WEBVTT - May Day Special: Labor Notes and the Future of Labor 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:08.000 All Zone Media. Welcome to a special May Day episode 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.520 of vicd app and here I'm your host, Mia Wong. 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.599 It wasn't too long ago that unions were finished. The 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.760 percentage of American workers in unions plunged towards the single digits. 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:26.079 The unions that survived, battered and broken shells of the 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:28.840 mighty behemists that shook the world for one hundred years, 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:33.519 embraced so called business unionism, which set out not to 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:35.720 conquer the world in the name of labor like its 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:39.800 great predecessors, or even really to bargain for higher wages, 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.360 but to make companies profitable in order to keep their jobs. 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.480 They took pay cuts and job losses without a fight, 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:51.240 forcing their membership into line, and effortlessly crushing the endless 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.880 slates of reform caucuses that sought to put the fight 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:58.640 back into the working class. Even the cutting edge of 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.840 Marxist theory, health time of unions was over. Workers were 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:08.080 too adomized, too divided, too far from the immediate processes 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:12.080 of production, from the discipline of the factory, and from 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:15.280 the massification of the city. To assemble the working class 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.880 in its old fighting form, there would be riots, To 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:26.760 be sure, barricades, blockades, occupations, but not strikes. Whatever the 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:30.440 working class did next, the age of the union was 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:35.520 over for much of the twenty tens. That prediction was 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:40.400 a smart bet. The bold proclamation of Wisconsin trade unionists 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:43.320 that organized labor would turn back the tide of the 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.720 CHEA Party failed to ruin under the failure of their 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.760 attempt to recall Wisconsin's hated union busting governor Scott Walker. 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:56.880 The CHA Party's march continued unimpeded, radicalizing even further in 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.640 the wake of the twenty fourteen twenty fifteen uprisings Ferguson 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.960 in Baltimore to produce not the victory of the working 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:09.480 class but Donald Trump. Even success stories like the rejuvenation 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.919 of the mighty Chicago Teachers Union AFT Local one by 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.640 a bold reform caucus called the Caucus of Rank and 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:20.920 File Educators or Corps, who waged a pair of unexpectedly 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:26.000 wildly popular strikes, was tainted by the reality of limited 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.520 wins and labor conditions in Chicago schools that remained appalling. 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.280 Even as the left returned in the wake of Occupy 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:38.240 Ferguson and the election of Trump, union membership continued to plunge, 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:43.160 and capitalists and Marxist alike continued to herald the union's demise. 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:52.280 They were wrong. History, it seems, delights in irony. It 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.800 was the dead enders, fighting hopeless battles and reform caucuses, 0:02:55.840 --> 0:03:00.000 losing union election after union election. It was the Wobbles Fire, 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:04.280 losing campaign after losing campaign, desperately trying to organize the 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:09.160 unorganizable fast food and retail workers. It was rank and 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.520 file Marxist trade unionists waiting sixty long years, their comrades 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.200 dead and gone, for somebody, anybody, to hear their plans 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:22.359 for shutting down Capitol's logistics networks. It was Labor Notes, 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:27.000 sixteen staffers compiling endless analyzes of labor struggles for a 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.280 crowd that couldn't have filled a baseball stadium. Who was right? 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:36.480 Unions are back, While still small compared to the height 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.000 of union power in the nineteen fifties, twenty twenty three 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.080 saw a wave of massively popular strikes waged by unions 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.520 from the massive behemoths like the UAW in the Writers 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:51.760 Guild to tiny independent coffee unions whose members. Larger existing 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:54.200 unions are rather spin on than spend a single cent 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:59.040 attempting to organize. Only the director intervention of the President 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:01.960 to break a rail workers strike before it could start, 0:04:02.440 --> 0:04:05.520 and the last second portrayal of Teamster's leadership stops twenty 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.520 twenty three from being this largest strikewave of the modern era. 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:14.120 Basking in his triumphs and conspiring to win more was 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:19.440 labor Notes. Labor Notes is a curious beast. It is 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.320 simultaneously a journal that publishes news about labor struggles, a 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.919 network that brings together a group of disparate rank and 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:32.160 file union reform movements largely but not exclusively from the US, 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.480 maintaining a strong emphasis on solidarity and organizing with workers 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:39.800 in Mexico, and a labor conference that runs every two years. 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.200 It is a relic of another time, whose time it seems, 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:50.080 has come again. Labor Notes was founded in nineteen seventy 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.400 nine as a way to coordinate and expand the interunion 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.800 connections formed to the United Mine Workers of America's nineteen 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:01.360 seventy nine bituminous coal strike. It's one of the last 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:06.440 direct connections to the era where labor was strong unwittingly 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.359 tasked with keeping the flame of labor alive during the 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:14.640 neoliberal downpour, Two weeks ago, they held their largest conference 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:19.320 ever FO Five hundred people crammed into the Wyatt Regency 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:24.839 next to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. At least a thousand 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:28.720 people who tried to register were turned down. I personally 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.200 watched interested workers turned away at the door because the 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.359 venue's conference halls had already reached the mass capacity for 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:42.320 fire safety. Labor we can safely say is back. It 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.600 is returning to the South the great rock unions have 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.840 shattered upon for one hundred years. It's moving in new 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:54.960 directions towards service workers previously thought impossible to organize. Most 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.600 of all, it's moving towards something we'd almost forgotten was possible. 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:04.960 It's moving towards victory. The first thing you noticed about 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:10.080 Labor Notes is it's staggering diversity. Young punks and battle 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.240 jackets sat on benches next to old anti war protesters 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:17.960 from the sixties. Independent trade unionists and feminist activists in 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:23.440 Mexico rubbed shoulders with battle hearted American union nurses. White 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:26.320 middle aged longshore men and women plotted with young, queer 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:30.080 Amazon warehouse workers to maximize the power of logistics strikes. 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.560 You saw old industrial organizers from the sixties, passing down 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.120 lessons and tactics and stories of strikes that otherwise would 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:42.520 have vanished into the mists of history. Media workers fighting 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.760 for their first contract, the lowliest rank and file workers 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:51.479 chatting in breakout groups with union presidents. For all the 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:53.760 talk I've done in this show about how many union 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.159 organizers are trans, even I didn't expect to see this 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:02.000 many trans people, It's a cross section of the American 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:06.880 working class come to fight, and that, above all, is 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.440 what this Labor Notes conference was about. Fighting. The most 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.040 direct conflict came on the first day of the conference, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:17.680 when Palestinian union activists called for a pro Palestine demonstration 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:22.120 outside the hotel. The cops arrested three people in an 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:27.080 attempt to clear the street. This, rather predictably, was a 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.600 terrible idea. Instead of backing down, the crowd of several 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.240 hundred union activists almost immediately surrounded the lone car and 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:39.520 demanded they let their prisoner go. What happened next, to 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.560 use a technical term, fucking ripped. A bunch of kids 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.880 had a rave to the changing police sirens. A fifty 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:49.440 year old white dude from the electrical worker stood next 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.040 to me, a Chinese Transzoman from a podcast union, a 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:57.239 bunch of longshore men, teamsters, staffers from unions. You wouldn't 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.920 believe even if I told you Palestinian trade union activists, 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.120 nurses punkt from independent unions. No one else in the 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:08.720 crowd could have named. An entire mass of unionists stood 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.640 their ground and refused to let the cops take one 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:15.920 of ours. A tradeswoman with drums marched around the police 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.000 car and we're all saying, which side are you on? 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.600 After two hours, the police gave up to a crowd 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.600 screaming Union power at the top of our lungs. It 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.720 was an incredible display of solidarity that set the tone 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.680 for the rest of the event. We were going to 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.320 fight the bosses together and fuck them if they came 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:40.559 for us. This is not to say there weren't divisions. 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:44.640 A group of protesters broke away from the cop car 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:48.320 to demand that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the darling of 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.719 the Chicago Teachers' Union, come tell the cops to let 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:56.360 our people go. Now. Whether or not this would have 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.880 worked is up to some debates. These cops were not 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.160 Chicago police departments. They were the cops of Rosemont which 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.520 is technically a separate entity from the city of Chicago. However, 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.760 Labor Notes staffers and securities tried to stop the protesters 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.560 from reaching Brandon Johnson and ended up throwing punches at 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:20.319 the protesters. As to quote one observer, union brother fought 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:25.000 union brother. This fight reveals one of the important tensions 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:29.240 in the movement. Should unions continue to back imperfect center 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:34.040 left politicians in exchange for some political benefits, or should 0:09:34.040 --> 0:09:36.679 they take a hard line against politicians who betray their 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:41.880 fundamental political principles. Brandon Johnson is a microcosm of the debate. 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:46.240 On the one hand, he was elected with enormous resource 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:50.160 expenditure from the Chicago teachers' unions. On the other hand, 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.400 he's been locking immigrants into berculosis ridden camps as the 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:58.360 city lurches from crisis to crisis. Even many of Chicago's 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:00.440 other unionists were never happy with with him in the 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.680 first place, as he failed to use his previous position 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:06.720 to come to the aid of striking nurses. When the 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:11.080 two points of view collide, there's a fight on a 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:15.080 national level. The conflict is the question of Joe Biden 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:20.760 in Palestine. At Labor Notes itself, there's strong support for Palestine. 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.960 Palestinian solidarity panels were packed to the rafters with workers 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.720 from every sector imaginable and activists from across the world. 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:32.960 I saw UAW workers deeply unhappy with their union leadership's 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.720 decision to endorse Biden, a decision made by maybe five 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:39.040 members of an executive committee with how to vote from 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:44.640 the union. Theren lies the issue, as much as Labor notes, 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:48.960 represents the bleeding edge of the labor movements. UAW president 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.839 Sean Fein, fresh off the uaw's astounding seventy three percent 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:57.240 victory at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, gave the conference's 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:02.040 closing address. The remain means massive bastions of conservatism and 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:05.400 the labor movement, who have actively fought against even statements 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:12.120 on Palestine, much less concrete actions. Unions are still weak 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.560 and the positions of activists within them are still tenuous. 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:20.680 Even more favorable shops have yet to turn broader popular 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:25.640 support among rank and file workers for Palestine into substantive 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.400 strike actions, and it's deeply unclear to me if any 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:43.800 such action is possible at all. My pessimism on labour's 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.559 willingness and ability to stop the genocide in Palestine, a 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.600 pessimism reinforced by watching the rapid spread of student campus 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:57.480 occupations while labor remains silent or perhaps more precisely dormant, 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.640 is broadly intention with my optimism and effectively everything else 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.200 that I saw there. There was incredible organizing going on 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:10.280 at labor notes. People are coordinating rank and file links 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:14.040 between unions whose staffers and leaderships hate each other for 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:17.200 grudges whose origins have passed into the mists of time. 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:22.360 There was quite serious talk about plans to line up 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:26.720 contracts to expire in twenty twenty eight to effectively create 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:31.559 a miniature general strike, or perhaps more precisely, to create 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:34.320 a version of what's called the Spring offensive in Japan. 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.840 Spring and offensive are the same word in Japanese, and 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:41.680 so labor unions decided to have their contracts expire in 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:45.760 the spring, thus maximizing the power of their strikes. This 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.480 effort to have contracts aligned in twenty twenty eight is 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:53.480 broadly speaking, a larger version of the Spring Offensive. We 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.559 will cover this more in a later episode. For now, 0:12:56.679 --> 0:13:00.480 I think it's enough to say that this cushions and 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:05.319 organization were quite serious, and there was significant enthusiasm, as 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:09.160 well as discussions of the potential difficulties of getting people's 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.959 contracts to actually align. People are organizing to bring their 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:17.239 unions together on a sectoral base to share resources, coordinate, 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:22.080 set standards for contracts, and generally help each other more 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.360 effectively oppose the bosses and unions that rule them all. 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:30.960 Labor Notes has also from the beginning been an incubator 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:34.640 for reform movements inside of unions, attempting to rest control 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:40.319 from corporate administrative caucuses. These reform movements almost always lose. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.400 The last fifty years is littered with defeats in union 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:48.760 election after union election with sub ten percent turnout, and 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:53.000 yet little by little, these groups are starting to win. 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.480 We heard from a number of smaller rank and file 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.240 efforts that had successfully taken control of their unionians. The 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.960 first major victory was a rank and file slate taking 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:12.079 over the management of notoriously corrupt Clickish Teamsters. Now I 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:17.840 have my issues with the new Teamsters leadership too. There 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.800 are something like two entire hours of this show dedicated 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.520 to how angry rank and file teamsters were over the 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.560 fact that UPS workers didn't go on strike last year 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:32.360 due to their leadership cutting a deal with management. But 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.120 on a broader level, the victory of the Teamsters reformed 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.120 slates and the defeat of one of the oldest union 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.480 I don't know if administrative caucus. 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:48.160 Is really a that's a bit of a euphemism for 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:53.840 the ups sort of corrupt leadership, dictatorship, but their victory 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:57.320 on a broader level was a sea change in American unionism. 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.040 Their victory was followed by the victory of Sean Fain 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:06.520 in the UAW, a man who, as much as he's 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:11.360 angered members by endorsing Joe Biden walked into Labor Notes 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:13.920 and gave a speech about the class war and the 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:19.320 authoritarianism of corporate greed. Certainly there was much to annoy 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:22.920 trade activists concerned with Palestine in the sense that his 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.960 central metaphor labor was the arsenal of democracy. Was in 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:29.680 bad taste as he described the unions that he leads 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:36.560 as the successors of Liberator B fifty two bombers, which not, 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.680 you know, not precisely the metaphor ed shoes, as your 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:45.240 own members are protesting the bombs following over Gaza. But 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.640 on the other hand, if a giant speech about the 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:52.400 class war and the need to organize across borders is 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:57.440 now the conservative wing of progressor trade unionism. The future 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.360 is bright. The kind of militant union actions we've seen 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.680 over the past year have coalesced into a sort of 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:09.640 strategy of fight as you build. It is based on 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:15.040 a very basic strategy that you would think unions would 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:19.440 have already been doing. However, Comma, see everything I've ever 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:25.280 said about administration, administrative caucuses, and business unionism and corporate unionism. 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.560 The strategy is, if you win things for people, more 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:34.680 of them will join unions. This strategy is already bearing 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:39.520 fruit in Chattanooga and has international implications as well. We 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:43.360 heard from organizers that workers in Mexico and China were 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:49.320 keenly watching the UAW strikes, and for good reason. These 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.400 strikes are ultimately their fight too, and slowly but surely 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:59.080 workers across the world are starting to realize it. The 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:03.080 degree of Internet nationalism at this labrynes was remarkable. I 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.320 came into an early China panel fully expecting the same 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:09.040 kinds of praise for the CCP that I've seen in 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:13.320 other leftist events held in the city of Chicago, most recently, 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:18.640 the sort of fiasco China panel held at Socialism Conference 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:23.800 that degraded into an argument about whether or not Brazil, Russia, India, 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:28.679 China and South Africa socialist. Here there was none of that. 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:33.520 For sure, there were some slightly weird German maoist defending 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.160 the Cultural Revolution, but on the other hand, there wasn't 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.960 any defense of Chinese capitalism or their failed bankrupt model 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:47.400 of corporate unionism. On top of cross border organizing sectorially, 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.000 the conference has a deep and ingrained pro immigrant position. 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.760 Sean Fayn is probably the most high profile political figure 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:57.840 I've seen actually discussing the horrific treatment of migrants at 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.360 the border right now and taking time to remind everyone 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:06.280 that immigrants are just workers trying to find a better life. This, however, 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.920 makes his support for Joe Biden, the butcher of Yakumba, 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:16.800 even more questionable. Still, you can see the wheels of 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:21.360 history turning. You can see it there in the muffled 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:25.560 buzz of conversations drifting through hallways, in the roar of 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.879 the cheering crowd, in the bright laughs of co conspirators 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:34.040 who moments before were strangers, and the drowsy chatter of 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.119 abortion workers who let a transwoman sleep on their floor 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.119 to hide from the police in the chance of one 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:42.800 hundred workers refusing to let the cops take one of 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:47.240 their own. You can see the outline of the great Leviathan, 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:50.880 the ruling class thought buried stone dead in the nineteen eighties. 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:55.160 You can see the working class waking from its day's slumber, 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.440 shaking the sleep from its eyes and the dirt from 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:03.439 its back for the first time in decades. Hear the 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.960 clatter and the roar as it tests its chains. The 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:12.640 great behemoth is beginning, just beginning, to assemble the ironwill 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:16.240 and terrible power necessary to turn its dreams into reality, 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.880 to break its chains and shatter its cage, and reclaim 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.440 the world it built with its blood and sweat and tears. 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:30.439 That day is not today, it's not tomorrow, but for 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.240 the first time in my life, it could be the 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.680 day after that this has been It could happen here. 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:46.000 Happy Mayday, everyone, It could happen here. As a production 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:49.080 of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:51.840 visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:54.679 out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.320 listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.440 happen here. Updated monthly at cool zone Media Com Slash Sources, 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:02.280 Thanks for listening.