Jacobin Radio

Suzi talks to historian and labor expert Nelson Lichtenstein about the historic, first-ever simultaneous strike against the Big Three automakers. Thirteen thousand workers, about 10% of UAW members at the Big Three, walked out of assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri on September 14. Instead of striking at all plants at once, the UAW is using a novel tactic they’re calling the “Stand-Up” strike with workers at select locals standing up and walking out on strike. Shawn Fain, the new militant leader of the UAW, says this tactic keeps companies guessing which other locals will be next. Nelson Lichtenstein looks at this strike in the context of the history of the UAW, the leading role the UAW played in the 1937 sit-down strikes that exemplified the power of the labor movement, and how auto workers have in many ways been canaries in the coal mine for the US working class writ large. There is broad support for striking workers, and auto workers are joining writers, actors, hotel workers, and others in this season of strikes. Are these strikes opening a new period, igniting a newly energized working class, with the UAW again in a leading role?Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

For its boosters, crypto finance is a modern-day version of the California gold rush, with fortunes to be made. And it seems to have attracted as many crooks and fraudsters as the original Wild West.Ramaa Vasudevan, professor of economics at Colorado State University and the author of Things Fall Apart: From the Crash of 2008 to the Great Slump, discusses the world of crypto from its beginnings as a "libertarian pipe dream" to the volatile situation today.Read her piece for Catalyst, "Silicon Valley Bank and Financial Turmoil," here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2023/06/silicon-valley-bank-and-financial-turmoilLong Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies. Music by Knxwledge.

Jodi Dean, author of a recent article for the Los Angeles Review of Books, takes on the postliberalism of Ahmari, Vermeule, Deneen, et al. Then Sarang Shidore of the Quincy Institute discusses the G20, the BRICS, and the erosion of US imperial power.Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

Suzi talks to journalist Marc Cooper, Salvador Allende's former translator, for part two of our commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile. Marc returned to Chile for a month this year to probe what has and has not changed in 50 years, and to understand why the new leftist millennial government of Gabriel Boric is having such a hard time. His multipart series for Truthdig, "Chile's Utopia Has Been Postponed," features articles, photo essays, interviews and discussions looking at the ways Pinochet's legacy continues to haunt Chile. Chilean society is once again deeply polarized, with up to 40% of the population saying the coup was a good thing. Was Allende’s Popular Unity government from 1970-1973 a stab at utopia that has been postponed, or was the trauma inflicted by the Pinochet years so deep as to cancel future attempts at a more just and profoundly democratic social order? You can read Marc's personal testimony, evoking the atmosphere and strategic debates within the left before the coup d'état in Jacobin America Latina, also part of our discussion.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

If you look, you'll see. Most people don't look. Produced by Stephen Cassidy Jones and Liza Yeager.Edited by Mitchell Johnson, with editorial oversight from Daniel Denvir.Featuring Mark Pilkington, Valerie Kuletz, and Trevor Paglen.Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDigBuy Blood Red Lines at haymarketbooks.orgSubscribe to Jacobin at bit.ly/digjacobin

Sam Gindin, writer and activist on labor issues, outlines the shortcomings of the UPS-Teamster deal (read his article, and a follow-up, on The Bullet website). Then Samuel Moyn, author of Liberalism Against Itself, discusses how the Cold War crushed the tendency’s emancipatory side.Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online.

Featuring Alex Press and Eric Blanc on surging labor militancy and why US unions must seize this historic moment.Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig and ask our guests follow-up questions!Learn more about Haymarket’s Book Clubs at haymarketbooks.org.Subscribe to Jacobin bit.ly/digjacobin and Catalyst bit.ly/digcatalyst

Widely described as "Hollywood's response to the Lewinsky scandal," THE CONTENDER (2000) imagines a Vice Presidential confirmation process derailed by sexism and moral prudishness. We excavate some Oscar bait from the very tail end of the Clinton Era and find... yes, another Politics Movie™.Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Suzi talks to Oscar Mendoza about the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende that came to an abrupt and bloody end 50 years ago on September 11, 1973. Pinochet's coup inaugurated a wave of violence, death and repression that shocked the world—and sparked an enormous international solidarity movement as many thousands of Chileans were forced to leave their country, their families, and their dreams of a democratic, egalitarian future. Oscar Mendoza's life was upended on that day nearly 50 years ago, when, in his words, his carefree days of youth came to an abrupt halt, followed by detention, torture and imprisonment. Two years later, in May 1975, Oscar was expelled from Chile and exiled to Scotland as a political refugee, where I greeted him along with other members of the Chile Solidarity movement in Glasgow. We get Oscar’s overview of the Chilean revolutionary process from 1970-1973, one that posited a peaceful transition to socialism with vino tinto (red wine) and empanadas, using the ballot box and constitutional means to achieve the profound economic, social, and political transformations working people demanded. Oscar asks himself two questions, and we take them up too: What are we commemorating 50 years later, and does Allende’s dream of a fairer and better Chile live on today?We’ll continue this two-part series next week with Marc Cooper, looking at the legacy of Pinochet’s dictatorship and the impediments it poses for the leftist government of Gabriel Boric today.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.