Haymarket Books Live is a regular online series of urgent political discussions, book launches, organizer roundtables, poetry jams, and more, hosted by Haymarket Books. The podcast features recordings of our livestreamed video event series. Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago.
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Haymarket Originals is a new home for audio deep dives, by and for the left—brought to you by Haymarket Books. The first Haymarket Originals project is FRAGILE JUGGERNAUT: WHAT WAS THE CIO? Through a limited run of twenty episodes, a group of labor historians and organizers will revisit the near-mythical history of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)—and the high water mark of US labor activity in the 1930s and 1940s—in the context of today’s critical juncture in the labor movemen ...
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A special conversation with Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Chenjerai KumanyikaPresented by Hammer & Hope magazine, Haymarket Books and Marguerite Casey Foundation.The Left is at a critical juncture in the United States—and globally.We confront multiple simultaneous threats, from rising militarism, to profound ecological dis…
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Episode 15 of Fragile Juggernaut is the second of our trio of regional episodes, landing this time in the South. Ben, Emma, and Tim are joined by the celebrated historian Robin D.G. Kelley to discuss the patterns of Southern development, the rich organizational ecology of the region, the strategic misfires of the CIO, and the political and social b…
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This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our third special bonus episode. Alex, Ben, Emma, Gabe, and Tim converged at Chicago’s Socialism conference to discuss what the CIO can make us alive to in the contemporary labor movement and our conjuncture more broadly. Our series has probed the history of the labor movement of the 1930s and …
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Episode 14 of Fragile Juggernaut is the first of our trio of regional episodes. It dials into New York City, the seat of the country’s largest manufacturing base, but one composed of a vast constellation of small and diverse shops; and also host to the nation’s largest port, transport system, white collar and cultural complex, and more. With the em…
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Episode 13 of Fragile Juggernaut surveys the impasse of the Second New Deal with the historian Ahmed White, when the newfound power of working-class organization in mass production confronted the counterattack of property and established social hierarchy. During 1937, the “Little Steel” Strike, the “Roosevelt Recession,” and the political dilemmas …
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Episode 12 of Fragile Juggernaut turns the lens on the situation and activity of white-collar, professional, and creative workers in the 1930s and 1940s. Together with guests Nikil Saval (state senator from Pennsylvania and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace) and Shannan Clark (historian at Montclair State University and author of T…
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Episode 11 of Fragile Juggernaut concerns the Communist Party and its complex role in the creation of the CIO. Andrew and Ben trace the strategic zigzags of America’s far-left, recount their pioneering role in organizing drives, and measure the Party’s own accounts of its politics against the often ambiguous, even contradictory realities of its pra…
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This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our second special bonus-episode: while we are on a brief summer hiatus, Andrew and Ben sum up the first half of our mini-series, drawing together the core themes of our show so far and discussing where we’ll go in the second half. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring t…
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This week our crew at Fragile Juggernaut is delivering our first special bonus episode. Tim and Ben talk with Sam-Adler Bell—an excellent writer and one-half of the brilliant Know Your Enemy podcast—about our series. Appearing on Know Your Enemy gave us a chance to explore a new dimension of our project: to think about the CIO not only as a moment …
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Episode 10 of Fragile Juggernaut surveys the wide range of workers who united–and sometimes fought each other–under the banner of the CIO. We begin in the slaughterhouse, with special guest Rick Halpern explaining how the United Packinghouse Workers of America (PWOC/UPWA) brought together black and white workers despite segregation inside and outsi…
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Episode 9 of Fragile Juggernaut is the first of a series of thematic episodes, in which we pause our chronological narrative to survey key issues shaping the world of the CIO. In this episode, we turn our view on the escalating confrontation between fascism and anti-fascism. Was there an American fascism? Where did it come from and what did it look…
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Episode 8 of Fragile Juggernaut places us back in the critical juncture of 1936: the final year of Roosevelt’s first term in office. What were FDR’s re-election prospects as workers’ insurgencies erupted from below and as capital waited in vain for the courts to demolish the Wagner Act? What did this juncture mean for the CIO and its relationship t…
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Episode seven of Fragile Juggernaut dramatizes the Sit Down strikes that built the UAW: why they proved to be powerful, what effect they had on the labor movement, and the truly global spread of the strike tactic. The fight in Flint and Cleveland, Kansas City and Atlanta, provides an occasion to talk both about the global organization of production…
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Episode six of Fragile Juggernaut pivots to high politics and institutional history: chronicling the passage of the Wagner Act, debating its significance, and recounting the raucous AFL convention in Atlantic City where the CIO was born. Featuring special guest Eric Blanc. Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, p…
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Episode five of Fragile Juggernaut is a dramatic retelling of the nearly-revolutionary strikes of 1934, in Toledo and San Francisco, in Minneapolis and across America’s textile belt: moments that dramatize the powerful interaction between radical militant minorities on the shop floor and mass working class struggles. Frustrated by the passivity of …
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Episode four of Fragile Juggernaut surveys the panorama of social life transfigured by the first three years of the Great Depression. By examining the sharp and persisting business downturn as a crisis of social reproduction—in which the conditions for working people to reproduce themselves appeared to permanently subside—Tim, Ben, Emma, and Andrew…
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Episode three of Fragile Juggernaut explores the transformations within the working class brought about by World War I and its decade-long aftermath. A growing political alliance between the AF of L and Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party profoundly altered the labor movement of the Progressive Era, growing its size and militancy amid the rising pric…
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Episode two of Fragile Juggernaut picks up with the labor movement of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. How did workers organize themselves amidst shifts in the structure of the economy, from the acceleration of proletarianization to the rise of corporate capitalism, and what opposition did they confront? Fragile Juggernaut is a Ha…
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Welcome to episode one of Fragile Juggernaut, the first project from Haymarket Originals! In episode one, we introduce our “organizing committee” of six rotating hosts and our goals for this collective project of inquiry into the history of the U.S. workers’ movement. We then tackle a key historical question: what was the American working class? We…
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Introducing Digressions, a virtual reading group organized by the Dig and Haymarket Books. This first session took place on August 3, 2023.Every session of Digressions will take place three to four weeks after its guest appears on the Dig, and will be broadcast live. A list of suggested readings—including a discount code for any recommended book(s)…
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Please join Linda Quiquivix, William C. Anderson, & Mohamed Abdou for a round table conversation on "Palestine 1492: Settler-colonialism, Solidarity & Resistance." They will situate Palestine transnationally in relation to 1492, & discuss admirable acts of solidarity by activists and organizers as well as common pitfalls within leftist social movem…
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This roundtable will celebrate the much-anticipated publication of Orisanmi Burton’s first book, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Order a copy of "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt" from Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9780520396326SpeakersJa…
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Come celebrate the launch of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s collected poems The Limitless Heart.Encompassing the breadth of Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s astounding career, The Limitless Heart is a time capsule of the boundless love, care, grief, and fortitude that make her work so stirring.With deep empathy, thoughtfulness, charisma, and lyricism, Boyce-Taylor’s w…
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Join us for a conversation between Vincent Bevins and Naomi Klein on what their recent books—"If We Burn" and "Doppelganger"—can teach us about our political moment.Over the course of the past ten years mass protests of unprecedented scale swept across the entire globe. From the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, to the eruption of rebellions in the…
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Join us for a conversation between Luke Messac and Kenyon Farrow on medical debt and racial justice. This event took place on November 16, 2023.Ruth Wilson Gilmore said, “Debt robs. But debt also disciplines…Today, while the imperial imperatives might be different, the role of debt is the same—to compel consent through the coercion of debt.” One of…
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Join Haymarket Books and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project for a conversation celebrating the launch of the anthology Going for Broke. Join Alissa Quart in conversation with Alex Miller, Annabelle Gurwitch, Katha Pollitt and Ray Suarez, to celebrate the launch of the anthology Going for Broke, a collaboration between Haymarket Books and the E…
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Join Mike Taber, David McNally, Anne McShane, & Tom Alter for a discussion about the Second International’s strengths, weaknesses, & legacy. This event took place on October 26, 2023.At its height, the Second (Socialist) International (1889-1914) represented the majority of organized workers in the world, with the stated revolutionary aim of overth…
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Join us for a livestream from Haymarket House: the first of a four-part public discussion series focused on Chicago’s left political landscape and movement!This event took place on October 25, 2023.We’re kicking off our Chicago Conversations series with a discussion about building & wielding left political power.Chicago’s robust left social movemen…
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Join Barbara Smith,Tamika Middleton, Haley Pessin and Jaimee A. Swift as they discuss historical & contemporary issues Black feminists face.This event took place on October 18, 2023.To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology Barbara Smith, Tamika Middleton, Haley Pessin, and Jaimee A. Swift will discuss the hist…
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Join us for the live stream of a conversation with Syrian writer & former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh moderated by Wendy Pearlman & Danny Postel. Broadcasting from Haymarket House. This event took place on October 17, 2023.Join us for the livestream of a conversation with Yassin al-Haj Saleh, the leading intellectual voice of the Syrian …
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Over the course of the past year, The Work and Us has been conducting surveys of incarcerated people to find out what they're thinking about prison labor, extraction, and freedom. In this conversation scholar-activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore and currently incarcerated organizer Stevie Wilson discuss some of the results, and what they mean for the strug…
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Join Dean Spade & organizers from Atlanta as they discuss how to protect our communities against recent threats to mutual aid & solidarity efforts.This event took place on August 17, 2023.In the last year, we’ve seen attempts to criminalize mutual aid become more common as an authoritarian tactic. The recent attacks on mutual aid organizers of the …
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The past few years have brought a huge resurgence in labor organizing across the U.S.—efforts which, from Chris Smalls’ founding of the Amazon Labor Union to Cecily Myart-Cruz’s work as president of United Teachers Los Angeles, have been driven in large part by members of the Black working class. In award-winning historian Blair LM Kelley’s BLACK F…
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Join Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Robin D.G. Kelley for a conversation about perspectives for fighting back against racism today. This event took place on July 19, 2023.Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Most recently, legislatures …
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Join trans theorists and activists for a discussion of how "Transgender Marxism” can explain the backlash and help guide the resistance. This event took place on July 16, 2023.The right has launched a systematic backlash against trans people. It has introduced hundreds of anti-trans bills in statehouses across the US, ramped up attacks on trans peo…
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In their latest collection of poems, Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner Brionne Janae dives into the deep, unsettled waters of intimate partner violence, queerness, grief, and survival.This event took place on July 6, 2023.“I’ve decided I can’t trust anyone who uses darkness as a metaphor for what they fear,” poet Brionne Janae writes in this stunning …
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Nisrin Elamin, Raga Makawi, and Hamid Khalafallah recount the history of the 2018 Sudanese Revolution and explain the current conflict. This event took place on July 5, 2023.Spectre Live Presents:Counterrevolution in Sudan: Understanding the Causes of the Current WarSudan is wracked by war between dueling military factions. Nisrin Elamin, Raga Maka…
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Three acclaimed poets with new books in multiple genres take on questions of history, trauma, and family in the Americas. This event took place on June 9, 2023.To celebrate the publication of Julie Carr’s Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, May 2023), she will be joined by…
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Join Alexa Patrick and special guests for a celebration of her debut poetry collection Remedies for Disappearing. This event took place on June 6, 2023.In this beautiful debut from an exciting new poet, Alexa Patrick’s Remedies for Disappearing memorializes Blackness in its quiet and unexpected forms, bringing the peripheral into focus. These poems…
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Join us for a conversation on the seedy underside to Tech’s past, present, and future. This event took place on May 30, 2023.If the industry’s most credulous boosters are to be taken at their word, the contemporary tech industry is an economic freight train driven by big-brained disrupters who are charting a path toward a future of mutual prosperit…
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Join us for a book launch, poetry reading, and visual showcase of Por Siempre. This event took place on May 17, 2023.Por Siempre is a visual and verbal narrative of the grit and gentleness in Southwestern Latinx communities told through photography by Antonio Salazar and poetry by José Olivarez.Guns, tattoos, pit bulls, and cars appear alongside a …
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Join us for a virtual launch event celebrating the release of Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba.This event took place on May 16, 2023.What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care is a practical and imagina…
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Join us for a discussion of Ukrainians' struggle to cancel their country's debt as part of the global movement against neoliberalism.This event took place on May 11, 2023.In the midst of Russia’s imperialist war, Ukraine’s left, unions, and popular movements have struggled to cancel their country’s debt held by international financial institutions …
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Join Cathy Linh Che, Kyle Lucia Wu, and illustrator Kavita Ramchandran for a book launch and celebration of An Asian American A to Z.A comprehensive and spirited exploration of Asian American history—its movements, cultures, and key figures—An Asian American A to Z is a beautifully illustrated and compellingly told for readers of all ages.Co-author…
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Join Clément Petitjean and Alex Han in conversation about the new book Occupation Organizer. This event took place on April 30, 2023.How can activists seize on this moment of unrest to build durable, effective organizations for change? Join Clément Petitjean and Alex Han for a history and critique of the community organizing tradition and the fight…
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Join Quenton Baker and special guests for a celebration of and conversation on their new book ballast. This event occurred on April 26, 2023.Ballast is a poetic sequence using the 1841 slave revolt aboard the brig Creole as a lens through which to view the vitality of Black lives and the afterlife of slavery.In 1841, the only successful, large-scal…
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Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated globally in outrage at Israel's genocidal bombardment of Gaza. In the Middle East in particular, protests have been massive, faced state repression, and evoked memories of the Arab Spring revolutions. In Egypt, for example, protestors marched to Tahrir Square for the first time since 2013. In Jordan…
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Join Alex Kane (Jewish Currents), Hannah Fertig (Justice Democrats), and Jason Farbman (Jewish Voice for Peace) for a panel moderated by Sumaya Awad (Adalah Justice Project) exploring the US-Israel relationship, with a focus on the role of the Israel lobby in domestic politics.————————————This event is sponsored by Adalah Justice Project, NYC-DSA, …
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Join Barnaby Raine, Nihal El Aasar, and Malia Bouattia for a conversation on how we can build a mass international movement for Palestinian liberationThe Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.” ― Ghassan KanafaniWe are …
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Join leading Palestine solidarity activists for a discussion of the role of BDS in solidarity with Palestine.Israel’s attack on the 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip has been described by genocide scholars, international law experts and UN officials as “a textbook case of genocide.” Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has ki…
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