Class

This is Class, the official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Education Committee. My name is Luke Pickrell. This is part one of our conversation with Daphna Thier about the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC)

Daphna is an organizer and educator at EWOC. In the last couple of years, she's trained a few hundred workers on the basics of workplace organizing. She is also a contributing writer and the editor of Unite and Win: the Workplace Organizer's Handbook. She's a DSA member based in Brooklyn, New York. In part two, Daphna discusses exciting labor campaigns, the intersection of labor organizing and politics, and EWOC’s future project. 

Unite and Win: the Workplace Organizer's Handbook:
workerorganizing.org/unite-and-win 

Learn more about EWOC and get involved:
workerorganizing.org/training
workerorganizing.org/support
workerorganizing.org/volunteer 

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This is Class, the official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Education Committee. My name is Luke Pickrell. This is part one of our conversation with Daphna Thier about the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC)

Daphna is an organizer and educator at EWOC. In the last couple of years, she's trained a few hundred workers on the basics of workplace organizing. She is also a contributing writer and the editor of Unite and Win: the Workplace Organizer's Handbook. She's a DSA member based in Brooklyn, New York. In part one, Daphna discusses EWOC's origins and its recent book, Unite and Win: the Workplace Organizer's Handbook. 

Unite and Win: the Workplace Organizer's Handbook:
workerorganizing.org/unite-and-win 

Learn more about EWOC and get involved:
workerorganizing.org/training
workerorganizing.org/support
workerorganizing.org/volunteer 

Send us Fan Mail

Become a member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Sign up to receive NPEC's newsletter, Red Letter. 

This is part two of our two-part interview with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth about politics in Mexico. José Luis and Kurt are journalists and activists based in Mexico and the co-hosts of Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast. José Luis has written for Venezuela Analysis, and Kurt has written for Jacobin, including a recent article, “Mexico’s Lessons for the International Left.” In part two, José Luis and Kurt discuss outgoing (former as of October 1) president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed constitutional reforms, discourse around immigration in Mexico, and what activists in the U.S. should know about Mexico. 

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In this episode, we talk with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth about politics in Mexico. The interview is divided into two parts, and part two will be released in two weeks. José Luis and Kurt are journalists and activists based in Mexico and the co-hosts of Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast. José Luis has written for Venezuela Analysis, and Kurt has written for Jacobin, including a recent article, “Mexico’s Lessons for the International Left.” In part one, José Luis and Kurt discuss Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory in the June presidential elections, the reaction to her victory in Mexico and abroad, and the history of Sheinbaum’s party, Morena.

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We're happy to share a bonus episode with you: the first episode of Haymarket Book’s Originals project, Fragile Juggernaut. 

Haymarket Originals brings in-depth, series-length audio treatments of a wide range of historical and contemporary political subjects to podcast listeners worldwide. Haymarket Originals is a new home for audio deep dives, by and for the left. The first Haymarket Originals project is Fragile Juggernaut: What Was the CIO? — an important collaboration with labor writers, historians, and organizers.

Through a limited run of twenty episodes, they will revisit and reflect on the near-mythical history of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)—and the high water mark of US labor activity in the 1930s and 1940s—in the context of today’s critical juncture in the labor movement. Join Tim Barker, Andrew Elrod, Ben Mabie, Alex Press, Emma Teitelman, Gabriel Winant, and special guests as they explore the trajectory of the American working class through a period of its greatest drama and political possibility.

You can Listen to and subscribe to Fragile Juggernaut on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and help us spread the word! You can read an introduction to this collective inquiry into the history of the US workers’ movement and support the show on Patreon.

I hope you enjoy the first episode of Fragile Juggernaut. 

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This is part two of our two-part conversation with Manisha Sinha about Reconstruction. Part one is here. In part two, Manisha discusses the historiography of reconstruction, the afterlives of “reconstruction and its discontents,” the eventual defeat of Reconstruction as the U.S. rose to become an imperial power, and the lessons contemporary activists can draw from the Reconstruction period.

Dr. Manisha Sinha is a history professor at the University of Connecticut. She is the author and co-author of several books, including The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016) and The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920, published this year. 

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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Manisha Sinha about Reconstruction and the interconnectedness of social movements between the beginning of the Civil War in 1860 and the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.  The interview is split into two parts.  Part two will be released in two weeks.  You can now click on the “Send us a Text Message” link at the top of the episode description to share your thoughts on the episode.  This episode's prompt: Do you think the history presented by Manisha is relevant to current political and social struggles in the U.S.? If so, how? 

Dr. Manisha Sinha is a history professor at the University of Connecticut. She is the author and co-author of several books, including The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016) and The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920, published this year. In part one, Manisha explains why it’s important to expand the chronology of Reconstruction to include labor struggles in the North, wars against Indigenous people, and the struggle for female suffrage; how Radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stevens interpreted the Constitution, fought for the Reconstruct Ammenendemts, and grappled with President Johnson; and how workers in the South and North struggled for rights during the Gilded Age.

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This is part two of our two-part interview with Aziz Rana.  To share your thoughts on the episode, click on the “Send us a Text Message” link at the top of the episode description.  

Aziz Rana is a professor of law at Boston College.  He’s the author of two books, The Two Faces of American Freedom, published in 2014, and The Constitutional Bind, published in April of this year.  In 2022, Aziz spoke at the Socialism Conference in Chicago about the need for a democratic constitution.  That recording is available in the class episode archive.  Aziz recently published an op-ed in the New York Times titled “The Constitution won’t save us from Trump,” which drew a response from Nacy Pelosi. 

In part two, Aziz talks about the Consitution as creating a political playing field within which American politics operates. Aziz also talks about the contradiction between a growing realization that the Constitution is harmful and the power of "constitutional realism."  Finally, Aziz talks about our current moment and how it compares to previous periods of constitutional critique. 

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In this episode, we talk with Aziz Rana about the struggle for democracy and America’s Constitutional Bind.  The interview is split into two parts.  Part two will be released in two weeks.  You can now click on the “Send us a Text Message” link at the top of the episode description to share your thoughts on the episode.  This episode's prompt: should socialists care about the Constitution? Why or why not? 

Aziz Rana is a professor of law at Boston College.  He’s the author of two books, The Two Faces of American Freedom, published in 2014, and The Constitutional Bind, published in April of this year.  In 2022, Aziz spoke at the Socialism Conference in Chicago about the need for a democratic constitution. That recording is available in the class episode archive.  Aziz recently published an op-ed in the New York Times titled “The Constitution won’t save us from Trump,” which drew a response from Nacy Pelosi. 

In the first part of the interview, Aziz talks about the inspiration for his book and lays out his primary arguments: America finds itself in a constitutional bind.  We cling to an undemocratic document that does us great harm.  It didn’t always used to be this way.  Our “Constitutional creed” developed over time, starting around the turn of the 20th century, in the context of American imperial expansion.  

Rana explains the importance of universal and equal rights to the Socialist Party of America, which exemplified pre-Cold War democratic agitation.  He compares the Socialist Party of America’s (SPA) political agitation and the Black Panther Party’s Revolution Peoples Constitutional Convention in 1970 to determine how the Cold War shaped constitutional critique - for better and worse.  A few subaltern voices, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Boggs, connected pre-Cold War critiques with those of the ‘60s and ‘70s.  Rana also identified many interesting points regarding democracy and the Constitution in the DSA’s 2021 political system.  At the end of Part One, Rana discusses the Bill of Rights and how socialists such as Crystal Eastman fought for civil liberties without supporting the Constitution. 

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This is the second part of our conversation with Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heideman about U.S. politics, conflict within the Republican Party, and the current state of American democracy. We invited Saniv and Paul back onto the podcast as a follow-up to their 2022 presentation at the Socialism Conference in Chicago. 

Sanjiv Gupta is a member of the River Valley DSA chapter in Western Massachusetts and a sociologist at UMass-Amherst. 

Paul Heideman is a writer and high school teacher in NYC. He is the editor of Class Struggle and the Color Line, and his work has appeared in Jacobin, Dissent, and In These Times.

Transcript:

Luke: This is CLASS, the official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America's National Political Education Committee. My name is Luke Pickrell. This is part two of our conversation with Sanjiv Gupta and Paul Heidman. Sanjiv is a member of the River Valley DSA chapter in Western Massachusetts and is a sociologist at UMass Amherst.

Paul is a writer and high school teacher in New York City. He's also the editor of Class Struggle and The Color Line, and his work has appeared in Jacobin, Descent, and In These Times. Our conversation continues just where we left off in Part 1. Enjoy.

The discussion around breaks, dirty breaks, and what's happening in the Republican Party kind of dovetails nicely into the next question I wanted to ask, which is also in your 2022 presentation. You said both parties are structurally weak, implying, of course, that, the Democratic Party is also structurally weak in some ways.

And we've talked about how this Palestine anti-APEC section within the Democratic Party. So, curious, Paul, if, if you could start, and then Sanjiv, of course, you can come in. Is the Democratic Party weak? weak? If so, how? And then could we see someone running on the Democratic Party ballot line on a Palestine angle or a true democracy, democracy angle?

Paul: there are a couple of different senses of party weakness that are related, but are, that are worth distinguishing. One is simply like electoral fortunes, you know, like a weak party is a party that fails electorally. In some senses, I would say, look, the Republican party, for most of my lifetime, has been weak. The Republican party has won the popular vote once since 1988. Right? 2004 was the only time that in the presidential election, the Republican Party won the presidential vote. That's kind of a stunning record, right? In some senses, we're living in a period of Democratic Party electoral dominance. Now, the Electoral College, you know, and the Supreme Court together have meant that that hasn't always translated into who holds the presidency.

But that's, that's, so, so just kind of how you do in the election. That's one index of party weakness. Another is the party as an institution and how able the leaders of that institution are to get what they want. And in that sense, I think both parties are weak, in comparison with earlier periods of American history and in comparison with like European parties in most senses.

 And, there's a couple of ways this is true. What one is just the primary system. The primary system means that the party leadership does not get to pick candidates. They can put their thumb on the scale, right? But they don't get to just pick the candidate, which they used to be able to do in American parties. And what that means is that like, look, that's how Trump. You know, took over the Republican Party, right? It was through the primaries. That is how, you know, socialists have won election to federal office in the United States is on the Democratic ballot, right? Like, the party leadership in both cases would have rather those things didn't happen. But they

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