Labor Arts News & Updates

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: I’m very pleased to report that we’re halfway to our $10,000 Straus Challenge Grant goal — and we need your help to go the distance by the end of the year! Every dollar you give will be matched, doubling your impact and helping us set an ambitious agenda for 2026: more events, more voices, and more solidarity through art and culture. Your tax-deductible contribution supports the Labor Heritage Foundation’s mission to preserve and promote labor’s creative spirit.

Please click here to give generously today and help us cross the finish line; Thank You!

✊🎶Chris

THIS WEEK'S LABOR HERITAGE POWER HOUR RADIO SHOW

Bernie, Debs & the Sound of Solidarity

On this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour: Senator Bernie Sanders accepts the Eugene V. Debs Award in Terre Haute, celebrating Debs’ legacy of solidarity and social justice — and reminding us that Debs’ vision still guides the labor movement today.

Then, from the Solidarity Works podcast, meet California musician Johnny Miller Jr., who’s keeping labor’s musical traditions alive with songs of struggle, hope, and community. Plus music from The Local Honeys.

WEEKEND LABOR ARTS CALENDAR

FRI: When We Fight (CA)

SUN: Celebration of Joe Hill in Poetry (Online)

ONGOING:

Power & Light: Russell Lee's Coal Survey (DC) (Re-opening!)

Don't Stand Alone: Black Labor Organizing in New Orleans (LA)

American Labor in Print (MA)

In Camps, Under Trees, and Evicted (CA)

Deadly Deception: The Asbestos Tragedy in McLean County (IL)

Jim Brozek: Honest Work (WI)

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PICKET SIGN OF THE WEEK: UAW 2320 non-profit IT workers on strike in Brooklyn, NY. photo by Labor Notes’ Sarah Hughes. 

LABOR VIDEOS OF THE WEEK
ABOVE: Highlights from SEIU’s recent Dream. Rise. Organize. 2025 Vision and Strategy Conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina — where SEIU staff came together to reflect, recharge, and reimagine organizing for today’s challenges. The Labor Heritage Foundation once again led the labor arts track, using art, music, and storytelling to strengthen connections and inspire purposeful organizing across the SEIU community.

BELOW: Cigarette Trees -- The Local Honeys (LIVE on Mountain Stage)

The Kentucky duo who performed at the Debs Award (featured in this week’s Labor Heritage Popwer Hour). And yes, we do also have a Labor Video of the Week playlist, just updated, with 71 labor videos, Pullman Porters’ Ordinary Men, Extraordinary History to Dropkick Murphys "This Machine Still Kills Fascists", Springsteen’s Ghost of Tom Joad and more!

LABOR QUOTE OF THE WEEK

”Don't look at Gene Debs as some kind of historical figure. Look at him as somebody who is motivating us today.”

Bernie Sanders at the 2025 Debs Award; listen on the Labor Heritage Power Hour.

LABOR SONG OF THE WEEK: Dying to Make A Living-The Local Honeys

Don’t you wish there was a place all these Labor Songs of the Week were collected for easy viewing? There is! Check out our updated playlist here, where you’ll find 80 great labor song videos, including Hazel Dickens’ Fire in the Hole, Linda Allen’s Good Trouble, Jon Fromer’s We Do The Work and a whole lot more!

LABOR POEM OF THE WEEK: Craftsman

In spare moments,

I watch you work your magic

How you cut and paint

Each slab of wood to perfection

A picture of finality

Though you would never

Call it finished

And now they say

Your work is not needed

You can get this kind of stuff

Online, anywhere

Maybe you can -- but the heartbeat

Will never be felt

And don't get me started

On quality


Cathy Porter, Blue Collar Review

Got labor art? Send it to us! info@laborheritage.org

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CLICK HERE for our complete labor arts calendar; look for our Labor Arts Calendar edition on Monday

TODAY’S LABOR HISTORY

1922: A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pa. kills 79. The mine had been rated gaseous in 1918, but at the insistence of new operators it was rated as non-gaseous even though miners had been burned by gas on at least four occasions. 

LABOR HISTORY TODAY PODCAST: 
“I Am of It”: Bernie Sanders on Eugene V. Debs

On this week’s Labor History Today: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders accepts the 60th annual Eugene V. Debs Award from the Eugene V. Debs Foundation in Terre Haute, Indiana. 

LAST WEEK’S QUIZ: On November 7, 1990, Lemuel Ricketts Boulware died in Delray Beach, Fla. at age 95. As a GE vice president in the 1950s he created the policy known as Boulwarism, in which management decides what is "fair" and refuses to budge on anything during contract negotiations. IUE President Paul Jennings described the policy as "telling the workers what they are entitled to and then trying to shove it down their throats."

RECENT NEWSLETTERS
Strikes Across Time — Casa Bonita to the Washington Post to Ancient Rome (11/6)
Quilts, Coal, and Courage: Labor Stories You’ll Love (10/30)
Ralph Fasanella, Si Kahn & a Yiddish-Anarchist song (10/23)
Laurel’s Legacy, Fannie Lou & Joe Hill’s Ashes (10/16)
“Forgotten” onstage in Detroit; walking in Matewan (10/10)
Power and Light in a Dark Time (10/3)