Historian-activists Kassandra Luciuk and Saku Pinta join us to discuss the "hall socialism" that flourished in communities of Finnish and Ukrainian migrant workers in the early 20th century. Though much of this incredibly vital social, political and cultural activity was successfully suppressed by anti-communist purges in the post-war period, the legacy and lessons of these networks lives on.

About our guests:

-- Kassandra Luciuk is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. She is broadly interested in the history of Ukrainians in Canada. Her dissertation uses the community as a case study to investigate how anti-communism was entrenched in Canadian political consciousness throughout the twentieth century. Kassandra has also written several books and articles on the internment operations of the First World War. Most notably, she is the author of a graphic novel, Enemy Alien: A True Story of Life Behind Barbed Wire, which was published with Between the Lines. Kassandra’s most recent article, “More Dangerous Than Many a Pamphlet or Propaganda Book: The Ukrainian Canadian Left, Theatre, and Propaganda in the 1920s,” was awarded the Jean-Marie Fecteau Prize from the Canadian Historical Association.

-- Dr. Saku Pinta holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and occassionally works as a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Labour Studies at the University of Manitoba. As an independent scholar, his research is focused on two areas: the intersections between anarchisms and Marxisms and the history of the Finnish North American left and the membership of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union in the twentieth century.

Pinta is a co-editor and contributor to Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red (PM Press, 2017) and his essays appear in the anthologies Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education (PM Press, 2012) and Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (Pluto Press, 2017). He is a proud memeber of the Winnipeg General Membership Branch of the IWW, Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3909, Unifor Local 567, and the Association of Employees Supporting Education Services.

* * *  

Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:  

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​​

• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​​

Nav Kaur (@north_kaur) joins HPC to talk about child care, how capitalism and colonialism are taught from an early age, and the conditions under which the people who care for children for a living might be less alienated. We talk worker cooperatives, landlords, boards and languages.

* * *  

Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:  

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​​

• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​​

Sam Gindin shares his critique of cooperatives and his ideas about the broader challenges of building socialism. 

Sam Gindin served as research director of the Canadian region of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and later as chief economist and Assistant to the President of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union. At both unions, he participated in major collective bargaining,  policy development, and strategic discussions on direction of the union.   

He drew on that experience to author "The Canadian Auto Workers: The Birth and Transformation of a Union." He co-authored "The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire" and "The Socialist Challenge Today" (with Leo Panitch) and "In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives" (with Greg Albo and Leo Panitch).  His articles for Jacobin mentioned in this episode include:  

Chasing Utopia: Worker ownership and cooperatives will not succeed by competing on capitalism's terms. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/workers-control-coops-wright-wolff-alperovitz 

What a Socialist Society Could Actually Look Like

* * *  

Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:  

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism

Half Past Capitalism Episode 002 – NYC's Solidarity Economy Movement 

Dru talks to Lauren Hudson, an organizer with SolidarityNYC, feminist geographer, PhD grad and lecturer at John Jay College (full bio below). She discusses her direct experience of capitalism, the differences in pandemic response among solidarity economy institutions she's involved in, effects of cooperation on family and kinship structures, and theories of the state – among other topics. (The continuous interventions from the one-year-old in the background are due to thin walls in the host's apartment.)

Follow/support Half Past Capitalism:

• Support HPC on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism​

• The audio podcast is here: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism​

• Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay​

More info:

• Solidarity NYC on the web: http://solidaritynyc.org/

• Solidarity NYC on Twitter: https://twitter.com/solidaritynyc

• CEANYC on the web: https://gocoopnyc.com/

• Lauren on Twitter: https://twitter.com/blactivist

Lauren Hudson is a recent Ph.D in earth and environmental sciences at the City University of New York-Graduate Center. Her dissertation, "Defining 'Movement Space' in New York City's Solidarity Economy," is an ethnographic project about women who engage in collective forms of labor throughout the city. Using both interviews and sketch maps from participants, her research asks how in doing such work - which includes cooperative finance, community gardens, and food cooperatives - women are redrawing the boundaries of the city and creating a movement geography based on collective values.

Lauren is also a peer educator with the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York, an organization that she and other collective members of SolidarityNYC, a solidarity economy advocacy organization, co-founded. She is a lecturer with ThinkOlio, were she teaches subjects related to feminist urban geography, and an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College. She lives in Brooklyn.

Half Past Capitalism Episode 001 – How can we transform the forestry industry? Spoiler alert: organizing worker power is part of the mix. Dru talks to Marcus Peters, a friend, collaborator, cooperative developer and labour organizer about mosquitoes, clearcuts, transparency and workplace culture in the corner of Canada's forestry industry devoted to treeplanting.  

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOkK5IDHxpJ3YBiOCBJttGg

Visit us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism  

Dru is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/druojajay