Belabored Podcast #18: Jobs and Freedom

This week on Belabored, an interview with historian William Jones about the forgotten history of civil rights and the relation between racial and economic justice. Plus the latest on prevailing wage law in New York, living wage law in DC, domestic workers’ rights, and labor issues at the ACLU.

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The eighteenth episode of Dissent’s Belabored podcast opens with a round-up of recent labor news: a legal defeat for prevailing wage law in New York, a potential veto of a retail living wage law in DC, a possibly imminent expansion of federal protections for domestic workers, and a contract fight over wages and job security for employees of the ACLU. Then Sarah and Josh interview historian and Dissent contributor William Jones about his new book, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights. As the march’s fiftieth anniversary approaches, they discuss how and why the march’s politics are misremembered, the relationship between racial and economic injustice, and what the left could do to reclaim the march’s meaning and potential.

Links for those following along at home:

William Jones in Dissent on “The Forgotten Radical History of the March on Washington”

Andrew Elrod in Dissent on the ACLU contract fight

Sarah on minimum wage activism

Josh on DC’s “Walmart bill”

Sarah on NYC’s race for care

Josh’s April interview with domestic workers labor leader Ai-Jen Poo

Sarah on “A Day Without Care”

Josh on “A De Facto Union”

Sarah on Bloomberg’s fight against a living wage

Pieces we wish we’d written:

James Cersonsky, “New labor movement emerges in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin,” Salon