Jacobin Radio

Barry Eidlin guest hosts today, talking to WGA leader-activists Alex O’Keefe, organizer and award-winning writer for The Bear, and Howard Rodman, writer and former president of the WGA. On September 24, after 146 days on strike, the WGA and the AMPTP announced a tentative agreement for the contract covering 11,500 film and TV screenwriters across the country. The WGA Negotiating Committee West and East voted unanimously to recommend the agreement, and on September 27, the strike was suspended. The strike is not over — WGA members still have to discuss the tentative agreement and vote on whether or not to ratify it by October 9. What do writers think of this deal after five months on strike? And what are the broader implications of the deal for writers and other workers in Hollywood and beyond? Based on what’s in the tentative agreement, the writers have won big. But beyond the contract language, writers have won something greater: a new sense of solidarity and the power they have as workers. That could be crucial as the class struggle continues in Hollywood and beyond: film and TV actors are still on strike, video game actors recently authorized a strike, and Teamsters and IATSE workers will be negotiating their contracts next year. Writers and other Hollywood workers have been joining the rallies and picket lines of other workers like UPS Teamsters, Big 3 auto workers, hotel workers, and more. It looks like the Hot Labor Summer may be transitioning into a Fiery Labor Fall.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Samar Al-Bulushi examines the coup in Niger, political unrest in France’s former colonies in Africa, and the US-led “war on terror” on that continent. Joanna Wuest, author of Born This Way, talks about the biology of sexuality.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 Jo Guldi on the global history of the long land war—a war over everything from agrarian reform to tenant rights, from India and China to England and Ireland, from the late 19th century through the present—and into the future.Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDigBuy Blood Red Lines at haymarketbooks.org/books/1519-blood-red-linesBuy Abolition for the People at haymarketbooks.org/books/2095-abolition-for-the-people

Aaron Benanav, sociologist and frequent contributor to New Left Review, and Seth Ackerman, an editor at Jacobin, discuss the long-term health of capitalism: Is stagnation really the problem?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.

In 2019, Clint Eastwood's RICHARD JEWELL took aim at two institutions — the FBI and the media — that were supposed to save America from Trumpism. We discuss one of the veteran auteur's most beautiful films, which is also one of his most loaded and ambiguous political hot potatoes. PLUS: David Brooks' expensive meal, Doug Ford's about-face, and Jean-Luc Godard's film criticism."David Brooks and the $78 airport meal the internet is talking about" by Timothy Bella - https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/09/22/david-brooks-newark-airport-meal/See Will introduce THINGS (1989) at the Fox Theatre on October 3 - https://www.foxtheatre.ca/movies/the-important-cinema-club-masterpiece-classics-things/Preorder Luke's new book Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality, coauthored with Ed Broadbent - https://ecwpress.com/products/seeking-social-democracy-ed-broadbentTORONTO: See Luke and Ed Broadbent in conversation at the Toronto Reference Library on October 22 - https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/seeking-social-democracy-a-conversation-with-ed-broadbent-tickets-713793665067VANCOUVER: See Luke and Ed at the Central Library on November 1 - https://vpl.bibliocommons.com/events/650b36ea2d0219cf8b5cf95fMichael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage.

Featuring Alex Han, Astra Taylor, and Rachel Gilmer on how we build powerful organizations that win both short-term fights and the long-term struggle for socialism. A live Dig recorded at the Socialism 2023 conference in Chicago. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig and ask Dig guests follow-up questions!Buy Our History Has Always Been Contraband at haymarketbooks.orgBuy To Build a Black Future princeton.press/blackfuture

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.