The Dig

Featuring Chris Brooks on labor’s crisis and the strategic, militant class struggle that can turn it all around. Brooks, former chief of staff to UAW President Shawn Fain, urges organizers to be flexible in their methodology, explains the federal monitor’s anti-left lawfare against the UAW over Gaza—and why labor must build for 2028.

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Read more:

“Is Labor at the Point of No Return?” by Chris Brooks in New Labor Forum newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2026/01/15/is-labor-at-the-point-of-no-return

“Is Labor at the Point of No Return?” by Chris Brooks in New Labor Forum newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2026/01/15/is-labor-at-the-point-of-no-return

“Shawn Fain’s UAW Is Facing Strong Headwinds” by Nelson Lichtenstein in New Labor Forum newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2026/05/15/shawn-fains-uaw-is-facing-strong-headwinds

“The War on the UAW” by Ella Fanger in The Nation  thenation.com/article/economy/uaw-elections-monitor-gaza

Find Bad Energy and Songs My Mother Taught Me at Haymarketbooks.org

Featuring Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian on their book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. What the world’s bizarre richest man reveals about our financially fabulist, hard tech, far-right political-economic era.

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Find Against Tech Oligarchy at Haymarketbooks.org 

Learn more about Hate Speech at UCPress.edu

Featuring Ben Shanahan, the architect of socialist David Morales’ victorious campaign to be the Democratic nominee for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. The Providence left ran a slate of left-wing candidates that not only elected Morales but also swept every single contested city council seat on a platform of capping the rent and building social housing.

Read Dennis Hogan’s essays on the Providence win in n+1 and Dissent:

nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-hi-neighbor-mayor/

dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/david-morales-providence-municipal-socialism/

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Listen to Death in Westminster on any podcast platform.  

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Featuring Daniel Denvir and Ben Mabie answering questions posed by you, our listeners.

Submit a question for our next mailbag: speakpipe.com/ListenerMailbag

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Read the piece Ben mentioned “From the Camp to the Picket: Reflections from the UC Strike for Palestine” longhaulmag.com/uc-strike-for-palestine

Learn more about The Shadow Court and Disability Revolution at UCPress.edu

Featuring David Wallace-Wells, Madison Condon, and Moira Birss on how insurance companies profit off climate catastrophe—and, in doing so, ensure that people and the planet suffer the consequences. Guest hosted by Astra Taylor.

Read “National Disaster Insurance for All: Single-Payer Disaster Insurance and Community Resilience Investments for Safer and More Affordable Housing” climateandcommunity.org/research/national-disaster-insurance-for-all-single-payer-disaster-insurance-and-community-resilience-investments-for-safer-and-more-affordable-housing/

Sign up! Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World reading group equator.org/events/late-victorian-holocausts

Buy When We Are Kin and The Veiled Prophet at Haymarketbooks.org

Featuring Molly Crabapple on her book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. The second in a two-part interview.

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Buy Decolonizing Money at Plutobooks.com 

Buy Femmephilia at Haymarketbooks.org

Featuring Molly Crabapple on her book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. The first episode of a two-part interview.

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Buy Unions of Our Own and Femmephilia at Haymarketbooks.org 

The eighth and final episode in a series on the history of Indonesia: a hinge in the world system where colonialism and revolution have decisively shaped the trajectory of global history. This last installment picks up with the 2014 election of Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, to the presidency. That promise was soon betrayed, laying the groundwork for the rise of Prabowo Subianto, a scion of Suharto who represents nearly everything repugnant about the New Order regime. And yet Prabowo’s rule remains beset by contradiction and controversy—and the Indonesia’s political future remains uncertain. Featuring Rianne Subijanto, Made Supriatma, Iqra Anugrah, and Farabi Fakih.

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Check out IndoPROGRESS promotion of Nusantara in Bahasa Indonesia instagram.com/reel/DafhG9-qdPW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Watch Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Time youtube.com/watch?v=A-pPemC8m_M

Buy The Extended Universe at Haymarketbooks.org

Find Money In The Mountains at Plutobooks.com

The seventh episode in a series on the history of Indonesia: a hinge in the world system where colonialism and revolution have decisively shaped the trajectory of global history. This penultimate installment analyses the 1998 fall of Suharto and his New Order dictatorship. Basic political freedoms were established but the transition to democracy never included a transition away from oligarchy. And it happened in the absence of a mass organized left—a left that had been destroyed through the mass anti-communist killings of 1965 and 66. We also trace the arc of three conflicts on Indonesia’s colonial periphery that have decisively shaped its recent history: West Papua, East Timor, and Aceh. Featuring Rianne Subijanto, Made Supriatma, and Iqra Anugrah.

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Buy Song For Hard-Hit People at Haymarketbooks.org

Find Money In The Mountains at Plutobooks.com

The sixth episode in a series on the history of Indonesia: a hinge in the world system where colonialism and revolution have decisively shaped the trajectory of global history. This installment details Suharto’s right-wing military coup and the horrific political crime that accompanied it: the US-backed mass murder of Indonesian communists. The military’s mass slaughter inaugurated Suharto’s oligarchic, authoritarian, and corrupt New Order regime—a regime that would endure for three decades and continues to shape Indonesia to this day. Featuring Rianne Subijanto, Made Supriatma, and Farabi Fakih.

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Get 50% off From the Clinics to the Streets, or any first book purchase from plutobooks.com with code ‘DIG50’