Reinventing Solidarity

Samir Sonti probes Leo Panitch about the character of the advanced capitalist economies through which the Covid-19 pandemic spread so rapidly. What has the pandemic revealed about the toll of neoliberalism on the poor and working-class, on migrants and people of color? And what about the organizations and parties that claim to protect them: namely organized labor, social democratic parties and our own Democratic Party?What signs are there that broad-based social struggle may be in the process of a revival in response to the grim realities that the pandemic has laid bare?

In this inaugural episode, David Unger and Kafui Attoh look squarely at the tragedy of police violence against people color, and at the unions that represent and negotiate contracts on behalf of the police. What role has organized labor played in supporting the Black Lives Matter movement? What role should it play? And what’s the rightful relationship of the labor movement to the police and their unions?