What can the history of strikes teach us about our power in the present moment? - Online event

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Sunday, July 26
10 am Pacific, 11 am Mountain, 12 pm Central, 1 pm Eastern

What can the history of strikes teach us about our power in the present moment?

 

Time is running out to prevent full-blown climate catastrophe. Intertwined crises of wealth inequality, poverty, racism, and corporate despotism are deepening.
 
When working people refuse to go to work -- when we put a stick in society's gears -- we can make enormous changes quite rapidly. There are many historical examples of this, including, flawed though it was, the New Deal.

Labor organizer, climate activist, and historian Jeremy Brecher will speak and then answer questions. He is the author of Strike! and the co-founder and policy and research director of the Labor Network for Sustainability.
 
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PM Press Releases 50th Anniversary Edition of Jeremy Brecher's Strike!

Jeremy Brecher’s Strike! narrates the dramatic story of repeated, massive, and sometimes violent revolts by ordinary working people in America. Involving nationwide general strikes, the seizure of vast industrial establishments, nonviolent direct action on a massive scale, and armed battles with artillery and tanks, this exciting hidden history is told from the point of view of the rank-and-file workers who lived it.

Encompassing the repeated repression of workers’ rebellions by company-sponsored violence, local police, state militias, and the U.S. Army and National Guard, it reveals a dimension of American history rarely found in the usual high school or college history course.

Since its original publication in 1972, no book has done as much as Strike! to bring U.S. labor history to a wide audience. Now this fiftieth anniversary edition brings the story up to date with chapters covering the “mini-revolts of the twenty-first century,” including Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for Fifteen.

The new edition contains over a hundred pages of new materials and concludes by examining a wide range of current struggles, ranging from #BlackLivesMatter, to the great wave of teachers' strikes “for the soul of public education,” to the global “Student Strike for Climate” that may be harbingers of mass strikes to come.

Jeremy Brecher's Strike! is history narrated by a labor and climate activist on our side of the class struggle.

Jeremy Brecher
has participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, peace, international labor rights, global economic justice, accountability for war crimes, climate protection, and many others. He is the author of fifteen books on labor and social movements, including the national best seller Strike!. He has received five regional Emmy awards for his documentary film work. He is currently policy and research director for the Labor Network for Sustainability.

Comments on Strike!

“Jeremy Brecher’s Strike! is a classic of American historical writing. This new edition, bringing his account up to the present, comes amid rampant inequality and growing popular resistance. No book could be more timely for those seeking the roots of our current condition.”
—Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize winner and DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University

“Magnificent—a vivid, muscular labor history, just updated and rereleased by PM Press, which should be at the side of anyone who wants to understand the deep structure of force and counterforce in America.”
—JoAnn Wypijewski, author of Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence

“An exciting history of American labor. Brings to life the flashpoints of labor history. Scholarly, genuinely stirring.”
New York Times

“Splendid . . . clearly the best single-volume summary yet published of American general strikes.”
Washington Post

“A magnificent book. I hope it will take its place as the standard history of American labor.”
—Staughton Lynd, author of Solidarity Unionism and coauthor of Labor Law for the Rank and Filer

How to Get the Book:

The 640-page 50th Year Edition of Strike! is available direct from PM Press for $28.95 paperback; $60.00 hard cover; and $8.95 e-book.

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Date: 
Sunday, July 26, 2020 - 10:00