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Picture of a truck stop.

Every Which Way but Regulated: The “Free Market” Trucking Industry

No longer home to the open-road outlaws and concrete cowboys of the ’70s, becoming a trucker is now the equivalent of operating a sweatshop on wheels thanks to deregulation.
Engraving of the 1886 Haymarket protest

When Labor Day Meant Something

Remembering the radical past of a day now devoted to picnics and back-to-school sales.

May Day's Radical History

The date of Occupy's strike has ties to the eight-hour day movement, immigrant workers and American anarchism.
Reagan at a podium.

Winging It: The Battle Between Reagan and PATCO

The true economic legacy of the Reagan years is not tax cuts but union busting.
Armed miners at the military headquarters of the United Mine Workers, in Trinidad, Colorado, the month of the Ludlow massacre.

There Was Blood

The Ludlow massacre revisited.

Shawn Fain Is Channeling the Best of the UAW’s Past

The ongoing UAW strike is reminiscent of early UAW leader Walter Reuther — before the union and Reuther himself downsized their ambitions.
Blue and yellow photo of a woman holding up a sign with the word "Union" on it

Unspooling Norma Rae

The story of Norma Rae, based on the union organizer Crystal Lee Sutton.
Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Jimmy Carter Was No Friend of Union Workers Like Me

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.
Ku Kluz Klan imperial wizard Hiram Wesley Evans.

Making Sense of the Second Ku Klux Klan

Understanding the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century gives insight into the roots of today’s reactionary activists and policymakers.
Chinese laborers engaged to work on the American Transcontinental Railroad system.

America's First Major Immigration Crackdown and the Making and Breaking of the West

Chinese immigrants sacrificed to create America's first transcontinental railroad. Its completion contributed to a backlash that led to immigration clampdown.
Crowded and brightly-lit Beale Street in Memphis.

Memphis: The Roots of Rock in the Land of the Mississippians

Rising on the lands of an ancient agricultural system, Memphis has a long history of negotiating social conflict and change while singing the blues.
The Executive Board of UCAPAWA in 1937.

Challenging the New Deal’s “Contemptible Neglect”

In the midst of the Great Depression, one CIO union used the new administrative state to influence legislation on behalf of people considered outcasts.
Crowd marches against high inflation and unemployment in 1973.

What Would Studs Terkel Make of 'Essential Workers'?

What American workers have lost since 1974 — and how some are getting it back.
Angela Davis standing at podium, speaking at Communist Party USA event.

How and Why American Communism Failed

Plus: One historian’s about-face on the Communist record.

We Can Breathe! Anti-Fascists United

What was the Popular Front? Where did it come from, and where did its energies go?
Painting of abstract lines obscuring faces on the cover of "Feeling Asian American" by Wen Liu.

Racial Hierarchies: Japanese American Immigrants in California

The belief of first-generation Japanese immigrants in their racial superiority over Filipinos was a by-product of the San Joaquin Delta's white hegemony.
Three photographs of Mother Jones with each becoming less pixelated until the final image is clear.

America’s Best Made-Up Person

On the transformation of Mary Harris into Mother Jones.
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
Groups of workers outside a St. Louis, Missouri factory.

How the Term “Hoosier” Became a Weapon in the Class War

In Indiana, “hoosier” is a badge of honor. In St Louis, it’s the nastiest insult around. The difference reveals the prejudice that breaks worker solidarity.
Bishop Desmond Tutu speaks at an International Conference Against Apartheid held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1986.

US Worker Movements and Direct Links Against Apartheid

Today's pro-Palestinian activists are utilizing anti-apartheid tactics from thirty years ago.
A large crowd listening to Harry Truman give a speech on a train.

Harry Truman's Train Ride

A whistle-stop train tour, and some plain speaking spur Harry Truman's come from behind win in 1948 over Thomas Dewey.
The Hollywood sign replaced with the words "The End."

The Life and Death of Hollywood

Film and television writers face an existential threat.
A small farmworker house in Ventura with children playing outside.

Reimagining Resistance, Reconstructing Community

Farmworker housing cooperatives in Ventura County, California.
Bud Schulberg testifying before HUAC.

During the 2023 Writers Strike, This Book Helped Me Understand the Depravities of Hollywood

A 1941 novel by a former Communist Party member about the dog-eat-dog scumbaggery of movie executives and the lying and artless bragging that Hollywood runs on.
British trade unionists blockade a weapons factory on November 10th, 2023.

The Problem of the Unionized War Machine

Union workers in the US weapons industry present a paradox for anti-war labor activists, but a history of “conversion” campaigns offers a route.
Director Edward Dmytryk and actress Jean Porter.

The 1950s Hollywood Blacklist Was an Assault on Free Expression

The blacklist didn’t just ruin many workers’ careers — it narrowed the range of acceptable movies and contributed to the conservatism of the 1950s.
Elon Musk celebrating with both hands in the air.
partner

Elon Musk’s Utopian Town Will Disappoint — Like Most Company Towns

America’s utopian communities have traditionally promoted egalitarianism and alternatives to capitalism. Company towns do the opposite.
Bernard King of the New Jersey Nets driving past Elvin Hayes of the Washington Bullets, in March of 1978.

The Racial Politics of the N.B.A. Have Always Been Ugly

A new book argues that the real history of the league is one of strife between Black labor and white ownership.
Emissions from Union Carbide’s Ferro-Alloy Plant, Charleston, West Virginia, May 1973

The Lost Promise of Environmental Rights

As environmental rights seem on the verge of a comeback, it’s worth remembering why they once seemed so promising, and why that promise remains unfulfilled.
The Lady of the Rockies statue. Photo by Doug Zwick/Flickr.

The 90-foot Sentinel of Butte, Montana

What does a statue dedicated to mothers reveal about women’s rights?

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