Welcome to episode one of Fragile Juggernaut, the first project from Haymarket Originals! In episode one, we introduce our “organizing committee” of six rotating hosts and our goals for this collective project of inquiry into the history of the U.S. workers’ movement.
We then tackle a key historical question: what was the American working class? We begin the story of the CIO in the nineteenth century in order to identify the different groups—immigrants, farmers, artisans, enslaved workers—who comprised the “raw materials” of an inchoate working class. Following their varied paths into wage work, and their relationship to the politics that resulted in the Civil War, the episode ends with the rise of industrial corporations, most notably the railroads, and the political compromise that ended Reconstruction—with a national uprising of workers in 1877. That mass action anticipates what’s to come for the emerging labor movement.
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
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We'll be back soon with more episodes of Heat the Ground Up!
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, Starbucks management takes the anti-union campaign to a new level and, after a series of bad management decisions, workers in San Antonio are driven to unionize. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World by Daniel Gross, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we get an inside look at how the baristas at Blanco, in San Antonio Texas, win a union with help from Starbucks Workers United. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine by Jeff Schuhrke, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we’ll hear workers fight for material gains and develop a concrete understanding of how union organizing can counteract exploitation and change workers’ lives. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner’s Daughter by Beth Howard, which is 10% off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.