Rejuvenating the Workers’ Movement – The Road Forward
featuring 
Prof. Stanley Aronowitz,  In the 1950s, Aronowitz was a factory metalworker. In the 50s and 60s, he directed organizing with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.   He is currently a professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center and has written dozens of books on the U.S. working class. His recent book is The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement

Prof. Aronowitz reminds us that the use of strikes and other militant strategies was what built the labor movement, and how they are essential to revitalizing the faltering, organized labor organizations.  The strategies and tactics to rekindle 
the growth of the workers’ movements are based in workers banding together across workplaces, across occupations and building bridges from the workplace to linking with community-based  struggles for housing, education, health-care and for human rights and against all forms of discrimination.   
****************** 
Workers Demand N.Y.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Enforce Law
featuring 
National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS)

Yes, the minimum wage went up in N.Y.S. to $8.75/h, but that’s not enough to live on says NMASS and furthermore, too many of N.Y.S’s workers will see no change in Governor Cuomo’s DOL failure to enforce the labor laws. NMASS took their complaints to the DOL and is  threatening to sue  Cuomo and the DOL to enforce minimum wage laws and to process wage theft claims timely.

play stream
download

Read More...

The Death and Life of American Labor:
Toward a New Workers’ Movement
with
Stanley Aronowitz  In the 1950s, Aronowitz was a factory metalworker. In the ’50s and ’60s, he directed organizing with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers. In 1963,he coordinated labor participation for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Ten years later, the publication of his book False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness was a land-mark in the study of the U.S. working-class and workers’ movements.

Union membership in the United States has fallen below 11 percent, the lowest rate since before the New Deal. Labor activist and scholar of the American labor movement Stanley Aronowitz argues that the movement as we have known it for the last 100 years is effectively dead. And he explains how this death has been a long time coming—the organizing and political principles adopted by U.S. unions at mid-century have taken a terrible toll.

In his new book The Death and Life of American Labor, Aronowitz draws on this long personal history, reflecting on his continuing involvement in labor organizing,  with groups such as the Professional Staff Congress of the City University. He brings a historian’s understanding of American workers’ struggles in taking the long view of the labor movement. Then, n a survey of current initiatives, strikes, organizations, and allies, Aronowitz analyzes the possibilities of labor’s rebirth, and sets out a program for a new, broad, radical workers’ movement.

play stream
download

Read More...

Working for an Economy, By the People, for the People withProfessor Stanley Aronowitz
 
Stanley Aronowitz is the director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work at the CUNY Graduate Center, a distinguished professor of sociology and urban education, author of 23 books , and ran for governor of New York in 2002.  He is one of the great public intellectuals of our times.  Author of 23 books, he’s known around the world for writing classics like False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness, 40 years ago, and The Crisis in Historical Materialism nearly 30 years ago. His more recent books such as The Jobless Future, How Class Works, Implicating Empire, The Politics of Identity: Class, Culture and Social Movements, and upcoming The Death and Rebirth of American Labor: Toward a New Labor Movement define the philosophic road to travel and offer a foundation for our thinking about the solution to our economic quagmire, our growing wealth inequality and deepening poverty.

play stream  

download

Read More...

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesWhatIsToBeDoneWithStanleyAronowitzAndMannyNess  
play stream
http://archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesWhatIsToBeDoneWithStanleyAronowitzAndMannyNess/aronowitznessntl.mp3 download


What Is To Be Done?

A Conversation about Organizing and Strategies to Win
With
Stanley Aronowitz, studies labor, and social movements, and is director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He’s authored or edited twenty-five books including: "Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future", "How Class Works", "The Jobless Future", and;"False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness".
and
Professor Manny Ness’ research focuses on working class
protest and revolutionary movements. His numerous books
include "Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market", "The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest". He is editor of the "Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration", and his newest book is "Guest Workers And Resistance To U.S. Corporate Despotism".

Read More...

What Is To Be Done?

In this period of intensified class warfare against the working class and the
poor, what will it take to mobilize the people for the mass movement it will
surely take to win? Many have been heartened by the fightback in Wisconsin
and many of the frontline states. But is the predominately electoral strategy
that is currently being followed sufficient to win? What is the role direct action,
strikes, including general strikes, and cross union and community solidarity?
We talk with:

General Baker has been called the most important 21st century American
revolutionary. He was a leader of the Detroit wildcat strikes in the 1960s, a
founder of the legendary League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), & the first American to refuse
induction to fight in Vietnam. The book, "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying" (about the
worker revolts of that era) calls Baker the "soul of the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement (DRUM)." An autoworker for 30 years, he remains a
champion of the unemployed and unorganized workers.

Stanley Aronowitz is a Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York, where he studies labor, social movements,
science and technology, education, social theory and cultural studies. He is
author or editor of 25 books including: Left Turn: Forging a New Political
Future; How Class Works; The Jobless Future (with William DiFazio); and
False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness.

Staughton Lynd has dedicated his life to activism & social change as a
historian, lawyer, and labor activist. He helped direct the Mississippi
Freedom Schools. In April 1965 he spoke at the first march on Washington
against the Vietnam War and became an early leader of the anti-war
movement. Subsequent to becoming an attorney he spent years focusing
on labor and prison issues. He wrote the definitive history of the 1993 Ohio
prison uprising at Lucasville as well as the ever popular “Labor Law for the
Rank and Filer” and “Rank and File” oral histories of the 1930’s .

stream or download

Read More...

Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition 27 minutes
**************************************
Excerpts from
The People’s Agenda:
Working For An Economy For The People!

A forum presented recently by WBAI, Building Bridges
and the New York Society for Ethical Culture which examined
the present crisis of capitalism and peoples’ demands that the
road to economic recovery lies in directly increasing their living
standard and abandoning trickle down economics.
with
Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Representative, Cleveland, Ohio
and
Stanley Aronowitz Prof. of Sociology, & Urban Education,
at the City University of NY Graduate Center, and author
of Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future

play or download

click below for more information or to post to this blog



with
Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Representative, Cleveland, Ohio

As mayor of Cleveland, Ohio Kucinich had the courage to
stand up to the banks. He has been Representative of the 10th
Congressional District of Ohio since 1997 He continues to stand
up for principle, advocating for the impeachment of former Pres.
George W. Bush for war crimes, his co-sponsorship with Rep.
John Conyers of HR 676, a single-payer health care system
and his criticism of the financial industry in the current economic
crisis.
and
Stanley Aronowitz Prof. of Sociology, & Urban Education,
at the City University of NY Graduate Center, and author
of Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future

Prof. Aronowitz is author of over 25 books and a plethora of
articles on education, sociology, the nature of class, trade unions,
and economics. His analysis Is always right on target and in the
current crisis he has advocated for a massive federal jobs
program, WPA-style as the centerpiece of economic recovery.
But that no meaningful progress can be made without a mass
movement .

Read More...

WBAI Radio's Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
Monday, January 5, 2009, 7 - 8 p.m. EST, over 99.5 FM ****************************************
A Tri-State Protest: Stop Israel's Assault On Gaza

Baristas Beat Starbucks with Isis Saenz,victorious barista,member, Starbucks Workers Union, IWW andDaniel Gross, barista, Starbucks Workers Union, IWW & co-author with Staughton Lynd of the new edition of "Labor Law for the Rank & Filer"

Battling the Economic MonsterwithStanley Aronowitz, Prof. of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political activist, cultural critic and champion of organized labor

Play Or Download

click below for more information or to post to this blog



A Tri-State Protest: Stop Israel's Assault On Gaza

Gaza is under attack by one of the most deadly military machines on the
planet – the Israeli military, and, silence in the face of such suffering is
unsupportable for anyone devoted to peace and social justice. The U.S.
government supplied Israel with the military means to carry out this attack
and has generously underwritten the Israeli government and military with
tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars. Building Bridges brings you the voices
of those piercing the silence and raising their support for a Free, Free
Palestine at a rally in Times Square which was several blocks long.
We must form a chorus demanding an end to the siege of Gaza and a
fundamental reorientation of our foreign policy. The Time Is Now!.
Free, Free Palestine!
*********
Baristas Beat Starbucks
with
Isis Saenz,victorious barista,member, Starbucks Workers Union, IWW
and
Daniel Gross, barista, Starbucks Workers Union, IWW & co-author with
Staughton Lynd of the new edition of "Labor Law for the Rank & Filer"

Starbucks calls its employees partners, but when they tried to unionize it was
so long partner. But, the baristas took legal action against the company that
masquerades as socially conscious and now a judge has ordered that the
baristas be reinstated and receive back wages. The judge also called on
Starbucks to end discriminatory treatment of other pro-union workers at four
Manhattan locations named in the case. The decision marks the end of an
18-month trial in New York City that pitted the ubiquitous multinational corp.
against a group of twenty something baristas who are part of the Industrial
Workers of the World.
**********
Battling the Economic Monster
with
Stanley Aronowitz, Prof. of sociology, cultural studies, and urban
education at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also a veteran political
activist, cultural critic and champion of organized labor

The main news these days is the global economic crisis, an event ascribed
by economists and most pundits to a 'financial' meltdown caused by the
irresponsibility of mainly, but not exclusively, US lending institutions and
consumers in offering-and accepting-'sub-prime' mortgages. But, Prof.
Stanley Aronowitz instructs that the crisis is buried deep within the structure
of capitalism and that there is little or no prospect that, within the current
framework of neo-liberal, market capitalism, that the deepening economic
crisis can be significantly reversed and a stimulus package bring prosperity.
But, Prof. Aronowitz opens a dialogue on how the left can wrestle the
economic monster until it cries uncle.

Play
Or Download

Read More...