On this week’s Labor History Today, host Chris Garlock explores how workers’ struggles leave lasting marks—not just on history, but on the physical landscape itself.

In Hamilton, Ontario, the 1946 Stelco strike helped secure collective bargaining rights for Canadian steelworkers—but also triggered a backlash that literally reshaped Woodlands Park, once known as the “People’s Park,” to prevent workers from gathering there again.

In our second segment, Tales from the Reuther Library celebrates its 100th episode by exploring how bold philanthropy helped fund labor organizing and civil liberties movements during some of America’s darkest times.

Together, these stories remind us that labor history lives all around us—in parks, factories, memorials, and the landscapes workers fought to shape.

Explore the Labor Landmarks Map and suggest a site near you at laborheritage.org!

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week’s Labor History Today: Labor History in 2:00 on the Sons of Vulcan’s 1865 strike, a Labor Jawn conversation with songwriter Mindy Murray about her song “Striking at Kings,” and a return to 1937 Anderson, Indiana, and the violence following the Flint sit-down strike. Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This week on Labor History Today: The 66th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins — a turning point that helped ignite the modern Civil Rights Movement and reshaped American politics. We feature an in-depth conversation from The Green and Red Podcast, tracing the origins of the sit-in movement, from Greensboro and Nashville to the rise of SNCC, and exploring how militant nonviolence, media exposure, and youth-led organizing forced a national reckoning — with powerful parallels to today’s struggles against state violence.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This episode of Labor History Today features historian Marcella Bencivenni on Arturo Giovannitti—Italian immigrant, poet, socialist, and labor organizer—whose role in the 1912 Lawrence textile strike made him a target of state repression and a powerful voice of labor resistance. Arrested for his words, Giovannitti turned imprisonment into poetry that helped define an era of immigrant-led radical organizing. The episode explores free speech struggles, anti-immigrant repression, and labor solidarity—lessons from more than a century ago that still resonate in 2026 America. We close with the Labor Song of the Month, featuring “Joe Hill’s Ashes,” performed by Otis Gibbs. Today’s show comes to us from the always fabulous Heartland Labor Forum on KKFI in Kansas City.

This week on Labor History Today, we explore how the 1892 Homestead Strike continues to live on—not just in books and archives, but in film, music, and living memory.

We begin with labor scholar and cultural critic Kathleen Newman, who takes us inside Ting Tong Chang’s The Hidden Shift, a two-screen film installation at Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory. Inspired by the Homestead Strike, the piece layers a fictionalized labor drama with behind-the-scenes footage of museum workers making the work itself—blurring the lines between labor and culture, past and present.

Kathleen reflects on Homestead as both a proud moment in worker history and a shameful chapter in corporate history, and connects the strike’s legacy to today’s service-sector workers—from museum staff to baristas—whose labor too often goes unseen.

We close with music that has carried the story for more than a century. “Homestead Strike Song” turns the events of 1892 into a communal act of remembrance. In this 1980 recording, Pete Seeger sings the song, invites a singalong, and shares the story of how the song survived—passed down in halls and bars long after the strike itself was crushed.

Together, these segments remind us that labor history isn’t just remembered—it’s made, performed, and sung.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This week on Labor History Today, Simon Sapper talks with historian Martin Wright, co-author of Made by Labour: A Material and Visual History of British Labor, 1780–1924. The book traces the rise of the world’s first modern labor movement through banners, boxes, coins, tools, and images created by working people during the Industrial Revolution and beyond—right up to the moment labor stood on the brink of political power in the 1920s.

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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This week on Labor History Today, we move from repression to resistance—and from history to possibility.

We begin with Labor History in Two and the 1917 trial of labor leader Tom Mooney, a stark reminder of how the justice system has been used to silence working-class dissent.

We close with another Labor History in Two—the 2006 Sago Mine disaster—underscoring the deadly consequences of corporate negligence and regulatory failure.

History doesn’t just explain the world we’re in. It helps us imagine the one we’re trying to build.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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On this week’s Labor History Today: From Camp Solidarity in Matewan, West Virginia—the heart of the legendary Mine Wars—UMWA President Cecil Roberts reflects on the long struggle of coal miners to claim America’s promise that “this land belongs to all of us.” On the eve of his retirement, Roberts’ words connect today’s fights for justice with a century of labor history rooted in the hollers of Appalachia. (Originally broadcast 9/21/25; updated with today’s Labor History in 2:00)

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

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In this episode of Labor History Today, labor organizer and researcher Eric Dirnbach talks with Dave Kamper, author of Who’s Got the Power: Hope for Troubled Times, about the post-pandemic union upsurge. From graduate student organizing and teachers’ strikes to the UAW’s stand-up strike and bargaining for the common good, Kamper reflects on what history can teach us about moments of possibility, and why solidarity is re-emerging as a force for change.

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcome, and to find out how you can be a part of Labor History Today, email us at [email protected]

Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

#LaborRadioPod #History #WorkingClass #ClassStruggle @GeorgetownKILWP #LaborHistory @UMDMLA @ILLaborHistory @AFLCIO @StrikeHistory #LaborHistory @wrkclasshistory