Episode 9: Jesse Hagopian

In this ninth episode of Black Work Talk, host Steven Pitts welcomes Jesse Hagopian, an Ethnic Studies teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington.  The public schools in the United States have been near Ground Zero during this confluence of COVID, the recession, and the fight for racial justice and because of this, education has become a flashpoint for political struggle. Jesse has been active trying to ensure that any school re-opening takes places on a timeline and fulfills key conditions that best serves the interests of students and staff, not the needs of outside political actors with their agendas. Prior to the pandemic, Jesse worked with others from around the country developing a liberation pedagogy and working with his union (and others) to build a social justice unionism that has the power to transform education.  Recently, Jesse has edited two books collecting essays on making teacher unions a force for racial and economic justice:Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities Our Students DeserveBlack Lives Matters at School

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.