In this episode, Adolph Reed, Jr. describes Jim Crow as a result of decades of post-emancipation contention between freed slaves, white farmers and laborers, and the ruling class of white planters and merchants. As an outgrowth of that contestation in various precincts of the South, Jim Crow’s rules and applications varied often significantly by locale. In his new book, The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives, Reed describes his own interaction with these shifting, very often treacherous, rules as a way to explore power alignments that shaped Jim Crow and continue to shape its afterlives.

Author Rick Wartzman describes Walmart’s decade-long effort at reforms in response to ubiquitous criticism. Low-wage labor was a chief focus of that criticism and of Walmart’s self-transformation. Partly as a result, the average Walmart worker now earns an hourly wage just above $17 an hour. While this well exceeds the minimum wage, it still means that the average full-time worker earns just under $32,000 a year. Milkman and Wartzman explore what this and other reforms suggest about the systemic failures of capitalism in the 21st century.

Over the past half-century, labor activists Marilyn Sneiderman and Stephen Lerner have been responsible for spurring major strategic advances in union organizing and movement building. Here, they discuss their recent New Labor Forum article, titled "Making Hope and History Rhyme: A New Worker Movement from the Shell of the Old". Describing the present moment as one of unparalleled peril and opportunity, they draw crucial lessons for the new crop of activists who have emerged in the current wave of strike action and unionization around the country.

A dramatic increase in national consumer debt began in the mid-1980s and currently stands at 16.5 trillion dollars, making it a key feature of capitalism in the 21st century. Average household debt today in the U.S. – mortgages, car loans, student, medical, and credit card debt – now exceeds $96,000 and is therefore greater than the median household income. Andrew Ross discusses debt as a crucial labor and social justice issue and describes the groundbreaking work of the Debt Collective.

Solidarity against the odds is what workers managed to achieve at the JFK8 Amazon Fulfillment Center on Staten Island and at the Elmwood Avenue Starbucks in Buffalo, New York. In this episode, School of Labor and Urban Studies Distinguished Lecturer Heather McGhee gets lead organizers Chris Smalls and Michelle Eisen to recount each of their riveting stories. In captivating detail, they tell a 21st century tale of corporate union resistance, as well as a chronicle of the worker determination and ingenuity that found a way to overcome that resistance.

The fact that current inflation rates are higher than they have been in decades weighs not only on households and businesses, but has also shifted the political landscape. As we head into the 2022 midterms and then the 2024 Presidential elections, understanding the deeper causes of and available remedies to inflation is of paramount importance. In this episode, Samir Sonti and JW Mason offer their insights on questions posed by inflation: If strong demand has contributed to rising prices, what role have constraints on the supply side played? Why have interest rate hikes become the textbook response inflation? What other remedies should be on the table?

Sean Sweeney, Director of SLU’s Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, speaks with journalist Laura Flanders about continued botched efforts by countries around the globe to meet the targets set forth in 2015 Paris Agreement. Pointing to worldwide policies that depend upon private investment, he describes why the profit motive has failed to deliver renewable energy at scale, affordably, or with the urgency demanded by the climate crisis. Much more promising, he suggests, is the Global Public Goods approach increasingly advanced by international unions and their allies.

This episode offers a discussion of Andrew Ross’ recent book, Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing. Ross shares his firsthand account of the burgeoning and largely overlooked housing emergency in our nation’s suburban and rural hinterlands. Reporting from Florida’s Osceola County, he describes families and people of all ages who cram themselves into dilapidated motels or literally pitch their tents in the woods. Adding to these dire circumstances, the people Ross comes to know find themselves also reckoning with psychological trauma, poverty, and nihilism. This compelling interview also examines the causes of the housing catastrophe and suggests what it will take to end it.

Journalist Laura Flanders speaks with Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta, the authors of The Future We Need, Organizing for a Better Democracy in the 21st Century. The book and this conversation explore the great democratizing power of collective bargaining, with potential applications even beyond the workplace in the yet mostly untried realms of housing, public safety, education, healthcare, and environmental justice, to name just a few. In this moment of national democratic peril and the upsurge in worker organizing, these bold new ideas hold both special urgency and possibility.

Commentators far and wide have been sounding the alarm for American democracy. The question of who can vote and who ends up voting is central to this democratic crisis. In a landscape of defensive battles to protect the right to vote and herculean efforts to turn out the vote, comes a new book: 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting. Written by Miles Rapoport and E.J. Dionne, the book makes an assertive argument that voting should be mandatory in the U.S., as it already is in 26 countries around the world. With SLU’s Heather McGhee, author Miles Rapoport discusses the case for requisite voting and its likely implications.