“Strike for Your Life!”; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis

<p>Jeremy Brecher's “Strike for Your Life!”; Peter Rachleff and labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis; plus a preview of Debs In Canton.   “The current situation has led us to reconsider the Minneapolis teamster strikes of 1934; their dramatic story shows that the labor movement is strongest when unions boldly organized workers on the job and in the community around a shared vision of fairness and justice.” Peter Rachleff, co-director of the East Side Freedom Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, on how <a href='https://advocate.stpaulunions.org/2020/05/04/lessons-from-labor-history-can-inform-our-labor-movement-during-covid-19-crisis/'>“Lessons from labor history can inform our labor movement during the COVID-19 crisis.”</a> “As a labor historian, the closest thing I can think of to the spread of coronavirus strikes is the epidemic of sitdown strikes to spread across the country in the mid-1930s.” Historian and writer Jeremy Brecher, from <a href='https://www.labor4sustainability.org/strike/strike-for-your-life/'>“Strike for Your Life!”</a> Also this week, we preview <a href='https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/318230-debs-in-canton'>Debs In Canton</a>, a new audio/radio drama from the filmmakers of American Socialist: The Life And Times Of Eugene Victor Debs. Produced by Chris Garlock; to contribute a labor history item, email <a href='mailto:laborhistorytoday@gmail.com'>laborhistorytoday@gmail.com</a></p> <p> Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.</p>