Episode 15: Lauren Jacobs

In this fifteenth episode of Black Work Talk, our guest is Lauren Jacobs.  Lauren is the Executive Director of the Partnership for Working Families – a national network of regional power-building organizations.  Lauren and I have been friends for over 15 years…I remember when she was a union organizer in Boston. I have always loved the way Lauren combines things: race and class…theory and practice.  That nuanced and rooted way of engaging the world is key at building real power to transform the world. We had a wide-ranging conversation on a variety of topics including:Working with unreliable partners in the united front against authoritarianismThe importance of working with everyday people to building the capacity to see themselves as social change agentsThe intertwined nature of race and classFor more background on Lauren Jacobs and her work, here are links:https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/https://forgeorganizing.org/article/building-united-front-against-authoritarianismhttps://forgeorganizing.org/article/organizing-economy-we-wantAnd during the podcast, Lauren mentioned an important article by Stuart Hall, “Gramsci and Us”:http://www.banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/87_06_16.pdf

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.