Episode 12: Barbara Ransby

In this twelfth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Barbara Ransby, professor of history at the University of Illinois-Chicago.  Barbara has written extensively on the Black Freedom Movement on topics ranging from Ella Baker and Eslanda Robeson to the current Black Lives Matter movement. Our conversation took place soon after the release of the videos of the Chicago police’s killing of 13-year old Adam Toledo and we began our talk examining the battle for justice in the face of police brutality.  We moved on to look at the relationship between policing and political economy.  During the episode other topics included:The nature of racial capitalismThe Portal Project which Barbara initiated to bring together social justice activists and scholarsHer views on Black freedom and movement buildingHere are links to two articles mentioned during this episode:Ransby - The Class Politics of Black Lives MatterRansby - The White Left Needs to Embrace Black LeadershipHere is a link to the website of The Portal Project that Barbara Ransby launched:https://sji.uic.edu/portal-project/

Om Podcasten

Black Work Talk is a show that elevates the voices of Black labor, workers, leaders, activists, and intellectuals in discussions on the connections between race, labor, capitalism and culture in the struggle for progressive governing power. On season three of Black Work Talk, new hosts Bianca Cunningham and Jamala Rogers explore the impact of 2023’s strike wave in conversations with rank and file workers from unions that have fought or are still fighting for better, more equitable contracts in 2023; including the UAW, Teamsters, Writers Guild of America and more. Where did the energy for this wave of labor movements come from, what does it mean for black workers, and where does it go from here? They also open the conversation by calling in the 90% of American workers who have yet to organize in their workplace with an ongoing accessible and educational series on the process of organizing and filing to start a union from scratch.