May 3, 2024 • 57 mins
More and more workers are unionizing across the country.
Metalhead and labor journalist Kim Kelly on the exciting new wave of unionization and what it means.
Follow Kim Kelly on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrimKim
Check out Kim’s new book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171056
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, it's Joey, producer and sometimes co host for
There Are No Girls on the Internet. This past Wednesday
was International Workers Day, or May Day as it's sometimes called,
and it's a time to celebrate and commemorate working people
and the labor movement around the globe. So today we're
revisiting our conversation with labor historian and punk rocker Kim Kelly,
(00:22):
author of Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor,
about why from Starbucks to tech workers, organized laborer is
having a moment.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And I got to.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Say this episode has a special place in my heart
as a member of a union myself that is the
iHeart Podcast Union. And if you want to learn more
about the work that we do with the Iheartpod Union,
or you just want to show support for the people
that make your favorite podcasts happen, you can check us
out on Instagram or Twitter at Iheartpod Union. That'll be
linked in the show notes as well. All right, here's
(00:52):
the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
When someone will even acknowledge that you work for them,
like they're certainly not going to acknowledge your humanity if
they don't value enough to give you the proper legal paperwork.
They do not care how your day is going. That's
the problem.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgett
and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
We're in what feels like a little bit of a
renaissance when it comes to organized labor and unions. More
and more workers, whether they're barista's at Starbucks or journalists,
(01:38):
are seeing the power of unions and organizing as a collective.
And even though we maybe used to have an idea
that union member as being a white guy working at
an auto factory or steel mill, the faith of who
we understand as somebody who needs a union is really
changing too. More and more media workers and office tech workers,
for instance, are trying to unionize. This shift is something
(02:01):
that labor reporter Kim Kelly is really happy to see.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I'm Kim Kelly, and I'm a independent labor reporter and
the author of Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of
American Labor.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So how did you become someone who cared about labor
and telling the story of all of these different fights?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So I guess the short answer is I got involved
in organizing my workplace. That's kind of a direct pipeline
right there, right to caring about the labor movement joining it.
But some of the longer answers like, well, I'm from
a union family, from a very like rural working class,
kind of isolated place, and everyone who raised me was
a construction worker, a steel worker, teacher, like everyone was
(02:40):
in the union. It wasn't something that really really talked
about that much, or really it was, you know, really discussed.
It was just part of the job, part of life, like, oh, yeah,
that is in a union. That's why we have health insurance.
That's why he has to go to those meetings sometimes,
that's why he's on strike and we can't go to Walmart,
you know, things like that. And it wasn't really until
I was at Vice, whereas the heavy metal editor and
(03:02):
some colleagues pulled me aside or were like, hey, we
want to form a union, what do you think. I'm like,
hell yeah, and let me get involved in that, that
I realized that there were even it was even an
option like that, there were unions for people like me,
someone who at that point was writing about death metal
on the internet. But it turns out there was and.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
We joined it, Kim got more and more involved in
unions to organize around her own union at the media company.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Vice, and we organized like almost I think by the
time I got laid off in twenty nineteen, we'd organized
like five or six hundred people in the building, and
we'd bark in two different contracts, like we'd gotten raised,
we'd improved the workplace, we'd done a ton, we'd accomplished
a lot. And I was deeply involved the whole time
because being in a union had always kind of appealed
(03:45):
to me as an idea, as something that fit into
my political like my political views and my worldview, and
just kind of felt nice to join that family tradition.
But I didn't really start writing about it with any
sort of regularity or depth until we unionized, and I
was already freelancing a lot working advice because they didn't
pay as shit, until we organized another big endorsement for
(04:07):
unions in a workplace. Yeah, it was freelancing a ton,
And really it just kind of happened by not by accident,
but unexpectedly because I was writing a little bit of
just freelance stuff about the prison industrial complex routine book,
and I pitched them on a profile of Mother Jones,
the labor leader. I thought, Okay, your audience is predominantly
(04:29):
like younger women, Like, here's a cool I kind we
can talk about. And my editor said, yeah, that's a
cool idea, but I don't think our audience necessarily knows
what a union is, so why don't you write about
that first? I was like okay, And I wrote a
little explainer because at that point I'd kind of learned
more about the movement, about the history, from talking the
organizers who work with, from reading books on my own,
(04:50):
from just getting all fired off about union stuff as
like a baby organizer. And I wrote that article and
it kind of was like mini viral. People paying attention
because in twenty seventeen, people weren't necessarily used to looking
to teen Vogue for their like anti capitalist analysis. Yet
they're like what is this? Essentially like it that helped
(05:11):
me out as a freelancer, where I was like, okay,
that went, well, what if you let me do a
whole column and they're like, yeah, okay, we'll try it.
And I was like four years ago and really just
having that experience organizing and kind of learning on the
fly and being a big nerd and loving history books
kind of made me feel like I was allowed to
write about labor, like I had a leg to stand on.
(05:31):
And once I kind of gave myself that permission, I
really just dove in and start writing more and writing more,
talking more. People just kind of fell in love with
the idea, right because I spent my whole life up
till then writing about heavy metal, which is still a
great love and still a huge part of my life.
But I was kind of looking for something new, and
the union happened to be there at exactly the right time.
(05:51):
And once I realized I was going to more union
meetings than heavy metal shows, I thought, Okay, maybe it's
time to actually try and do this. And here we are.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Wow. What what a trajectory. Yeah, I mean it's it's it. Really.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I see a lot of through lines in your work,
and I I remember the vice unionization fight, and I
I Hart Radio, where my podcast is hosted recently, which
is a big deal. I guess it's a good question,
what do you think of this idea that I don't know.
I often I think that everybody could.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Benefit from a union.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I think that the benefits are there for unions are
for everybody, But I often hear this kind of pushback
that like, oh, what does an office media worker need
a union for? What do you say to things like that?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Oh, it makes it so mad because it's just and
it's always like stupid, like rich white guys on Twitter
that just feel the need to have opinions about Oh, well, Brad,
students don't need a union. Video game workers on need
a union. Journalists don't need a union. You're not working
in a coal mine or in a factory, Okay? Do
you have a boss? You rely on someone else's decisions
(07:02):
to pay your bills? Do you have to go to
an office, do you have coworkers? Are you getting mistreated
or you getting disrespected? Like are you going to a job?
Do you work for someone? Then you need a union.
It is ridiculous to act as though different categories of worker,
whether were you're doing like the white collar blue collar
sort of dichotomy or whatever other artificial division that somebody
(07:24):
with an interest in preserving capital likes to lean on,
like it's It's never been the case that only one
type of worker, one demographic of worker, is allowed to
have a union or is encouraged to have a union
or is benefited from having a union, Like every type
of worker can benefit from having a union, and that's
(07:45):
not even necessarily. You don't have to go through the
specific process of like filing for an election with n RB,
doing all of the kind of bureaucratic red tape bs
that a lot of workers are kind of forced to
deal with. Now to form a union, you can just
get to get other with your coworkers and try and
make some shit happen. Like there's no one way to
be a union member. There's no one way to be
(08:05):
a union and they're all valid and important, and honestly,
building collective power with your coworkers is the most effective
and empowering thing that you can do, because one worker
on their own can only do so much, but a
bunch of us, whether it's five or fifty or five hundred,
that's how you move mountains. Whether you work in an
office where you work in a coal miner, you work
(08:27):
in Amazon, or you're a gig worker, Like, someone is
trying to screw you over, and the only way you
can stop that is by getting together with a bunch
of other people who are feeling screwed over doing something
about it.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I love how you put that.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And that's the thing that I really love about talking
about labor and the you know, collective organizing, and it's
something I really see as a value that it's about
people banning together, oftentimes against massive, powerful companies like Amazon
that have like teams of lawyers and pr and all abys.
(09:04):
But even with all that institutional power, they're not more
powerful than the collective. They're not more powerful than people
coming together. Is that something that you see in these
union stories as well?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yeah, I mean, Jeff Bezos is the new g ghoul.
Like we talked about that, we're in the new Gilded Age.
The railroad barons, like they controlled the rails, they controlled
all the capital, but the workers built those rails, and
the workers shut them down a whole bunch. Then struck
fear into the hearts of the capitalist class, like there's
always more of us than there are of them. And
(09:36):
I think that's something that workers sometimes forget because we
are so disenfranchised and isolated and beaten down. But the
people on top never forget that, And that's why they
get so frightened and anxious when they see workers organizing,
because they know that they're outnumbered, and that if a
whole bunch of people want to make them do something,
you know we've done it before and we'll do it again.
(09:58):
Like there's the history of labor in this country is
very complicated. There's a lot of wins, there's a lot
of losses. There's a lot of struggle and bloodshed and
beautiful things and terrible things. But every step foward that
we've made as a country has come from workers, has
come from regular working people down in their tools and
saying all right, I've had enough of this shit. Let's
(10:20):
do something. And that is something that has not gone away,
and especially now, I think we're something we're going to
keep seeing more of because it's easier for people to
be connected to one another, it's easier for people to
see other folks taking control. Whether you're a Starbucks customer,
you buy stuff from Amazon, you go to REI, you
have a friend who works as a grad student, Like,
someone in your life is probably part of some kind
(10:42):
of organizing effort, and if they're not, you can help
them start, or you can start your own. Like the
possibilities are endless. Let's take a click right.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Ederer back.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
This right here, this is going to be the catalyst
for the revolution. That's exactly what this is.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I just went to stay.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Back in April, Amazon warehouse workers on Staten Island's JFK eight,
the Amazon warehouse with the most employees in the state
of New York, won a historic bid to form a
labor union. It's the very first Amazon facility in the
United States to have a successful union election, which is huge.
So we know that workers at JFK eight, the Amazon
warehouse in Staten Island, they won a union election and
(11:41):
they kind of went against some of the conventional wisdom,
you know, they started their own independent organization instead of
trying to sort of join and established national union. And
I've read some of your writing on this and it
sounds like to you it really just comes down to
the workers. Can you tell us more about kind of
like what you mean by this.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
So here's the thing, Like what Amazon labor union organizers
did was incredible and inspiring and so important, and it's
also not anything new, right, the idea of building a
union from the ground up, of building real human bonds
and connections and solidarity, forming a community to fight instead
of you know, following a prescriptive playbook doing what you're
(12:23):
supposed to do, because that's how it's done, that's how
it sometimes works, like ione has to do anything like
this is this is the thing. I mean, that's one
of the reasons they're so successful. They kind of threw
out that playbook and drew on whether or not it
was intentional. They drew on these kind of historical examples
of workers in their position doing the exact same thing.
(12:45):
Because the workers that organized to add JFKA predominantly like
younger folks, queer and transpost black and brown workers, immigrant workers,
multi lingual, multi generational, the best, multiracial, multi gender, multi
everything kind of coalition. And that is how workers have
won throughout history. And that is not something that you
maybe find in every mainstream labor history book, but that
(13:08):
is just true. That's just how it is. I Mean,
one of the parallels that I, as a labor nerd
I like to draw between JFKA and history is what
Dorothy Lee Bolden was able to do in the sixties
in Atlanta, and she was a domestic worker from the
age of nine, Like really the majority of black women
(13:29):
and women in that city in that time that had
a job, they worked in domestic service. And she realized like, Okay,
we're not being paid enough, our work isn't being treated
properly as labor. We're being true like garbage, and you
know what, like there's a lot of us. Maybe we
can do something about this. She was actually lived a
few doors down from doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and
she was commisering with him one day and he told her, like, Dorothy,
(13:51):
you know, you can just do something yourself, like if
you want to change things, if you want to organize things,
like just do it. And she did. She organized it
then that from Domestic Workers Union of America, which wasn't
a recognized standard labor union. It wasn't operate within that framework.
It was an independent organization and at its peak the
membership roles hit I think ten thousand people, so all
(14:14):
black women domestic workers in Atlanta, and they built power,
and they built political power, they educated what another, they
shared resources. In order to join, all you had to
show up with was a dollar and a voter registration card.
Showing the intersection between different movements for justice. And it's
such a cool example because she did it her way
and she made a huge difference. You can see there's
(14:35):
a direct line from George Lee Bolden's organization in the
sixties to the current National Domestic Workers Alliance, which I
mean in Philly. A couple of years ago they managed
to pass an incredibly impactful bill that helped get healthcare
for domestic workers in my city. Like, everything builds on
the work that someone did before, whether it's in nineteen
sixty or eighteen sixty, and I'm just excited to see
(14:59):
what's going to happen in fifty years when someone younger
than me writes a book and interviews Chris Smalls and
asks what inspired him? Right, Because we're all part of
than We're all linked in a very long chain, and
you know, one link can do something cool, but that
whole long chain, that's how we get close to where
we need to be.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I have chills. What a description I used to.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Talk to a lot of union meetings.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I love us.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Is historical?
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Is Amazon versus the people and the.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
People have spoken.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
That's Chris Small's the president and founder of the Amazon
Labor Union. He started working in Amazon warehouses in twenty
fifteen during COVID, when everybody myself included, was ordering a
ton of stuff on Amazon. Chris started to speak out
about how warehouses were putting workers at risk by failing
to meet basic COVID mitigation protocols. So Chris organized a
(15:50):
walk out in protest. He was fired that same day for,
according to Amazon, failing to meet social distancing protocols. So basically,
Amazon was claiming that Chris was the one who was
failing to keep Amazon worker safe, not them, which is
a little sketchy. So Chris organized. He started the Congress
(16:11):
of Essential Workers, which later backed the formation of the
Amazon Labor Union. Amazon suits, like former Obama administration spokesperson
turned Amazon pr and policy chief Jay Carney and David Zablotski,
personally smeared Chris in leaked notes. They called him not
smart and not articulate. In fact, they thought Chris was
so not smart that their plan, according to these reports,
(16:34):
was to make Chris the face of the movement because
certainly that would tank it. Only it backfired. Chris, that
turns out, was an incredibly effective organizer and spokesperson and
would go on to usher in the very first unionized
Amazon warehouse in history. I mean, so you've just hit
on a couple of things that I am fascinated by.
(16:54):
One I do think we have this issue not just
in labor organizing, but in organizing in general, where it's
so tempting to have there be one face, like this
is the person who started this whole thing, when the
reality is it's often so many different stories and voices
coming together, and I get the inclination to make it
(17:16):
about one central figure that like that is such a
such a powerful motivating thing just in our culture, but
that sometimes it can obscure what you were just talking about,
that it's a lineage, it's about a lot of people
coming together and inspiring each other.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Yeah, I saw it. It was interesting because Twitter is
always going to Twitter, but I saw there was some
criticism because people were excited about Chris Mal's who is
the leader of the Amazon labor union, who was kind
of the spark that started that whole movement when he
was fired in twenty nineteen for protesting about COVID safety.
Like you gotta hand it to the guy, even like
(17:50):
like sometimes it is okay to lie andize someone when
they have done something incredible, And I think it is
important for us to have those working class heroes. You know,
of course, like no one person does everything. People are flawed,
people are complicated whishdn't you know? Hero worship is not
something that I would recommend, but acknowledging and appreciating someone's
(18:11):
skill and someone's importance to a movement that doesn't take
away from the collective effort. That's just kind of giving
somebody their flowers and they deserve them. And I think
something that you know, President Small's has done in a
really wonderful way is making clear like the Amazon Labor
Union organizing Committee, like all of us did this. All
of us are in this together, like a lot of
(18:33):
the other organizers are public too, Derk Palmer, Angelic and
Justine Matina, like it was clearly a very collective effort.
But you know, I think it's okay to get excited
about having one person, you know, getting a little bit
more attention, because I mean, we need more heroes. We
need more heroes that look like us and sound like us.
(18:53):
And especially the fact that like a young handsome black
man with gold teeth and tattoos is like the face
of the labor movement in America right now. That is phenomenal,
Like that is going to keep the movement moving, That
is going to bring more people in. We do not
need more white guys in suits, like, we got some
good ones, shout out to them, But like, the white
(19:15):
guys in suits are also a lot of the time
the people that have their boots on our neck. I
think it is very important to recognize who the working
class is and what they look like, what we look like,
and sound like a talk like to build those connections,
to bring more people in and show that there's so
much more room in the movement for every other cut
type of person. And you know, I don't want to
(19:36):
talk too much shit on the white guys and suits.
Some of them are great, but some of them are
and they've had plenty of a time to bask in
their attention over the years. I think it is perfectly
fine to give someone else a shot.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Absolute Absolutely, every single time I see a photo or
a video of Chris Small's and it's fitted in his
do rag talking to an elected official, I'm like, yes.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
This is like, it just feels good to see like.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And honestly, if I'm being honest, him being like his
trajectory is what got me fired up about the Amazon fight.
I will never forget the way that Amazon suits use
this like very clearly racially coded language to refer to
him and discredit him. He's inarticulate, he's not smart, he's
not a deep thinker. And I feel like every black
(20:24):
and brown person, every immigrant, or anybody connected this to
one of those communities knew exactly what these Amazon suits
were trying to do. And what's so funny is that,
a they were really downplaying the multi racial workers that
that keep their company running, that made that like they
would be nothing without. And I think that they really
(20:45):
kind of shot themselves in the foot because in the end,
they made Chris like this lionized face of their movement
because like it kind of in spite of their trying
to discredit him, And boy, they couldn't have picked a
more effective spokes person, right, like the wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
One for that if they were trying to keep like
they even said in some of their little leaked internal memos,
like we're gonna make him the face of this. And
I remember when they want he tweeted like, you know, thanks,
like a call that was the worst mistake ever made.
It's like it just shows this massive disconnect between the
people in the c suite doing whatever the fuck is
they do all day and the people actually working and
(21:22):
living these communities and trying to build power, trying to survive,
Like why wouldn't people respond to a character like Chris,
Like why wouldn't people want to talk to other folks
in the organizing committee that speak their language and live
in their neighborhoods and take the bus with them? Like
why would someone listen to some rich guy in a
suit and when they could talk to someone that they're
(21:44):
used to seeing, like out in the neighborhood, who like
someone whose cousin you know? Like why It's it's like
a century apart. But thinking about the way that the
workers in the organizing committee Amazon were able to build
power and bridge these kind of artificial divisions, it reminds
you of this example. They're with me again. I'm a giant.
(22:05):
I just wrote a whole book about it. But in
nineteen forty six, the Great Sugar Strike in Hawaii. At
that time and probably still but especially at that time,
the sugar game plantations in the islands were owned entirely
by white guys who lived in the mainland, and they
were worked by native Hawaiians as well as Chinese, Korean,
(22:25):
Puerto Rican, Filipino, Japanese immigrants. But prenominantly Asian workforce from
all sorts of different places, lots of different languages, and
the bosses had a very explicit policy of treating different
workers differently, unequally, so that like some workers made more
than others. They kept all of the workers in different
segregated camps so that Chinese workers and Filipino workers, Korean
(22:48):
workers wouldn't really see one another, wouldn't really talk to
one another. And they did that because they wanted to
make sure the workers weren't organized. They wanted to be
able to use different groups of workers against one another,
and like earlier strikes, Filipino workers were brought in too
active strike breakers. When Japanese field workers went on strike,
there were a lot of instances of that kind of
thing happening. And when it came time to strike in
(23:10):
nineteen forty six, the ILWU in National Longshore and Warehouse
Workers Union were really cool radical union. Their history is read.
There's time to strike, and they realized, Okay, we can't
let them break us apart like that again. We need
to pull people together, and how do we do that.
They brought in translators and made sure everybody in every
meeting felt heard and understood what's happening. They had different
(23:32):
groups of workers cooked for one another and share recipes
and build community that way. Same thing they did in
the parking lot at Staten Island. They brought people together
on a human level and showed them, you know, you're
all being exploited, you're all being treated like garbage, you're
all being You're all in this together, whether or not
you chose to be, so why not embrace it and
try to become more powerful together? And it worked and
(23:54):
they won. They won like the first big raised in
like twenty years. And that's exactly what I thought about
when I heard about, you know, the barbecues and the
jolof rice and all of the just the very personal,
intimate kind of organizing and connecting those happening in the
parking lot and then the breakroom in Amazon and JFKA. Like,
when you connect with people as people and listen to
(24:16):
them and hear them, that's when magic happens. Like it
sounds so basic, but I feel like people in charge
don't get that because they don't see us as people.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah, that's and I think it really goes back to
what you were saying, that people coming together, people uniting
in the power of community and shared vision and a
collective that's such a powerful force. And it's not surprising
to me that the powers that be, whether it's you know,
sugarcane owners or Amazon, it's like, oh, we got to
(24:48):
keep these people divided, We got to keep them. We
have to really inflame these divisions, because when they come together,
there's more of them than there are of us, and
they are very powerful.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
And so just figuring out ways to to.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Really rely on those community bonds, I think is so
important and valuable, and.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Like unions have screwed that up over the years too.
The labor movement is not the track record is not great,
especially when it comes to like I mean even now
right so earlier I always think about this example that
makes me so mad, the American Federation of Labor, which
was like an earlier organization that later got folded into
They'll say, oh, that's the whole thing, But I mean, like
(25:26):
the eighteen hundreds, eighteen eighties, when the Chinese Exclusion Act
was passed, the AFL were big supporters, They're all about it,
and that was obviously incredibly xenophobrig racist legislation that kept
Chinese workers and other Asian workers out of the country
for decades, and at that point, those labor leaders embraced
that because they didn't want people to come in and
(25:47):
take their members' jobs. And now that is a familiar
refrain that we've seen throughout the centuries. Like at one
point it was women, then it was black workers, Chinese
and other Asian workers. It's Mexican, South American, Central American
workers who are being painted with that brush. Like there's
always this reactionary impulse in some corners to say that, oh,
(26:09):
these other people are coming in and taking everything we built. Wow,
fuck do you think you built in the first place?
By organizing people and trying to help workers, like that
kind of mentality is harmed the movement and harms so
many workers over the century, Like just the thought of
seeing a new group of workers coming in who are
more vulnerable, who are desperate for work, who are in
(26:31):
a marginalized position, and thinking, oh, no, they're gonna mess
with our guys, our people, instead of thinking, oh, we
need to organize them and bring them in so we
can help them out, and like our union will be
stronger as a result. The unions who have done that
are still around like they are more effective than the
ones that were you know, exclusionary. And I've refused to
(26:52):
kind of get with the times and realize that all
workers deserve a union, and all workers maybe deserve to
join your union depending on what you do. Is like
I think a good example of unions kind of and
this isn't necessarily like that type of division. This is
more like just workplace division. But I think about the
United Autoworkers, who are obviously the storied industrial union, Like
(27:14):
there's I touched on them in the book, and they're
you know, they've been around forever. They're synonymous with like
Detroit at the rust Bell and like you know, the
automotive industry, and right now, out of their four hundred
thousand members, a quarter of those one hundred thousand people
they're grand students. They work in education, They work in
colleges and universities in California and across the country. Like
(27:37):
and that is the big shift, and that's a great
Like that is how you evolve. That is how you
grow and stay relevant. Like sure, an adjuct professor at
you know, University California has a different experience from someone
working in a plant in Flint, Michigan. But that doesn't
mean that they still don't need those higher wages, those
(27:58):
better working conditions, that protection to the union contract, Like
we're all in this together. And the sooner than people
realize that and act and organize around that principle, like
sooner we're gonna get shit.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
Done, the sooner we'll get free.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
I mean, really, it's so simple that people will fuck
it up so much over here more after a.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Quick break, let's get right back into it. So this
is probably where I should say that I have a
pretty complicated personal relationship with Amazon. If you walked into
(28:45):
my apartment building on any given day, there's probably a
few Amazon boxes shamefully stacked up in the trash, And
I honestly don't want to tell you how much I
order from them.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Let's just say it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And I'd be willing to bet that I am not
a It's just the truth that our myself, very much included,
individual actions impact what life is like for workers at
Amazon warehouses.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
So what should we do? So to that vein of.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Sort of the sooner we realize we're all in this together,
I have to sort of admit something something that I'm
like it's one of It's probably there's probably not many
things in my life that I am like more deeply
personally ashamed of than my personal relationship to Amazon. I
got very hooked on it during the pandemic. And what
I really mean is like I was clearly sort of
(29:32):
like relying on it to experience like a short term
serotonin boost of like new shit at my door because
I was depressed and said, like like most you, oh,
there's a sepoura box right behind you, right behind this
laptop that you can't see. So I yeah, And I
think there are probably people out.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
There listening who can relate.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
You know, do you think that there is a need
for all of us to sort of recalibrate around the
human cost of companies like Amazon and.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Sort of just like what it means.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
You know, I've listened to Amazon workers talk about how
they're not robots, but I think it can be hard
for people, especially people who might kind of have to
rely on Amazon for whatever reason, like maybe they have
a disability, maybe they're a new mom, and like you know,
it's just like how shit gets done in their household.
I don't know, I guess I wonder how can we
is there a way for us to sort of meaningly
recalibrate so that people to to sort of feel more
(30:30):
attuned with the fact that, like, yeah, the reason why
I was able to get a new hat in twenty
four hours is because of a person who brought it
here and a person who put it in a box
for me.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
And that's hard. That's one of the great conundrums of
modern existence, right, like the idea of like no es
coal consumption under capitalism. I'm probably not even smart enough
to discuss all the implications of that, right, And I
do think that it's important to recognize that individual people
should not necessarily be on the hook for the actions
of massive corporations and the failed government that it's allowed
that things to get to this point. I mean, I
(31:02):
personally try to avoid Amazon, but like half the time
that just means I'm trying to find someone on Walmart
dot com. You know, like it's not we're kind of
we're stuck in this current reality. I mean, you can
do little things like instead of pushing for two day shipping,
go for like the later option, you know, like if
you're able, just go to the store, like if you
(31:22):
are not, Because a lot of people, like you said,
are dependent on delivery services because they're disabled, they're mun
to compromise, they have other stressors on their life that
means that they need to use these services. And I
think that is fine, Like people need to survive and
people need to thrive in the ways that they're able to.
But yeah, I think that ditching Amazon would be cool.
But then if everyone in the nation was like, we're
(31:43):
gonna boycott Amazon and then did it, that would be cool.
That would have an impact. But the US government still
pays Amazon to like use the Internet, Like there's all
that their tentacles are so deep into everything we consume
in every part of our existence, as like being to
use technology that there's only so much individual consumers can do.
(32:04):
So I don't know, like try to avoid it if
you can. But like halftime, my mother in law sends
us crap off Amazon anyway, Like there's she does not
listen to me, she's to Tellian. So it's a hard question, right,
Like I think even what you're talking about now, like
this step of realism, Like I got this because a
person brought it to me, a person pacted. That person
(32:25):
might be in pain, that person might be having a
hard time. Even just internalizing and understanding that aspect of
things will probably impact your consumer habits and will probably
impact the way you see, you know, petitions about workers
asking for better working conditions, or the way that you
support union drives. Like. I think the first step that
any person can take, no matter of the situation, is
(32:47):
to recognize the human cost of this. You know, these
consumption patterns, this setup, this whole you know, capitalist healthscape,
we're trapped within, like and then what you do from
there is kind of up to you. But I think
the putting the onus on individual people to fix all
this stuff isn't really fair when we have a government
(33:10):
and a social system and a capitalist society to blame.
You know, you can if we all got together and
did a boycott, that would be cool, But I don't know,
It's it's a hard question, right, Like, how do you
go up against a giant when you're not like because
consumers there's probably way that consumers could organize against Amazon,
but I don't know that will look like a boycott
(33:31):
a strike. It's I feel like people I see people
talking about, oh, we get a boycott Amazon all the
time whenever news comes out of how terrible they are.
I'm like, yeah, avoid them if you can, But I
think we need some kind of greater concentrated strategy if
we really wanted to take them down, and then what
will come after them? Would are we gonna go after
Walmart and Target? Like that's cool too, but it's it's
(33:53):
a big thorning thing. And if it comes down to it,
at the very least, don't pick twenty four hours ship.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, that's that's that's a good like practical if you've
got to, if you've got a little bit of a
problematic relationship with Amazon, like I do, at least you
know you can you can make that experience if you're
going to buy from them, make that experience a little
less crappy for some of the workers who are doing
the work to bring you your serotonin boost or the
(34:22):
like life saving medicine that you need or what have you.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Right, Yeah, it's it comes down to remembering that there
are people in those warehouses and a lot of them
are in pain, and a lot of them are struggling.
Some of them are going to lose their lives because
the way that Amazon operates. And I mean, maybe I'm
not a big electoral guy, but pressuring your elected officials
to try and do something about Amazon and corporations like that,
that could be an avenue for people too. I feel
(34:46):
like there's a lot of different ways to slay a giant,
or at least, you know, cut a couple pounds of
flesh off of them. And hopefully one thing we'll see
from the success of Amazon laboring and drive and you know,
hopefully more rumblings that we'll see across the countries that
people will realize what's happening and realize the role they
play and just maybe reevaluate the way that they interact
(35:07):
with that system. And you know, if they have friends
at Amazon, maybe tell them about the union they union.
It would be a good step too.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I mean it's so interesting because I was reading the
story yesterday, I think it was yesterday about how the
food delivery service grub Hub had this free they were
gonna do free lunch for three hours yesterday, and it
basically was a shit show. All the kitchens were really
backed up, and come to find out, they didn't tell
any of the kitchens or the delivery drivers that this
(35:36):
was happening, And so part of me was like, are
they just so divorced from the idea of like human
labor that they didn't even think that they needed to give.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
These people a heads up on what they were doing.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
It's like, I mean, they don't consider those people employees
even even though they clearly work for the country, and
they don't consider them like equal partners when they're dealing
with these kindive restaurants. I mean, grub mom is so shady.
I was just reading today, like I live supporter from
like an incredible Indonesian restaurant and they're posting an Instagram
like please don't order for rephub. We didn't ask to
be on there. They don't have our prices right, Like
(36:09):
we were trying to get them to take it down,
like they will do that. They'll try and encroach on
independent businesses like whole operations, just because they think it
might get them more of a commission. Like they don't
care about the people they quote unquote partner with at all,
whether they're business owners and restaurant workers or those livery workers.
Like it does come with them down to that idea
(36:29):
that the people that are doing this labor are invisible
to the people that are making these decisions that impact
their days, like, Oh, they'll figure it out. Oh, there's
plenty of drivers. Oh there's so many ways to justify
treating people poorly if you don't have their welfare and
their well being at the top of your mind. And
that's clearly what happens with these tech companies. They don't
(36:51):
like the fact that so many people that work for
tech companies are resigned in this weird nether realm of
gig work instead of just being given a W two.
And clearly now as the employees they are, like when
someone will even acknowledge that you work for them, Like,
they're certainly not going to acknowledge your humanity if they
don't value enough to give you the proper legal paperwork,
they do not care how your day is going. And
(37:14):
that is the problem.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It is a problem.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I mean, it's I it's so interesting to me how
oftentimes tech company when we're talking about organized labor, it's
often conversations about tech companies. Do you do you see
technology and labor as linked?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, and I'm not. I'm not a technology guy. And
there's definitely reporters who do really good work in that space,
but especially folks at Motherboard shout out to Edward m.
Wiso and Lauren Gurley, they're really on top of those
those intersections. I'm kind of a dummy when it comes
to tech stuff, but even just in terms of what
you see happening, whether it's in like the gig work
world or the increasing surveillance that companies are able to
(37:54):
levy against you need organize, you know, Amazon's little band
word list on their internal chat or whole big brother
aspect of them being able to monitor everything you do. Like,
technology and labor have always been connected, I mean going
back to the Industrial Revolution, right, like that new technology
that came in back in the day pulled people out
of an uprooted society, pulled people into these factories and
(38:17):
these dark satanic mills totally kind of reconceive the way
people related to labor and wage labor specifically. I mean.
One of the things about tech work and like gigwork.
I keep harping on this gigwork gig economy thing, but
I think it is so insiduous and it is such
a big issue in labor right now, is that that's
not necessarily a new thing either. Because when you think
(38:38):
about gigwork, like someone who is a gig worker. You're
giving little assignments and you get a little bit of
money for every little piece that you do. You don't
have a specific set workday or set hours. You're just
kind of picking up whatever scraps come your way and
trying to piece together something you can survive on. That
is a very old concept, going back to the early
nineteen hundreds something called piece garment workers in New York
(39:02):
City specifically that time, the would spend all day laboring
at the factory and all day I mean like twelve
plus hours and poorly ventilated, hot or cold, locked door,
just nightmare places. They and a lot of them were women,
a lot of them were children. Well, these folks would
go spend all day in the factory and then come
home and they would bring home more scraps of fabric
(39:22):
or unfinished projects and work on these pieces and they
would get paid by the piece. And basically like they
they're kind of the predecessors of the folks that are
stuck in this predicament right now because they didn't have
I mean, they had their their day job, but they
were trying to make more money. So they're being paid
so poorly at their day job by doing these bits
and pieces, and of course they got short changed. Of
(39:45):
course they were. You know, this isn't like in the
era of candle light. So imagine someone hunched over sewing
a shirt waist at one am in the morning. Poor
they had to wake up at five to go to
the factory. Like that is not that far removed from
what today's delivery drivers and rideshare app drivers and all
of the other things that are now being grouped into
(40:06):
this sort of amorphous gigwork, remote work. Just this weird
morass of garbage. It happened before, and regulations and labor
laws and progress in that space kind of chipped away
at that, And right now we're kind of in this
weird wild West zone where tech companies can do whatever
(40:28):
they want, which seems like maybe somebody in charge to
do something about that, but half the people in charge
are like friends with the tech people. So it's a
little bit of a different world. But some things really
haven't changed.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, I definitely, I definitely see that as well. So
I want to talk about the book a little bit.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
YEA, so.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Fight like Hell, the Untold Story, Untold History of American labor.
You're really right about the ways that people who have
been historically marginalized, like women and black folks and indigenous
folks were the life blood of labor and always have been,
and like our stories and our voices were always there,
even though you know, I feel like the face of
what we think of as someone involved in a union
(41:10):
is like a white male. I guess my question is one,
how do we make sure that we're telling a more
authentic story of what the face of labor actually looks like?
And are there any do you have a favorite figure
or person who you want to get more shine in
the history of labor?
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Yeah? Well, okay, is it the second part and the
second but I think like as one of the most
important things to realize I'm recognized. It's like, you know,
the subtitle is the Untold History, And that's not to
say that folks haven't been telling these stories the whole time, right,
Like the workers told them in the first place, and
then contemporary journalists and chroniclers wrote them down, and then
historians and academic research as archivists, they dug into the
(41:50):
past and pulled out all these pieces and preserved them
and analyzed them and you know, tuck them away somewhere safe.
So then like journalists and nerds like me could come
in and kind of pull together and synthesize that information
and bring it out further people to see. I think
so much of it comes down to people that are
in a position to elevate these stories and write about labor,
write about history, do it in a way that's accessible
(42:11):
and intersectional and inclusive, Like it's not that hard, Like
literally you could like any labor book you could pick up,
Like there are black and brown and indigenous and queer
and disabled folks and women and every other gender like
in those stories too. It just depends on what you
choose to focus on. And I think that is something
(42:33):
that people can be more mindful of, and certainly not
folks in the academic space who are like very specifically
research specific groups or eras, like whether it's like Judy
Young who wrote a book called Unbound feed of social
History of San Francisco that was hugely impactful for my
research into that area, or doctor Turr Hunter who wrote
(42:54):
to Enjoy My Freedom, which is about Black women's labor
post reconstruction. Like, academics have done this work, but it
is not necessarily on offer to everyone, right, Like you
can't necessarily walk into a library and pick up their
books that you should be able to. It's there's a
little bit of a gap between what's available to folks
in the academic space and most available to folks that
(43:16):
like maybe walk by Barnes and Noble on their way
home from work. And it's really important to me to
pull together as much as I could from that history,
and you know, pull from tons and tons of research
and different historians and newspapers and magazine articles and interviews
and put it together in a way that made it
very clear that everyone else has always been here and
(43:36):
it's done incredible things. And I hope that people will
read my book and then read the bibliography and follow
those breadcrumbs and find some more of those those important writings,
because this is just the beginning. This is kind of
an intro to a lot of these folks. Like one
of the people to your second question, one of the
people that I was so excited to write about because
(43:57):
I thought I knew so much about her. Turns out
I was wrong. A woman named Lucy Parsons who and
I knew about her just from my involvement like Radical Space.
She's kind of like an anarchist art icon, and I
had read an earlier biography of her from the seventies,
I'd read her own writings. I thought I had a
pretty good grip on who she was. But then this
history named Jacqueline Jones put out a book a couple
(44:20):
of years ago called A Goddess of Anarchy that was
this exhaustively researched biography of Lucy Parson's life. And it
turns out that the common wisdom about her and her
life was pretty wrong during her lifetime, and Lucy Parsons,
she was kind of a chameleon. It was kind of
to her. She decided to shape shift a little bit
(44:42):
and hide who she was in order to be more
impactful in her work and more easily relatable to the
white factory workers she was trying to organize, right, because
she presented herself as a mixed like Spanish and indigenous
maiden from Texas. That's how she said she was, and
she said she was from there. She moved to Chicago
with her husband, Albert Parsons in the late eighteen hundreds,
(45:04):
and they set up shop and started organizing in the
anarchist community and the labor community. Like she was a
dressmaker and she organized lady like women garment workers, and
she she had like a very interesting overlap when it
comes to like labor and inarchist politics, revolutionary politics, because
at that time a lot of those folks were the
same people like that was a very not incestuous, but
(45:26):
a very interconnected community, like it kind of still is
now right like radicals, we've always been here, We've always
been getting up to mischief in the labor movement elsewhere.
But so yeah, she was she and she was a
co founder of the Industrial Works for the World. IWW
like she she had an impact in the labor community
certainly and in labor history. But Lucy Parsons was not
(45:46):
who she said she was. She was born in Virginia
on a plantation. She was a black woman who was
born enslaved, who moved out to Texas following emancipation, and
then she kind of built up her own mythology to
protect herself and for other reasons that I don't know
what went through her head. I haven't met her, but
she was just this fascinating character and she intersected with
(46:10):
so many different pieces of so many different movements. But
I tried to write better in a way that showed
like how important and interesting and like radical and militon
she was, but also acknowledged like she was not perfect,
like even outside of her own identity, and you know
the way she presented herself like she did. She made
some pretty gnarly decisions in her life, and you can
(46:30):
read more about it. But it was a challenge to
write about a figure that I've admired for so long
and to kind of address a little bit of the
ugular and messy humanity of a person like that. But
I was really excited to include her because I feel
like she's very well known in radical circles, but labor people,
unless you're like in Chicago and have a specific interest
(46:51):
in that point in time, you probably don't know that
much about Lucy Parson, so you probably have a pretty
negative view of her and the other anarchists, and hoping
to kind of, I don't know, present a more balanced
view of someone who I think is a really important
historical figure.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
That's fascinating and it really does go back to recognizing
humanity and sort of if you only know Lucy Persons
as this you know hero figure that you miss out
on all these other parts of who she was and
how and what made her her and how she showed
up in the world.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Isn't it better to have a messy, complex, honest human
person to to, you know, look to for guidance than
a hero than someone who, like you know, is just
isn't isn't all of those things right?
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Because that just makes it seem like a storybook kind
of situation or a fairytale instead of a flesh and
blood person, a historical thing that happened. And so many
of the people in this book are complicated or they've
been either people that have been kind of left out
or they have been included but not in the fullness
of their whole experience. Like I started out the book
(48:00):
in one of the earlier chapters talking about the Triangle
Shirwey's Factory fire, which I feel like a lot of
people know about that. That's a big one. And Clara Lemlick,
one of the organizers of the Garment Workers Union, that
was kind of in that mediu right, like she was
part of the uprosing of the twenty thousand in nineteen
oh nine. She that was before the Triangle Factory fire.
But they're connected because Clara Lemlich, who was often painted
(48:23):
as this just kind of spunky girl who stood up
in a meeting and said we're going to go on strike,
like she was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who had been
organizing for years. She had gotten her ribs broken by
the cops on a picket line, like she was an organizer,
she was out there, like she was not just a
spontaneous romantic heroine, like she was in that struggle. And
(48:46):
like the connection with the triangle of Shirtway factory fire
is that the work that Clara Lemlix and other organizers
predominantly at that point Eastern European Jewish women and Italian women,
the work they had done. If the owners of that
factory had signed on to the agreement that those organizers
in that strike forced, like most of the other garment
factors in the area in Manhattan to sign those workers
(49:08):
probably would't have burned to death, like they were one
of the only factories that didn't sign on to these
more increased safety cords. So that's yeah, I'm going I
guess a slightly different direction. But it just shows that
like these human people that are so connected to so
many other things happening, like you're in no one's just
a hero, you know. Sometimes you're someone who got beat
(49:29):
up by the cops and decided, Okay, I'm going to
keep going. I'm going to force this system to change
because it's not fair.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Starting with the Starbucks in Buffalo in twenty twenty one,
Starbucks Bristas have been unionizing across the country in states
like California and Utah, and a lot of this energy
is being sparked by a new generation younger folks. Seventy
seven percent of young adults support unions, according to a
September Gallop Pole and I have to say that feels
pretty darn hopeful. We're in this moment where it feels
(49:59):
like a lot of big wins for labor. You know,
the first Starbucks unizing, you know, the JFK eight. I'm
seeing a lot of interesting chatter about unions on places
like TikTok where younger folks hang out like gen Z,
so they're really fire up about unions. Are you hopeful
that we're entering this new era of union power?
Speaker 3 (50:17):
I am always hopeful to the point of almost being
a Pollyanna about these things. And that's I think that is.
It's definitely a conscious decision to be hopeful and be
optimistic because the labor movement has kind of been in
decline since really before I was born, and I'm thirty four,
so I guess, like the entirety that I have been
(50:37):
on this earth, the numbers of union density has been falling.
You know, anti union legislation has been cutting us off
at the knees. There have been all of these factors
like manufacturing. Laura knows what happened there, Like, there have
been all these factors kind of pulling the movement out
of the movement, like kind of putting a damper on things.
(50:59):
We'll say. And you know, facts aren't always fun. Numbers
are not always fun, especially when you're looking at your density.
But we are in a moment where, like you said, specifically,
the younger generation is interested and fired up in paying attention.
And not only are they paying attention, they're doing something.
They're organizing. I mean the Starbucks workers and Amazon workers
like those are younger people. Like not only are they
(51:21):
younger people, they're queer at trands, at black and brown
immigrant workers, like workers fromd these marginalized backgrounds that have
always formed the backbone and the labor movement, but have
not necessarily gotten their due, Like these are the workers
propelling things forward, and that is important and significance. And
even some of the conversation I've seen, like on TikTok
and other places where maybe a traditional labor union isn't
(51:45):
the answer for some specific groups of people, that doesn't
mean that then thinking about it is inconsequential, and that
doesn't mean they're going to find a different way to
organize and find a different way to harness their labor.
Like I got an email from a person actually get
able of them back about a bunch of independent sellers
on Etsy who want to form an independent seller's guild,
(52:06):
and that is that is very interesting, Like I need
to do a little bit of reading to figure out
what to tell them, because like that's kind of a
whole bunch of small business owners coming together and they
want to organize against this bigger company that they are
kind of in dialogue with. Like that is not like
that's tricky. It's a little complicated, but it's very interesting.
Like that is not something that would have happened five
(52:28):
years ago, or maybe even a couple of years ago.
Like all of these new organizing wins and some of
the setbacks and some of the losses, like that is
all working in concert to get people excited and give
people an option, because I think a lot of folks
for a very long time have maybe either felt or
been made to feel like the labor movement isn't for them,
(52:49):
like unions aren't for them. Like back when I was advice,
when someone asked me if I went to unionize, I
was like, we can do that, like we were Williamsburg,
Like there's kombucha and the fridge. Like really, like my
dad's operating engineer, I can be in the same movement
as him, and I could, and so can anyone else.
There are a lot of ways to form a union,
(53:10):
a lot of ways to organize with your coworkers and
build power. And I think this current generation, gosh, it
feels so it makes it feel so old to say that.
I'm like, not older, promise, but definitely people younger than
me are doing really big things. And I don't think
that's gonna stop. Like I know that Amazon is Starbucks
are going to pull out every stop and use every
nefarious legal means and probably extra legal means they can
(53:33):
think of to try and slow this wave down. And
try to, you know, stave off union negotiations and put
a stop to this. But I don't think you can
put that lightning back in the bottle. And I think
if those big corporations keep actively trying to bust up
these unions and break down these organizers, spirits like they're
gonna be consequences. You can't be a big quote unquote
(53:55):
progressive company and be a union buster and have anyone
take you seriously. Like, I think the tide has turned
in a very real way. And I'm sure that there
are labor storians and economists who would have a whole
bunch of like, you know, like my broader perspective and numbers,
and have a lot of things to say about that.
But as someone who's just like studied unions a lot
(54:15):
and talked to a lot of workers, and it's very
excited about unions in general, Like, it feels like a
very cool time to be alive and to be paying attention.
And I am so grateful to those younger workers who
are kind of pushing the movement in this direction where
it's needed to go for so long.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
I love it. I love a hopeful ending.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
I'm just I believe that we will win, even if
it's after I'm dead.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Kim, where can people keep up with all the amazing
worker up to and get the book?
Speaker 3 (54:43):
So you can buy the book anywhere? I mean, fuck Amazon,
but if you got it, you can get it on Amazon.
But I always tell people to uh if you can
either order it from like bookshop or Indie bound or
like an independent bookstore, or get it from the library.
Like the library changed my life. I wouldn't be here
without it. So if for library has it, just get
it there. I don't care. I just want you to
read it. And I'm aggressively online. I am on Twitter
(55:07):
at grim Kim and on Instagram is Kim Kelly writer,
and I have a Patreon thing. I think it's just
Kim Kelly and yeah, I'm too old for TikTok and
all that, but maybe if I figure it out you
can hopefully you'll find me on there. But yeah, give
me the little time my thirties. Man, I've fallen apart.
Speaker 4 (55:23):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Is there anything that I did not ask but you
want to make sure it gets included?
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Mmm? No, this is incredible. But I guess the last
thing I will say is that I wrote this book
for workers, and for regular people to read on their
breaks or on the bus, or when you get home
from a long day, to pick it up and page
through it and hopefully find people on the pages that
ring true to you. I want people to see themselves
(55:48):
in this book and to recognize that they are part
of this incredible history and they're part of the future too,
Like the labor movement has always belonged to all of us,
whether or not the people powers wanted us to recognize that.
And the only way we're going to get closer to
me and free is by working together. You're recognizing that
power and fighting like hell of tabe What's Ours.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
out our March store at tangodi dot com slash store.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at teangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at TENG.
Speaker 4 (56:27):
Goody dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me bridget Tood. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative,
edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada
is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
you want to help us grow, rate and review us
on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out
(56:50):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts
Hey, y'all, it's Joey, producer and sometimes co host for
There Are No Girls on the Internet. This past Wednesday
was International Workers Day, or May Day as it's sometimes called,
and it's a time to celebrate and commemorate working people
and the labor movement around the globe. So today we're
revisiting our conversation with labor historian and punk rocker Kim Kelly,
(00:22):
author of Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor,
about why from Starbucks to tech workers, organized laborer is
having a moment.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And I got to.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Say this episode has a special place in my heart
as a member of a union myself that is the
iHeart Podcast Union. And if you want to learn more
about the work that we do with the Iheartpod Union,
or you just want to show support for the people
that make your favorite podcasts happen, you can check us
out on Instagram or Twitter at Iheartpod Union. That'll be
linked in the show notes as well. All right, here's
(00:52):
the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
When someone will even acknowledge that you work for them,
like they're certainly not going to acknowledge your humanity if
they don't value enough to give you the proper legal paperwork.
They do not care how your day is going. That's
the problem.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgett
and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
We're in what feels like a little bit of a
renaissance when it comes to organized labor and unions. More
and more workers, whether they're barista's at Starbucks or journalists,
(01:38):
are seeing the power of unions and organizing as a collective.
And even though we maybe used to have an idea
that union member as being a white guy working at
an auto factory or steel mill, the faith of who
we understand as somebody who needs a union is really
changing too. More and more media workers and office tech workers,
for instance, are trying to unionize. This shift is something
(02:01):
that labor reporter Kim Kelly is really happy to see.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I'm Kim Kelly, and I'm a independent labor reporter and
the author of Fight Like Hell, The Untold History of
American Labor.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So how did you become someone who cared about labor
and telling the story of all of these different fights?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
So I guess the short answer is I got involved
in organizing my workplace. That's kind of a direct pipeline
right there, right to caring about the labor movement joining it.
But some of the longer answers like, well, I'm from
a union family, from a very like rural working class,
kind of isolated place, and everyone who raised me was
a construction worker, a steel worker, teacher, like everyone was
(02:40):
in the union. It wasn't something that really really talked
about that much, or really it was, you know, really discussed.
It was just part of the job, part of life, like, oh, yeah,
that is in a union. That's why we have health insurance.
That's why he has to go to those meetings sometimes,
that's why he's on strike and we can't go to Walmart,
you know, things like that. And it wasn't really until
I was at Vice, whereas the heavy metal editor and
(03:02):
some colleagues pulled me aside or were like, hey, we
want to form a union, what do you think. I'm like,
hell yeah, and let me get involved in that, that
I realized that there were even it was even an
option like that, there were unions for people like me,
someone who at that point was writing about death metal
on the internet. But it turns out there was and.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
We joined it, Kim got more and more involved in
unions to organize around her own union at the media company.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Vice, and we organized like almost I think by the
time I got laid off in twenty nineteen, we'd organized
like five or six hundred people in the building, and
we'd bark in two different contracts, like we'd gotten raised,
we'd improved the workplace, we'd done a ton, we'd accomplished
a lot. And I was deeply involved the whole time
because being in a union had always kind of appealed
(03:45):
to me as an idea, as something that fit into
my political like my political views and my worldview, and
just kind of felt nice to join that family tradition.
But I didn't really start writing about it with any
sort of regularity or depth until we unionized, and I
was already freelancing a lot working advice because they didn't
pay as shit, until we organized another big endorsement for
(04:07):
unions in a workplace. Yeah, it was freelancing a ton,
And really it just kind of happened by not by accident,
but unexpectedly because I was writing a little bit of
just freelance stuff about the prison industrial complex routine book,
and I pitched them on a profile of Mother Jones,
the labor leader. I thought, Okay, your audience is predominantly
(04:29):
like younger women, Like, here's a cool I kind we
can talk about. And my editor said, yeah, that's a
cool idea, but I don't think our audience necessarily knows
what a union is, so why don't you write about
that first? I was like okay, And I wrote a
little explainer because at that point I'd kind of learned
more about the movement, about the history, from talking the
organizers who work with, from reading books on my own,
(04:50):
from just getting all fired off about union stuff as
like a baby organizer. And I wrote that article and
it kind of was like mini viral. People paying attention
because in twenty seventeen, people weren't necessarily used to looking
to teen Vogue for their like anti capitalist analysis. Yet
they're like what is this? Essentially like it that helped
(05:11):
me out as a freelancer, where I was like, okay,
that went, well, what if you let me do a
whole column and they're like, yeah, okay, we'll try it.
And I was like four years ago and really just
having that experience organizing and kind of learning on the
fly and being a big nerd and loving history books
kind of made me feel like I was allowed to
write about labor, like I had a leg to stand on.
(05:31):
And once I kind of gave myself that permission, I
really just dove in and start writing more and writing more,
talking more. People just kind of fell in love with
the idea, right because I spent my whole life up
till then writing about heavy metal, which is still a
great love and still a huge part of my life.
But I was kind of looking for something new, and
the union happened to be there at exactly the right time.
(05:51):
And once I realized I was going to more union
meetings than heavy metal shows, I thought, Okay, maybe it's
time to actually try and do this. And here we are.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Wow. What what a trajectory. Yeah, I mean it's it's it. Really.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
I see a lot of through lines in your work,
and I I remember the vice unionization fight, and I
I Hart Radio, where my podcast is hosted recently, which
is a big deal. I guess it's a good question,
what do you think of this idea that I don't know.
I often I think that everybody could.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Benefit from a union.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I think that the benefits are there for unions are
for everybody, But I often hear this kind of pushback
that like, oh, what does an office media worker need
a union for? What do you say to things like that?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Oh, it makes it so mad because it's just and
it's always like stupid, like rich white guys on Twitter
that just feel the need to have opinions about Oh, well, Brad,
students don't need a union. Video game workers on need
a union. Journalists don't need a union. You're not working
in a coal mine or in a factory, Okay? Do
you have a boss? You rely on someone else's decisions
(07:02):
to pay your bills? Do you have to go to
an office, do you have coworkers? Are you getting mistreated
or you getting disrespected? Like are you going to a job?
Do you work for someone? Then you need a union.
It is ridiculous to act as though different categories of worker,
whether were you're doing like the white collar blue collar
sort of dichotomy or whatever other artificial division that somebody
(07:24):
with an interest in preserving capital likes to lean on,
like it's It's never been the case that only one
type of worker, one demographic of worker, is allowed to
have a union or is encouraged to have a union
or is benefited from having a union, Like every type
of worker can benefit from having a union, and that's
(07:45):
not even necessarily. You don't have to go through the
specific process of like filing for an election with n RB,
doing all of the kind of bureaucratic red tape bs
that a lot of workers are kind of forced to
deal with. Now to form a union, you can just
get to get other with your coworkers and try and
make some shit happen. Like there's no one way to
be a union member. There's no one way to be
(08:05):
a union and they're all valid and important, and honestly,
building collective power with your coworkers is the most effective
and empowering thing that you can do, because one worker
on their own can only do so much, but a
bunch of us, whether it's five or fifty or five hundred,
that's how you move mountains. Whether you work in an
office where you work in a coal miner, you work
(08:27):
in Amazon, or you're a gig worker, Like, someone is
trying to screw you over, and the only way you
can stop that is by getting together with a bunch
of other people who are feeling screwed over doing something
about it.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I love how you put that.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And that's the thing that I really love about talking
about labor and the you know, collective organizing, and it's
something I really see as a value that it's about
people banning together, oftentimes against massive, powerful companies like Amazon
that have like teams of lawyers and pr and all abys.
(09:04):
But even with all that institutional power, they're not more
powerful than the collective. They're not more powerful than people
coming together. Is that something that you see in these
union stories as well?
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yeah, I mean, Jeff Bezos is the new g ghoul.
Like we talked about that, we're in the new Gilded Age.
The railroad barons, like they controlled the rails, they controlled
all the capital, but the workers built those rails, and
the workers shut them down a whole bunch. Then struck
fear into the hearts of the capitalist class, like there's
always more of us than there are of them. And
(09:36):
I think that's something that workers sometimes forget because we
are so disenfranchised and isolated and beaten down. But the
people on top never forget that, And that's why they
get so frightened and anxious when they see workers organizing,
because they know that they're outnumbered, and that if a
whole bunch of people want to make them do something,
you know we've done it before and we'll do it again.
(09:58):
Like there's the history of labor in this country is
very complicated. There's a lot of wins, there's a lot
of losses. There's a lot of struggle and bloodshed and
beautiful things and terrible things. But every step foward that
we've made as a country has come from workers, has
come from regular working people down in their tools and
saying all right, I've had enough of this shit. Let's
(10:20):
do something. And that is something that has not gone away,
and especially now, I think we're something we're going to
keep seeing more of because it's easier for people to
be connected to one another, it's easier for people to
see other folks taking control. Whether you're a Starbucks customer,
you buy stuff from Amazon, you go to REI, you
have a friend who works as a grad student, Like,
someone in your life is probably part of some kind
(10:42):
of organizing effort, and if they're not, you can help
them start, or you can start your own. Like the
possibilities are endless. Let's take a click right.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Ederer back.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
This right here, this is going to be the catalyst
for the revolution. That's exactly what this is.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I just went to stay.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Back in April, Amazon warehouse workers on Staten Island's JFK eight,
the Amazon warehouse with the most employees in the state
of New York, won a historic bid to form a
labor union. It's the very first Amazon facility in the
United States to have a successful union election, which is huge.
So we know that workers at JFK eight, the Amazon
warehouse in Staten Island, they won a union election and
(11:41):
they kind of went against some of the conventional wisdom,
you know, they started their own independent organization instead of
trying to sort of join and established national union. And
I've read some of your writing on this and it
sounds like to you it really just comes down to
the workers. Can you tell us more about kind of
like what you mean by this.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
So here's the thing, Like what Amazon labor union organizers
did was incredible and inspiring and so important, and it's
also not anything new, right, the idea of building a
union from the ground up, of building real human bonds
and connections and solidarity, forming a community to fight instead
of you know, following a prescriptive playbook doing what you're
(12:23):
supposed to do, because that's how it's done, that's how
it sometimes works, like ione has to do anything like
this is this is the thing. I mean, that's one
of the reasons they're so successful. They kind of threw
out that playbook and drew on whether or not it
was intentional. They drew on these kind of historical examples
of workers in their position doing the exact same thing.
(12:45):
Because the workers that organized to add JFKA predominantly like
younger folks, queer and transpost black and brown workers, immigrant workers,
multi lingual, multi generational, the best, multiracial, multi gender, multi
everything kind of coalition. And that is how workers have
won throughout history. And that is not something that you
maybe find in every mainstream labor history book, but that
(13:08):
is just true. That's just how it is. I Mean,
one of the parallels that I, as a labor nerd
I like to draw between JFKA and history is what
Dorothy Lee Bolden was able to do in the sixties
in Atlanta, and she was a domestic worker from the
age of nine, Like really the majority of black women
(13:29):
and women in that city in that time that had
a job, they worked in domestic service. And she realized like, Okay,
we're not being paid enough, our work isn't being treated
properly as labor. We're being true like garbage, and you
know what, like there's a lot of us. Maybe we
can do something about this. She was actually lived a
few doors down from doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and
she was commisering with him one day and he told her, like, Dorothy,
(13:51):
you know, you can just do something yourself, like if
you want to change things, if you want to organize things,
like just do it. And she did. She organized it
then that from Domestic Workers Union of America, which wasn't
a recognized standard labor union. It wasn't operate within that framework.
It was an independent organization and at its peak the
membership roles hit I think ten thousand people, so all
(14:14):
black women domestic workers in Atlanta, and they built power,
and they built political power, they educated what another, they
shared resources. In order to join, all you had to
show up with was a dollar and a voter registration card.
Showing the intersection between different movements for justice. And it's
such a cool example because she did it her way
and she made a huge difference. You can see there's
(14:35):
a direct line from George Lee Bolden's organization in the
sixties to the current National Domestic Workers Alliance, which I
mean in Philly. A couple of years ago they managed
to pass an incredibly impactful bill that helped get healthcare
for domestic workers in my city. Like, everything builds on
the work that someone did before, whether it's in nineteen
sixty or eighteen sixty, and I'm just excited to see
(14:59):
what's going to happen in fifty years when someone younger
than me writes a book and interviews Chris Smalls and
asks what inspired him? Right, Because we're all part of
than We're all linked in a very long chain, and
you know, one link can do something cool, but that
whole long chain, that's how we get close to where
we need to be.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
I have chills. What a description I used to.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Talk to a lot of union meetings.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I love us.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Is historical?
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Is Amazon versus the people and the.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
People have spoken.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
That's Chris Small's the president and founder of the Amazon
Labor Union. He started working in Amazon warehouses in twenty
fifteen during COVID, when everybody myself included, was ordering a
ton of stuff on Amazon. Chris started to speak out
about how warehouses were putting workers at risk by failing
to meet basic COVID mitigation protocols. So Chris organized a
(15:50):
walk out in protest. He was fired that same day for,
according to Amazon, failing to meet social distancing protocols. So basically,
Amazon was claiming that Chris was the one who was
failing to keep Amazon worker safe, not them, which is
a little sketchy. So Chris organized. He started the Congress
(16:11):
of Essential Workers, which later backed the formation of the
Amazon Labor Union. Amazon suits, like former Obama administration spokesperson
turned Amazon pr and policy chief Jay Carney and David Zablotski,
personally smeared Chris in leaked notes. They called him not
smart and not articulate. In fact, they thought Chris was
so not smart that their plan, according to these reports,
(16:34):
was to make Chris the face of the movement because
certainly that would tank it. Only it backfired. Chris, that
turns out, was an incredibly effective organizer and spokesperson and
would go on to usher in the very first unionized
Amazon warehouse in history. I mean, so you've just hit
on a couple of things that I am fascinated by.
(16:54):
One I do think we have this issue not just
in labor organizing, but in organizing in general, where it's
so tempting to have there be one face, like this
is the person who started this whole thing, when the
reality is it's often so many different stories and voices
coming together, and I get the inclination to make it
(17:16):
about one central figure that like that is such a
such a powerful motivating thing just in our culture, but
that sometimes it can obscure what you were just talking about,
that it's a lineage, it's about a lot of people
coming together and inspiring each other.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Yeah, I saw it. It was interesting because Twitter is
always going to Twitter, but I saw there was some
criticism because people were excited about Chris Mal's who is
the leader of the Amazon labor union, who was kind
of the spark that started that whole movement when he
was fired in twenty nineteen for protesting about COVID safety.
Like you gotta hand it to the guy, even like
(17:50):
like sometimes it is okay to lie andize someone when
they have done something incredible, And I think it is
important for us to have those working class heroes. You know,
of course, like no one person does everything. People are flawed,
people are complicated whishdn't you know? Hero worship is not
something that I would recommend, but acknowledging and appreciating someone's
(18:11):
skill and someone's importance to a movement that doesn't take
away from the collective effort. That's just kind of giving
somebody their flowers and they deserve them. And I think
something that you know, President Small's has done in a
really wonderful way is making clear like the Amazon Labor
Union organizing Committee, like all of us did this. All
of us are in this together, like a lot of
(18:33):
the other organizers are public too, Derk Palmer, Angelic and
Justine Matina, like it was clearly a very collective effort.
But you know, I think it's okay to get excited
about having one person, you know, getting a little bit
more attention, because I mean, we need more heroes. We
need more heroes that look like us and sound like us.
(18:53):
And especially the fact that like a young handsome black
man with gold teeth and tattoos is like the face
of the labor movement in America right now. That is phenomenal,
Like that is going to keep the movement moving, That
is going to bring more people in. We do not
need more white guys in suits, like, we got some
good ones, shout out to them, But like, the white
(19:15):
guys in suits are also a lot of the time
the people that have their boots on our neck. I
think it is very important to recognize who the working
class is and what they look like, what we look like,
and sound like a talk like to build those connections,
to bring more people in and show that there's so
much more room in the movement for every other cut
type of person. And you know, I don't want to
(19:36):
talk too much shit on the white guys and suits.
Some of them are great, but some of them are
and they've had plenty of a time to bask in
their attention over the years. I think it is perfectly
fine to give someone else a shot.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Absolute Absolutely, every single time I see a photo or
a video of Chris Small's and it's fitted in his
do rag talking to an elected official, I'm like, yes.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
This is like, it just feels good to see like.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And honestly, if I'm being honest, him being like his
trajectory is what got me fired up about the Amazon fight.
I will never forget the way that Amazon suits use
this like very clearly racially coded language to refer to
him and discredit him. He's inarticulate, he's not smart, he's
not a deep thinker. And I feel like every black
(20:24):
and brown person, every immigrant, or anybody connected this to
one of those communities knew exactly what these Amazon suits
were trying to do. And what's so funny is that,
a they were really downplaying the multi racial workers that
that keep their company running, that made that like they
would be nothing without. And I think that they really
(20:45):
kind of shot themselves in the foot because in the end,
they made Chris like this lionized face of their movement
because like it kind of in spite of their trying
to discredit him, And boy, they couldn't have picked a
more effective spokes person, right, like the wrong.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
One for that if they were trying to keep like
they even said in some of their little leaked internal memos,
like we're gonna make him the face of this. And
I remember when they want he tweeted like, you know, thanks,
like a call that was the worst mistake ever made.
It's like it just shows this massive disconnect between the
people in the c suite doing whatever the fuck is
they do all day and the people actually working and
(21:22):
living these communities and trying to build power, trying to survive,
Like why wouldn't people respond to a character like Chris,
Like why wouldn't people want to talk to other folks
in the organizing committee that speak their language and live
in their neighborhoods and take the bus with them? Like
why would someone listen to some rich guy in a
suit and when they could talk to someone that they're
(21:44):
used to seeing, like out in the neighborhood, who like
someone whose cousin you know? Like why It's it's like
a century apart. But thinking about the way that the
workers in the organizing committee Amazon were able to build
power and bridge these kind of artificial divisions, it reminds
you of this example. They're with me again. I'm a giant.
(22:05):
I just wrote a whole book about it. But in
nineteen forty six, the Great Sugar Strike in Hawaii. At
that time and probably still but especially at that time,
the sugar game plantations in the islands were owned entirely
by white guys who lived in the mainland, and they
were worked by native Hawaiians as well as Chinese, Korean,
(22:25):
Puerto Rican, Filipino, Japanese immigrants. But prenominantly Asian workforce from
all sorts of different places, lots of different languages, and
the bosses had a very explicit policy of treating different
workers differently, unequally, so that like some workers made more
than others. They kept all of the workers in different
segregated camps so that Chinese workers and Filipino workers, Korean
(22:48):
workers wouldn't really see one another, wouldn't really talk to
one another. And they did that because they wanted to
make sure the workers weren't organized. They wanted to be
able to use different groups of workers against one another,
and like earlier strikes, Filipino workers were brought in too
active strike breakers. When Japanese field workers went on strike,
there were a lot of instances of that kind of
thing happening. And when it came time to strike in
(23:10):
nineteen forty six, the ILWU in National Longshore and Warehouse
Workers Union were really cool radical union. Their history is read.
There's time to strike, and they realized, Okay, we can't
let them break us apart like that again. We need
to pull people together, and how do we do that.
They brought in translators and made sure everybody in every
meeting felt heard and understood what's happening. They had different
(23:32):
groups of workers cooked for one another and share recipes
and build community that way. Same thing they did in
the parking lot at Staten Island. They brought people together
on a human level and showed them, you know, you're
all being exploited, you're all being treated like garbage, you're
all being You're all in this together, whether or not
you chose to be, so why not embrace it and
try to become more powerful together? And it worked and
(23:54):
they won. They won like the first big raised in
like twenty years. And that's exactly what I thought about
when I heard about, you know, the barbecues and the
jolof rice and all of the just the very personal,
intimate kind of organizing and connecting those happening in the
parking lot and then the breakroom in Amazon and JFKA. Like,
when you connect with people as people and listen to
(24:16):
them and hear them, that's when magic happens. Like it
sounds so basic, but I feel like people in charge
don't get that because they don't see us as people.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah, that's and I think it really goes back to
what you were saying, that people coming together, people uniting
in the power of community and shared vision and a
collective that's such a powerful force. And it's not surprising
to me that the powers that be, whether it's you know,
sugarcane owners or Amazon, it's like, oh, we got to
(24:48):
keep these people divided, We got to keep them. We
have to really inflame these divisions, because when they come together,
there's more of them than there are of us, and
they are very powerful.
Speaker 4 (24:56):
And so just figuring out ways to to.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Really rely on those community bonds, I think is so
important and valuable, and.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Like unions have screwed that up over the years too.
The labor movement is not the track record is not great,
especially when it comes to like I mean even now
right so earlier I always think about this example that
makes me so mad, the American Federation of Labor, which
was like an earlier organization that later got folded into
They'll say, oh, that's the whole thing, But I mean, like
(25:26):
the eighteen hundreds, eighteen eighties, when the Chinese Exclusion Act
was passed, the AFL were big supporters, They're all about it,
and that was obviously incredibly xenophobrig racist legislation that kept
Chinese workers and other Asian workers out of the country
for decades, and at that point, those labor leaders embraced
that because they didn't want people to come in and
(25:47):
take their members' jobs. And now that is a familiar
refrain that we've seen throughout the centuries. Like at one
point it was women, then it was black workers, Chinese
and other Asian workers. It's Mexican, South American, Central American
workers who are being painted with that brush. Like there's
always this reactionary impulse in some corners to say that, oh,
(26:09):
these other people are coming in and taking everything we built. Wow,
fuck do you think you built in the first place?
By organizing people and trying to help workers, like that
kind of mentality is harmed the movement and harms so
many workers over the century, Like just the thought of
seeing a new group of workers coming in who are
more vulnerable, who are desperate for work, who are in
(26:31):
a marginalized position, and thinking, oh, no, they're gonna mess
with our guys, our people, instead of thinking, oh, we
need to organize them and bring them in so we
can help them out, and like our union will be
stronger as a result. The unions who have done that
are still around like they are more effective than the
ones that were you know, exclusionary. And I've refused to
(26:52):
kind of get with the times and realize that all
workers deserve a union, and all workers maybe deserve to
join your union depending on what you do. Is like
I think a good example of unions kind of and
this isn't necessarily like that type of division. This is
more like just workplace division. But I think about the
United Autoworkers, who are obviously the storied industrial union, Like
(27:14):
there's I touched on them in the book, and they're
you know, they've been around forever. They're synonymous with like
Detroit at the rust Bell and like you know, the
automotive industry, and right now, out of their four hundred
thousand members, a quarter of those one hundred thousand people
they're grand students. They work in education, They work in
colleges and universities in California and across the country. Like
(27:37):
and that is the big shift, and that's a great
Like that is how you evolve. That is how you
grow and stay relevant. Like sure, an adjuct professor at
you know, University California has a different experience from someone
working in a plant in Flint, Michigan. But that doesn't
mean that they still don't need those higher wages, those
(27:58):
better working conditions, that protection to the union contract, Like
we're all in this together. And the sooner than people
realize that and act and organize around that principle, like
sooner we're gonna get shit.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
Done, the sooner we'll get free.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
I mean, really, it's so simple that people will fuck
it up so much over here more after a.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Quick break, let's get right back into it. So this
is probably where I should say that I have a
pretty complicated personal relationship with Amazon. If you walked into
(28:45):
my apartment building on any given day, there's probably a
few Amazon boxes shamefully stacked up in the trash, And
I honestly don't want to tell you how much I
order from them.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Let's just say it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And I'd be willing to bet that I am not
a It's just the truth that our myself, very much included,
individual actions impact what life is like for workers at
Amazon warehouses.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
So what should we do? So to that vein of.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Sort of the sooner we realize we're all in this together,
I have to sort of admit something something that I'm
like it's one of It's probably there's probably not many
things in my life that I am like more deeply
personally ashamed of than my personal relationship to Amazon. I
got very hooked on it during the pandemic. And what
I really mean is like I was clearly sort of
(29:32):
like relying on it to experience like a short term
serotonin boost of like new shit at my door because
I was depressed and said, like like most you, oh,
there's a sepoura box right behind you, right behind this
laptop that you can't see. So I yeah, And I
think there are probably people out.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
There listening who can relate.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
You know, do you think that there is a need
for all of us to sort of recalibrate around the
human cost of companies like Amazon and.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Sort of just like what it means.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
You know, I've listened to Amazon workers talk about how
they're not robots, but I think it can be hard
for people, especially people who might kind of have to
rely on Amazon for whatever reason, like maybe they have
a disability, maybe they're a new mom, and like you know,
it's just like how shit gets done in their household.
I don't know, I guess I wonder how can we
is there a way for us to sort of meaningly
recalibrate so that people to to sort of feel more
(30:30):
attuned with the fact that, like, yeah, the reason why
I was able to get a new hat in twenty
four hours is because of a person who brought it
here and a person who put it in a box
for me.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
And that's hard. That's one of the great conundrums of
modern existence, right, like the idea of like no es
coal consumption under capitalism. I'm probably not even smart enough
to discuss all the implications of that, right, And I
do think that it's important to recognize that individual people
should not necessarily be on the hook for the actions
of massive corporations and the failed government that it's allowed
that things to get to this point. I mean, I
(31:02):
personally try to avoid Amazon, but like half the time
that just means I'm trying to find someone on Walmart
dot com. You know, like it's not we're kind of
we're stuck in this current reality. I mean, you can
do little things like instead of pushing for two day shipping,
go for like the later option, you know, like if
you're able, just go to the store, like if you
(31:22):
are not, Because a lot of people, like you said,
are dependent on delivery services because they're disabled, they're mun
to compromise, they have other stressors on their life that
means that they need to use these services. And I
think that is fine, Like people need to survive and
people need to thrive in the ways that they're able to.
But yeah, I think that ditching Amazon would be cool.
But then if everyone in the nation was like, we're
(31:43):
gonna boycott Amazon and then did it, that would be cool.
That would have an impact. But the US government still
pays Amazon to like use the Internet, Like there's all
that their tentacles are so deep into everything we consume
in every part of our existence, as like being to
use technology that there's only so much individual consumers can do.
(32:04):
So I don't know, like try to avoid it if
you can. But like halftime, my mother in law sends
us crap off Amazon anyway, Like there's she does not
listen to me, she's to Tellian. So it's a hard question, right,
Like I think even what you're talking about now, like
this step of realism, Like I got this because a
person brought it to me, a person pacted. That person
(32:25):
might be in pain, that person might be having a
hard time. Even just internalizing and understanding that aspect of
things will probably impact your consumer habits and will probably
impact the way you see, you know, petitions about workers
asking for better working conditions, or the way that you
support union drives. Like. I think the first step that
any person can take, no matter of the situation, is
(32:47):
to recognize the human cost of this. You know, these
consumption patterns, this setup, this whole you know, capitalist healthscape,
we're trapped within, like and then what you do from
there is kind of up to you. But I think
the putting the onus on individual people to fix all
this stuff isn't really fair when we have a government
(33:10):
and a social system and a capitalist society to blame.
You know, you can if we all got together and
did a boycott, that would be cool, But I don't know,
It's it's a hard question, right, Like, how do you
go up against a giant when you're not like because
consumers there's probably way that consumers could organize against Amazon,
but I don't know that will look like a boycott
(33:31):
a strike. It's I feel like people I see people
talking about, oh, we get a boycott Amazon all the
time whenever news comes out of how terrible they are.
I'm like, yeah, avoid them if you can, But I
think we need some kind of greater concentrated strategy if
we really wanted to take them down, and then what
will come after them? Would are we gonna go after
Walmart and Target? Like that's cool too, but it's it's
(33:53):
a big thorning thing. And if it comes down to it,
at the very least, don't pick twenty four hours ship.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah, that's that's that's a good like practical if you've
got to, if you've got a little bit of a
problematic relationship with Amazon, like I do, at least you
know you can you can make that experience if you're
going to buy from them, make that experience a little
less crappy for some of the workers who are doing
the work to bring you your serotonin boost or the
(34:22):
like life saving medicine that you need or what have you.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Right, Yeah, it's it comes down to remembering that there
are people in those warehouses and a lot of them
are in pain, and a lot of them are struggling.
Some of them are going to lose their lives because
the way that Amazon operates. And I mean, maybe I'm
not a big electoral guy, but pressuring your elected officials
to try and do something about Amazon and corporations like that,
that could be an avenue for people too. I feel
(34:46):
like there's a lot of different ways to slay a giant,
or at least, you know, cut a couple pounds of
flesh off of them. And hopefully one thing we'll see
from the success of Amazon laboring and drive and you know,
hopefully more rumblings that we'll see across the countries that
people will realize what's happening and realize the role they
play and just maybe reevaluate the way that they interact
(35:07):
with that system. And you know, if they have friends
at Amazon, maybe tell them about the union they union.
It would be a good step too.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I mean it's so interesting because I was reading the
story yesterday, I think it was yesterday about how the
food delivery service grub Hub had this free they were
gonna do free lunch for three hours yesterday, and it
basically was a shit show. All the kitchens were really
backed up, and come to find out, they didn't tell
any of the kitchens or the delivery drivers that this
(35:36):
was happening, And so part of me was like, are
they just so divorced from the idea of like human
labor that they didn't even think that they needed to give.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
These people a heads up on what they were doing.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
It's like, I mean, they don't consider those people employees
even even though they clearly work for the country, and
they don't consider them like equal partners when they're dealing
with these kindive restaurants. I mean, grub mom is so shady.
I was just reading today, like I live supporter from
like an incredible Indonesian restaurant and they're posting an Instagram
like please don't order for rephub. We didn't ask to
be on there. They don't have our prices right, Like
(36:09):
we were trying to get them to take it down,
like they will do that. They'll try and encroach on
independent businesses like whole operations, just because they think it
might get them more of a commission. Like they don't
care about the people they quote unquote partner with at all,
whether they're business owners and restaurant workers or those livery workers.
Like it does come with them down to that idea
(36:29):
that the people that are doing this labor are invisible
to the people that are making these decisions that impact
their days, like, Oh, they'll figure it out. Oh, there's
plenty of drivers. Oh there's so many ways to justify
treating people poorly if you don't have their welfare and
their well being at the top of your mind. And
that's clearly what happens with these tech companies. They don't
(36:51):
like the fact that so many people that work for
tech companies are resigned in this weird nether realm of
gig work instead of just being given a W two.
And clearly now as the employees they are, like when
someone will even acknowledge that you work for them, Like,
they're certainly not going to acknowledge your humanity if they
don't value enough to give you the proper legal paperwork,
they do not care how your day is going. And
(37:14):
that is the problem.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It is a problem.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
I mean, it's I it's so interesting to me how
oftentimes tech company when we're talking about organized labor, it's
often conversations about tech companies. Do you do you see
technology and labor as linked?
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, and I'm not. I'm not a technology guy. And
there's definitely reporters who do really good work in that space,
but especially folks at Motherboard shout out to Edward m.
Wiso and Lauren Gurley, they're really on top of those
those intersections. I'm kind of a dummy when it comes
to tech stuff, but even just in terms of what
you see happening, whether it's in like the gig work
world or the increasing surveillance that companies are able to
(37:54):
levy against you need organize, you know, Amazon's little band
word list on their internal chat or whole big brother
aspect of them being able to monitor everything you do. Like,
technology and labor have always been connected, I mean going
back to the Industrial Revolution, right, like that new technology
that came in back in the day pulled people out
of an uprooted society, pulled people into these factories and
(38:17):
these dark satanic mills totally kind of reconceive the way
people related to labor and wage labor specifically. I mean.
One of the things about tech work and like gigwork.
I keep harping on this gigwork gig economy thing, but
I think it is so insiduous and it is such
a big issue in labor right now, is that that's
not necessarily a new thing either. Because when you think
(38:38):
about gigwork, like someone who is a gig worker. You're
giving little assignments and you get a little bit of
money for every little piece that you do. You don't
have a specific set workday or set hours. You're just
kind of picking up whatever scraps come your way and
trying to piece together something you can survive on. That
is a very old concept, going back to the early
nineteen hundreds something called piece garment workers in New York
(39:02):
City specifically that time, the would spend all day laboring
at the factory and all day I mean like twelve
plus hours and poorly ventilated, hot or cold, locked door,
just nightmare places. They and a lot of them were women,
a lot of them were children. Well, these folks would
go spend all day in the factory and then come
home and they would bring home more scraps of fabric
(39:22):
or unfinished projects and work on these pieces and they
would get paid by the piece. And basically like they
they're kind of the predecessors of the folks that are
stuck in this predicament right now because they didn't have
I mean, they had their their day job, but they
were trying to make more money. So they're being paid
so poorly at their day job by doing these bits
and pieces, and of course they got short changed. Of
(39:45):
course they were. You know, this isn't like in the
era of candle light. So imagine someone hunched over sewing
a shirt waist at one am in the morning. Poor
they had to wake up at five to go to
the factory. Like that is not that far removed from
what today's delivery drivers and rideshare app drivers and all
of the other things that are now being grouped into
(40:06):
this sort of amorphous gigwork, remote work. Just this weird
morass of garbage. It happened before, and regulations and labor
laws and progress in that space kind of chipped away
at that, And right now we're kind of in this
weird wild West zone where tech companies can do whatever
(40:28):
they want, which seems like maybe somebody in charge to
do something about that, but half the people in charge
are like friends with the tech people. So it's a
little bit of a different world. But some things really
haven't changed.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, I definitely, I definitely see that as well. So
I want to talk about the book a little bit.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
YEA, so.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Fight like Hell, the Untold Story, Untold History of American labor.
You're really right about the ways that people who have
been historically marginalized, like women and black folks and indigenous
folks were the life blood of labor and always have been,
and like our stories and our voices were always there,
even though you know, I feel like the face of
what we think of as someone involved in a union
(41:10):
is like a white male. I guess my question is one,
how do we make sure that we're telling a more
authentic story of what the face of labor actually looks like?
And are there any do you have a favorite figure
or person who you want to get more shine in
the history of labor?
Speaker 3 (41:28):
Yeah? Well, okay, is it the second part and the
second but I think like as one of the most
important things to realize I'm recognized. It's like, you know,
the subtitle is the Untold History, And that's not to
say that folks haven't been telling these stories the whole time, right,
Like the workers told them in the first place, and
then contemporary journalists and chroniclers wrote them down, and then
historians and academic research as archivists, they dug into the
(41:50):
past and pulled out all these pieces and preserved them
and analyzed them and you know, tuck them away somewhere safe.
So then like journalists and nerds like me could come
in and kind of pull together and synthesize that information
and bring it out further people to see. I think
so much of it comes down to people that are
in a position to elevate these stories and write about labor,
write about history, do it in a way that's accessible
(42:11):
and intersectional and inclusive, Like it's not that hard, Like
literally you could like any labor book you could pick up,
Like there are black and brown and indigenous and queer
and disabled folks and women and every other gender like
in those stories too. It just depends on what you
choose to focus on. And I think that is something
(42:33):
that people can be more mindful of, and certainly not
folks in the academic space who are like very specifically
research specific groups or eras, like whether it's like Judy
Young who wrote a book called Unbound feed of social
History of San Francisco that was hugely impactful for my
research into that area, or doctor Turr Hunter who wrote
(42:54):
to Enjoy My Freedom, which is about Black women's labor
post reconstruction. Like, academics have done this work, but it
is not necessarily on offer to everyone, right, Like you
can't necessarily walk into a library and pick up their
books that you should be able to. It's there's a
little bit of a gap between what's available to folks
in the academic space and most available to folks that
(43:16):
like maybe walk by Barnes and Noble on their way
home from work. And it's really important to me to
pull together as much as I could from that history,
and you know, pull from tons and tons of research
and different historians and newspapers and magazine articles and interviews
and put it together in a way that made it
very clear that everyone else has always been here and
(43:36):
it's done incredible things. And I hope that people will
read my book and then read the bibliography and follow
those breadcrumbs and find some more of those those important writings,
because this is just the beginning. This is kind of
an intro to a lot of these folks. Like one
of the people to your second question, one of the
people that I was so excited to write about because
(43:57):
I thought I knew so much about her. Turns out
I was wrong. A woman named Lucy Parsons who and
I knew about her just from my involvement like Radical Space.
She's kind of like an anarchist art icon, and I
had read an earlier biography of her from the seventies,
I'd read her own writings. I thought I had a
pretty good grip on who she was. But then this
history named Jacqueline Jones put out a book a couple
(44:20):
of years ago called A Goddess of Anarchy that was
this exhaustively researched biography of Lucy Parson's life. And it
turns out that the common wisdom about her and her
life was pretty wrong during her lifetime, and Lucy Parsons,
she was kind of a chameleon. It was kind of
to her. She decided to shape shift a little bit
(44:42):
and hide who she was in order to be more
impactful in her work and more easily relatable to the
white factory workers she was trying to organize, right, because
she presented herself as a mixed like Spanish and indigenous
maiden from Texas. That's how she said she was, and
she said she was from there. She moved to Chicago
with her husband, Albert Parsons in the late eighteen hundreds,
(45:04):
and they set up shop and started organizing in the
anarchist community and the labor community. Like she was a
dressmaker and she organized lady like women garment workers, and
she she had like a very interesting overlap when it
comes to like labor and inarchist politics, revolutionary politics, because
at that time a lot of those folks were the
same people like that was a very not incestuous, but
(45:26):
a very interconnected community, like it kind of still is
now right like radicals, we've always been here, We've always
been getting up to mischief in the labor movement elsewhere.
But so yeah, she was she and she was a
co founder of the Industrial Works for the World. IWW
like she she had an impact in the labor community
certainly and in labor history. But Lucy Parsons was not
(45:46):
who she said she was. She was born in Virginia
on a plantation. She was a black woman who was
born enslaved, who moved out to Texas following emancipation, and
then she kind of built up her own mythology to
protect herself and for other reasons that I don't know
what went through her head. I haven't met her, but
she was just this fascinating character and she intersected with
(46:10):
so many different pieces of so many different movements. But
I tried to write better in a way that showed
like how important and interesting and like radical and militon
she was, but also acknowledged like she was not perfect,
like even outside of her own identity, and you know
the way she presented herself like she did. She made
some pretty gnarly decisions in her life, and you can
(46:30):
read more about it. But it was a challenge to
write about a figure that I've admired for so long
and to kind of address a little bit of the
ugular and messy humanity of a person like that. But
I was really excited to include her because I feel
like she's very well known in radical circles, but labor people,
unless you're like in Chicago and have a specific interest
(46:51):
in that point in time, you probably don't know that
much about Lucy Parson, so you probably have a pretty
negative view of her and the other anarchists, and hoping
to kind of, I don't know, present a more balanced
view of someone who I think is a really important
historical figure.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
That's fascinating and it really does go back to recognizing
humanity and sort of if you only know Lucy Persons
as this you know hero figure that you miss out
on all these other parts of who she was and
how and what made her her and how she showed
up in the world.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Isn't it better to have a messy, complex, honest human
person to to, you know, look to for guidance than
a hero than someone who, like you know, is just
isn't isn't all of those things right?
Speaker 3 (47:40):
Because that just makes it seem like a storybook kind
of situation or a fairytale instead of a flesh and
blood person, a historical thing that happened. And so many
of the people in this book are complicated or they've
been either people that have been kind of left out
or they have been included but not in the fullness
of their whole experience. Like I started out the book
(48:00):
in one of the earlier chapters talking about the Triangle
Shirwey's Factory fire, which I feel like a lot of
people know about that. That's a big one. And Clara Lemlick,
one of the organizers of the Garment Workers Union, that
was kind of in that mediu right, like she was
part of the uprosing of the twenty thousand in nineteen
oh nine. She that was before the Triangle Factory fire.
But they're connected because Clara Lemlich, who was often painted
(48:23):
as this just kind of spunky girl who stood up
in a meeting and said we're going to go on strike,
like she was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who had been
organizing for years. She had gotten her ribs broken by
the cops on a picket line, like she was an organizer,
she was out there, like she was not just a
spontaneous romantic heroine, like she was in that struggle. And
(48:46):
like the connection with the triangle of Shirtway factory fire
is that the work that Clara Lemlix and other organizers
predominantly at that point Eastern European Jewish women and Italian women,
the work they had done. If the owners of that
factory had signed on to the agreement that those organizers
in that strike forced, like most of the other garment
factors in the area in Manhattan to sign those workers
(49:08):
probably would't have burned to death, like they were one
of the only factories that didn't sign on to these
more increased safety cords. So that's yeah, I'm going I
guess a slightly different direction. But it just shows that
like these human people that are so connected to so
many other things happening, like you're in no one's just
a hero, you know. Sometimes you're someone who got beat
(49:29):
up by the cops and decided, Okay, I'm going to
keep going. I'm going to force this system to change
because it's not fair.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Starting with the Starbucks in Buffalo in twenty twenty one,
Starbucks Bristas have been unionizing across the country in states
like California and Utah, and a lot of this energy
is being sparked by a new generation younger folks. Seventy
seven percent of young adults support unions, according to a
September Gallop Pole and I have to say that feels
pretty darn hopeful. We're in this moment where it feels
(49:59):
like a lot of big wins for labor. You know,
the first Starbucks unizing, you know, the JFK eight. I'm
seeing a lot of interesting chatter about unions on places
like TikTok where younger folks hang out like gen Z,
so they're really fire up about unions. Are you hopeful
that we're entering this new era of union power?
Speaker 3 (50:17):
I am always hopeful to the point of almost being
a Pollyanna about these things. And that's I think that is.
It's definitely a conscious decision to be hopeful and be
optimistic because the labor movement has kind of been in
decline since really before I was born, and I'm thirty four,
so I guess, like the entirety that I have been
(50:37):
on this earth, the numbers of union density has been falling.
You know, anti union legislation has been cutting us off
at the knees. There have been all of these factors
like manufacturing. Laura knows what happened there, Like, there have
been all these factors kind of pulling the movement out
of the movement, like kind of putting a damper on things.
(50:59):
We'll say. And you know, facts aren't always fun. Numbers
are not always fun, especially when you're looking at your density.
But we are in a moment where, like you said, specifically,
the younger generation is interested and fired up in paying attention.
And not only are they paying attention, they're doing something.
They're organizing. I mean the Starbucks workers and Amazon workers
like those are younger people. Like not only are they
(51:21):
younger people, they're queer at trands, at black and brown
immigrant workers, like workers fromd these marginalized backgrounds that have
always formed the backbone and the labor movement, but have
not necessarily gotten their due, Like these are the workers
propelling things forward, and that is important and significance. And
even some of the conversation I've seen, like on TikTok
and other places where maybe a traditional labor union isn't
(51:45):
the answer for some specific groups of people, that doesn't
mean that then thinking about it is inconsequential, and that
doesn't mean they're going to find a different way to
organize and find a different way to harness their labor.
Like I got an email from a person actually get
able of them back about a bunch of independent sellers
on Etsy who want to form an independent seller's guild,
(52:06):
and that is that is very interesting, Like I need
to do a little bit of reading to figure out
what to tell them, because like that's kind of a
whole bunch of small business owners coming together and they
want to organize against this bigger company that they are
kind of in dialogue with. Like that is not like
that's tricky. It's a little complicated, but it's very interesting.
Like that is not something that would have happened five
(52:28):
years ago, or maybe even a couple of years ago.
Like all of these new organizing wins and some of
the setbacks and some of the losses, like that is
all working in concert to get people excited and give
people an option, because I think a lot of folks
for a very long time have maybe either felt or
been made to feel like the labor movement isn't for them,
(52:49):
like unions aren't for them. Like back when I was advice,
when someone asked me if I went to unionize, I
was like, we can do that, like we were Williamsburg,
Like there's kombucha and the fridge. Like really, like my
dad's operating engineer, I can be in the same movement
as him, and I could, and so can anyone else.
There are a lot of ways to form a union,
(53:10):
a lot of ways to organize with your coworkers and
build power. And I think this current generation, gosh, it
feels so it makes it feel so old to say that.
I'm like, not older, promise, but definitely people younger than
me are doing really big things. And I don't think
that's gonna stop. Like I know that Amazon is Starbucks
are going to pull out every stop and use every
nefarious legal means and probably extra legal means they can
(53:33):
think of to try and slow this wave down. And
try to, you know, stave off union negotiations and put
a stop to this. But I don't think you can
put that lightning back in the bottle. And I think
if those big corporations keep actively trying to bust up
these unions and break down these organizers, spirits like they're
gonna be consequences. You can't be a big quote unquote
(53:55):
progressive company and be a union buster and have anyone
take you seriously. Like, I think the tide has turned
in a very real way. And I'm sure that there
are labor storians and economists who would have a whole
bunch of like, you know, like my broader perspective and numbers,
and have a lot of things to say about that.
But as someone who's just like studied unions a lot
(54:15):
and talked to a lot of workers, and it's very
excited about unions in general, Like, it feels like a
very cool time to be alive and to be paying attention.
And I am so grateful to those younger workers who
are kind of pushing the movement in this direction where
it's needed to go for so long.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
I love it. I love a hopeful ending.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
I'm just I believe that we will win, even if
it's after I'm dead.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Kim, where can people keep up with all the amazing
worker up to and get the book?
Speaker 3 (54:43):
So you can buy the book anywhere? I mean, fuck Amazon,
but if you got it, you can get it on Amazon.
But I always tell people to uh if you can
either order it from like bookshop or Indie bound or
like an independent bookstore, or get it from the library.
Like the library changed my life. I wouldn't be here
without it. So if for library has it, just get
it there. I don't care. I just want you to
read it. And I'm aggressively online. I am on Twitter
(55:07):
at grim Kim and on Instagram is Kim Kelly writer,
and I have a Patreon thing. I think it's just
Kim Kelly and yeah, I'm too old for TikTok and
all that, but maybe if I figure it out you
can hopefully you'll find me on there. But yeah, give
me the little time my thirties. Man, I've fallen apart.
Speaker 4 (55:23):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
Is there anything that I did not ask but you
want to make sure it gets included?
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Mmm? No, this is incredible. But I guess the last
thing I will say is that I wrote this book
for workers, and for regular people to read on their
breaks or on the bus, or when you get home
from a long day, to pick it up and page
through it and hopefully find people on the pages that
ring true to you. I want people to see themselves
(55:48):
in this book and to recognize that they are part
of this incredible history and they're part of the future too,
Like the labor movement has always belonged to all of us,
whether or not the people powers wanted us to recognize that.
And the only way we're going to get closer to
me and free is by working together. You're recognizing that
power and fighting like hell of tabe What's Ours.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
out our March store at tangodi dot com slash store.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at teangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at TENG.
Speaker 4 (56:27):
Goody dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:28):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me bridget Tood. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative,
edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.
Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada
is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
you want to help us grow, rate and review us
on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out
(56:50):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts
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