In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, hosts Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman are joined by Jeff Schuhrke, Assistant Professor of Labor Studies in the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State College to discuss potential strikes by airline pilots’ unions and why airline pilots are striking, what quality of life issues pilots have to deal with and how airlines squeeze pilots for profits, how past administrations have used the Railway Labor Act to break pilots’ strikes in the past and why the Biden administration’s demonstrated willingness to use that act will affect the probability of a strike, and how this demonstrates a shift in worker attitudes post-pandemic.
In the second segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Christian Garramone, organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation to discuss the 2018 Supreme Court ruling in Janus v AFSCME case and what it meant for American workers, how it fits into the history of attacks on American workers from the US government, and how anti-labor forces engineered this case in order to attack former pro-labor rulings and actions.
In the third segment, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Miguel Garcia of the ANTICONQUISTA Collective, also the host and creator of the Sports as a Weapon podcast to discuss recent controversies around student athletes and sports gambling and why the embrace of sports gambling by some institutions highlights a double standard in how it is treated, former Auburn football coach and Senator Tommy Tuberville downplaying the issue of white nationalists in the US military and calling the military a “hard-nosed killing machine,” and the questions that these comments raise about Tuberville’s relationship with the Black players he coached at Auburn.
Later in the show, Sean and Jacquie are joined by Netfa Freeman, Coordinating Committee member with the Black Alliance for Peace, organizer with Pan-African Community Action, and host of Voices with Vision on WPFW 89.3 FM to discuss a recent brigade to Cuba marking International Workers Day and the impact of the sanctions on those celebrations, the harassment of members of that brigade by US customs authorities and what it reveals about the grasp of US imperialism, and how Cuba provides examples of civic engagement that would not happen in the US.
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