In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman discuss the history of labor struggles in the US that is largely forgotten, how police and state brutality crushed the pivotal labor movements of the early 19th century that won the 8-hour workday, weekends, and ended child labor, and how today’s labor struggles must win back those workers’ rights won by anarchists and socialists in the US.
In the second segment Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dr. Linwood Tauheed, Associate Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Economic Information, University of Missouri-Kansas City & Graduate Faculty, University of Missouri-Columbia to discuss the current debt ceiling showdown between Republicans and the Biden Administration, how Democrats never seem to raise the debt ceiling issue when Republicans control the White House and how this is both good and a weakness, how the debt ceiling debate itself is a political issue and not a legitimate economic issue, how Bernie Sanders’ pleas to Joe Biden to advocate for working class and poor Americans in the debt ceiling fracas is not a serious declaration since the US government is well able to afford to fund people’s needs, and how organization around people’s needs to advocate for ourselves against the capitalist misappropriation of government funds is the only real way to ensure the peoples’ needs are met.
In the second segment Sean and Jacquie are joined by Dr. Linwood Tauheed, Associate Professor of Economics and Director, Center for Economic Information, University of Missouri-Kansas City & Graduate Faculty, University of Missouri-Columbia to discuss the current debt ceiling showdown between Republicans and the Biden Administration, how Democrats never seem to raise the debt ceiling issue when Republicans control the White House and how this is both good and a weakness, how the debt ceiling debate itself is a political issue and not a legitimate economic issue, how Bernie Sanders’ pleas to Joe Biden to advocate for working class and poor Americans in the debt ceiling fracas is not a serious declaration since the US government is well able to afford to fund people’s needs, and how organization around people’s needs to advocate for ourselves against the capitalist misappropriation of government funds is the only real way to ensure the peoples’ needs are met.
In the third segment Sean and Jacquie are joined by John Kiriakou, co-host of Political Misfits, which you can hear from 12 to 2 PM EST right here on Radio Sputnik to discuss the deep corruption of the prison guards and staff of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons, how they BOP’s very low hiring requirements create a culture of abuse and corruption, the extensive number of prison staff accused of misconduct from rape of inmates to drug trafficking compared to the number of staff convicted, how even the number of BOP staff accused and convicted pales in comparison to the actual size of the problem as BOP policy is to dismiss inmates' claims outright because they are deemed to be criminals, how no government oversight or leadership change can reform the BOP and only abolishing it will improve conditions for inmates.
Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Jon Jeter, award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent, radio and television producer, Bluesologist and Decolonizer, and author of the book “Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People” to discuss the current state of labor organizing in the US compared to pitched battles against workers and the state in countries like France and the UK, how the US left should identify and deal with real divide and conquer racial tactics committed by the ruling class that fractures and weakens the left, the prospects for the Democratic Party with a Biden/Harris ticket that is weak due to lack of people-focused policies and an unpopular and absent vice president.
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