Michelle Crentsil, political director for the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA). The members of NYSNA have been through hell this past year dealing with the extreme conditions caused by COVID and federal government ineptitude. We talked about these struggles and the reality…

In this seventh episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Erica Smiley, Executive Director of Jobs with Justice. Smiley has been with Jobs with Justice for over 15 years. Prior to joining the organization, she worked at a number of unions and community-based organizations. During the episode, we spoke about a variety of topics including…

In this sixth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes William A. Lucy. Bill retired in 2010 after over 50 years in the leadership of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Union (AFSCME). Bill talked about his beginnings in the labor movement organizing government workers in Contra Costa County (CA). He later represented…

In the fifth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes April Sims, Secretary-Treasurer of the Washington State Labor Council.  April told us a bit about her background, in particular, how the experiences of her mother led April to understand the importance of unions to working people’s lives.  She also talked about the work of the State…

In the fourth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Greg Kelley, President of SEIU Health Care Illinois.  Greg gave us a sense of how he got into labor organizing.  We moved to get a sense of how COVID has impacted union members and their resolve to use the power of their union to protect their quality of life on the job.  Greg relayed…

In this third episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Tanya Wallace Gobern, Executive Director of the National Black Worker Center. Tanya spoke of how growing up in Chicago shaped her passion for social justice and worker organizing. She continued to share lessons from her years of organizing Black workers especially to need to build…

In this first episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Bill Fletcher, long-time racial justice and labor activist. Bill talks about key takeaways from the 2020 Election and steps needed to build a progressive governing majority. Also, we discuss why it is important to build Black worker power and how to go about doing this.…

Guest Bill Fletcher sits down with Steven and previews for us the big questions he will address in our first real episode, dropping November 11th, one week after the election. Bill tells us what he thinks Black workers and organizers should be paying attention to as election day approaches. This is an important glimpse into the most important challenges…