Episode 13: Maurice Mitchell

In this thirteenth episode of Black Work Talk, Today’s guest is Maurice Mitchell.  Maurice is the National Director of the Working Families Party.  Since its inception, the Working Families Party has done a good job of navigating the complicated waters of combining Left political perspectives with building bases among working class people and maintaining effectiveness in the electoral arena.  Maurice became national director about two years and we had a wide-ranging conversation on a variety of topics including:Policing and the issue of police accountabilityThe need for social movements to claim their victories as we strive for greater victoriesThe need for political education as we build durable progressive movementsThe importance of bringing a class analysis to an understanding of racial oppression.  For more background on Maurice Mitchell and the Working Families Party, here are links to some articles:https://forgeorganizing.org/article/one-two-punch-how-green-new-deal-fights-ecofascism-and-racialized-capitalismhttps://workingfamilies.org/2021/03/wfp-on-american-jobs-plan-we-need-to-build-back-a-lot-bigger/https://forgeorganizing.org/article/our-movements-beat-trump-now-what https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/police-accountability-protests/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2021/04/12/what-happened-biden-pledge-have-backs-black-america-column/7192178002/ 

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.