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THIS WEEK'S LABOR HERITAGE POWER HOUR RADIO SHOW
This week on the Labor Heritage Power Hour: Murderous billionaires, labor’s racial divide, and DC Labor Chorus concert highlights.
Cultural critic Kathleen Newman looks at how labor themes are playing out in today’s film and television, historian Rudi Batzell unpacks how race and the legacy of slavery shaped early U.S. labor organizing, and we close with moving highlights from the DC Labor Chorus holiday concert. Plus, the latest labor arts news, including registration now open for the 2026 Labor Notes Conference and Great Labor Arts Exchange and new organizing wins across the museum sector.
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WEEKEND LABOR ARTS CALENDAR
Christopher Payne’s Made in America photography exhibit (NYC), the factory-set film installation The Hidden Shift (Pittsburgh), the Starbucks union documentary Baristas vs. Billionaires, and Deadly Deception, an exhibit on the asbestos industry’s human toll (Bloomington, IL).
Details here.
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LABOR ARTS NEWS BRIEFS
Metropolitan Museum of Art Staff Vote to Join UAW: Staff at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City have overwhelmingly voted to form a union with UAW Local 2110. Workers at The Met join the ranks of their colleagues at the Guggenheim, New York Historical, the Tenement Museum and other cultural centers in the city who are already represented by Local 2110. Read more.
A Brick, a Bible, and a Reason to Visit St. Louis: If you’ve been looking for a great reason to visit St. Louis, A Brick and a Bible is it. The new labor play tells the gripping story of the 1933 Funsten Nut Strike, when Black women workers organized more than 2,000 people across five factories to challenge low wages, dangerous conditions, and Jim Crow segregation—brought to life with an original jazz and blues score and a powerful reminder of labor’s deep ties to the civil rights movement. We’ll also be featuring the playwrights in an upcoming episode of the Labor Heritage Power Hour.
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Keeping LaborHeritage.org Working for You
We’re making a round of updates to LaborHeritage.org—refreshing information, fixing links, and making small improvements to help the site work better for you. We’d love your input! Take a few minutes to click around the site and share what you find useful—and what could be improved—by emailing info@laborheritage.org. With your help, we’ll keep LaborHeritage.org a strong home for the art and soul of the labor movement.
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Reader Voice: Elmore Leonard: A Picket Line That Fails
Responding to our recent post about Picket Line, Elmore Leonard’s recently re-discovered novella, reader Paul Gottlieb writes: “I would not recommend this book to anyone with an abiding, even a passing interest in unions. While I've never spent any time in the fields with farmworker organizers, I have helped to organize a local union or two. And I don't believe that Chavez or Dolores Huerta or any experienced organizer would try to get people to stop picking and join a strike line by making fun of them, calling them names in public, as one of the organizers does repeatedly. Better to spend time with a writer who actually cares about the people and the issues.”
Fan mail or critiques, we always love to hear from you; email us at info@laborheritage.org
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Sing in Solidarity Virtual Choir: The Internationale
Note: includes the DC Labor Chorus’ own Ken Giles!
Got labor video? email us at info@laborheritage.org
| | Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow.
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PICKET SIGN OF THE WEEK
@nynurses.bsky.social: “NYC nurses are holding strong for patient and nurse safety on Day 9! Today, nurses at Mount Sinai West were joined by healthcare justice allies
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Together, we're calling out corporate hospital greed and speaking out for safe staffing.”
Got picket sign? email us at info@laborheritage.org
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LABOR SONG Of The Week
Carsie Blanton's 'Little Flame' Gleann Dhúlocha County Mayo
At the Doolough Famine memorial in County Mayo, Singer Roesy links the 1849 Doolough Tragedy—where hundreds died seeking relief from the Westport Poor Law Union —to ongoing struggles from Gaza to Sudan.
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LABOR ART OF THE WEEK: “Beyond the Pale” by Sandra Hill at National Gallery’s East Building, part of The Stars We Do Not See exhibit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art—the largest ever shown in North America. Up through March 1, 2026.
Got labor art? Send your suggestions to us: info@laborheritage.org
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LABOR QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Michael Coard
“It’s not only the erasure of history. On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the birth of this country, this is a historical outrage. This is historical blasphemy.”
Coard is a founding member of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, commenting on the removal on an exhibit on slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The exhibit included information on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 alongside images of slaves being beaten.
photo: National Park Employees remove signage related to slavery from the President's House in Philadelphia's Independence Historical Park on Thursday. (Mijuel K. Johnson)
| | Like this newsletter? Help us spread labor art by passing it along! | | CLICK HERE for our complete labor arts calendar; look for our Labor Arts Calendar edition on Monday | | |
TODAY’S LABOR HISTORY
1913
10,000 clothing workers strike in Rochester, NY for the 8 hour day, a 10% wage increase, union recognition, and extra pay for overtime and holidays. Daily parades were held throughout the clothing district and there was at least one instance of mounted police charging the crowd of strikers and arresting 25 picketers. Six people were wounded over the course of the strike and one worker, 18 year old Ida Breiman, was shot to death by a sweatshop contractor. The strike was called off in April after manufacturers agreed not to discriminate against workers for joining a union.
| | This week on Labor History Today, we trace how the 1892 Homestead Strike lives on through film and song. Cultural critic Kathleen Newman takes us inside The Hidden Shift, a two-screen film installation that reimagines Homestead while linking it to today’s service-sector labor, and we close with Pete Seeger’s “Homestead Strike Song,” a reminder of how music has kept the story alive across generations. | |
| What was a “Yellow Dog” contract in early U.S. labor history? | | | | LAST WEEK’S QUIZ: President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988 on January 17, 1962, guaranteeing federal workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively. | | |
SUPPORT LABOR ARTS!
Please CLICK HERE NOW to pledge your financial support to our 2026 program, which includes our annual Solidarity Forever Award, the Great Labor Arts Exchange, the DC Labor FilmFest and much more (check out our website for details!).
Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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