Highlights from Three Years of Laborwave

Laborwave Radio is celebrating it's three-year anniversary! In three years we've produced 50 episodes and had nearly as many guests, and we've reached more than 17,500 listeners!

To celebrate this milestone we've put together this highlight reel from our latest year featuring Jarrod Shanahan, Asad Haider, Boots Riley, Raj Patel, Holly Lewis, Micah Uetricht, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Sarah Jaffe, Natasha Lennard, Liza Featherstone, Bill Fletcher Jr, Andrea Haverkamp, Shannon Ikebe & Tara Phillips, Nick Driedger, and Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò.

We also take a moment to reflect on our history and give a shoutout to all our patreon members! Lots of credit needs to be given to our frequent guest host Andrea Haverkamp for all her work dreaming up this podcast and helping sustain it, thank you comrade for your all-around friendship and radical spirit that gives me hope!

Thank you Rank-and-Filers, Committee Members, and Strike Captains that make up our patreon community! You help keep Laborwave running, and we greatly appreciate your contributions. Our patreon community includes: Nicholas Fisher, Jason Sarkozi-Forsinski, Caroline Hunter (my mom!), Tony Vogt, Michael Marchmann, Dawson Hughes, Molly Harney, Hazel Daniels, David DeHart, Shane Scopatz, Meera Petroff, Lucas Carpenter, Erica Mercier, Sam Drake, and Nicholas Driedger.

Also thanks to Jon Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees and Damaged Bug for allowing us to use his music on our show, and final gratitude goes to our resident artist, my wonderfully talented and lovely wife Kerry Hill for all the artwork that goes into our stickers, zines, and t-shirts!

Ep. 4 Comrades Read Together "If We Can Change the White House, We Can Change the Hog House"

Join in on the fun Discord conversations by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave

Andrea Haverkamp, president of CGE 6069, joins Laborwave to discuss chapters 5 & 6 of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey; "If We Can Change the White House, We Can Change the Hog House!"

Our conversation highlights the importance of connecting our movement histories to fight against the consistent bracketing of social movements as self-contained and insular phenomenons, making the role of staff transparent and accountable for developing the leadership of the rank-and-file, and also pose some hard questions for the IWW asking why is it so prone to the "one-man organizing show" written about in Organizing Work and what prevents its own policies and structures from being consistently implemented?

Chapter 5 analyzes the strategies of UFCW's multiple union campaigns at Smithfield Foods, where in their third round after 10+ years they finally won a union through a deep organizing model that brought in community allies under a banner of social justice to win.

Chapter 6 examines the "mobilizing model," with promise, of Make the Road New York, an immigrants rights organization with more than 15,000 dues-paying members. McAlevey argues key ingredients for their success include "high-touch" participatory democracy and power over staff afforded by MRNY members.

This and more in our penultimate episode of Comrades Read Together: No Shortcuts!

Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together!

Organizing Work, Beware the One-Man Organizing Show organizing.work/2019/07/beware-th…-organizing-show/

Music: Thee Oh Sees- Bloody Water

Ep. 3 Comrades Read Together: No Shortcuts chapters 3 & 4 w/ Ellen Kress & Andrea Haverkamp

Join in on the fun conversations by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave

Ellen Kress, former president of GTFF 3544 and current AFT-Oregon officer, and Andrea Haverkamp, president of CGE 6069, join Laborwave for a comradely discussion on chapters 3 & 4 of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Jane McAlevey.

These chapters are full of exercises and advice for rookie organizers, which we discuss in detail, and talks STRIKES!!! We're introduced to another villain of the working class in the form of Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, and shown the bravery and heroism of teachers that battled him down and won in a massive strike during 2012. These chapters also present us with arguments about the possibility of reforming unions through challenging existing leadership and bargaining for the common good.

Join us in discussion and some reading sessions on our Discord server! You can get in on the fun by becoming a Laborwave Patron at patreon.com/laborwave and joining as a Rank-and-Filer, or Committee Member, or Strike Captain. Once joined, you'll receive an invitation to our Discord where we have a pdf of the book, multiple channels for discussions, and voice channels for periodic reading and chat sessions together!

Music:

Thee Oh Sees- Maria Stacks