Calendar Edition

LABOR ARTS CALENDAR: WEEK AT A GLANCE…


MON: Control (NY)

TUE: Nova Arts Union Caucus (virtual)

TUE: Preservation in Art (Virtual)

WED: 'Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries" (Virtual)

WED: NYLHA/EWOC Reading Group (Virtual)

WED: America 250 Democracy Dialogs (Virtual)

THU: Labor Heritage Power Hour (radio/online)

FRI: Annual Clarence Darrow Flower Tossing (IL)

SAT: Join Mother Jones In Chicago For St. Patrick's Day

SAT: America 250 Democracy Dialogs (Virtual)

Ongoing Events: 
Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne (NY)

The Hidden Shift (PA)

Deadly Deception: The Asbestos Tragedy in McLean County (IL)
Work in Progress (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada)


Got a labor art event to share? Email us at info@laborheritage.org

Lights, Camera, Solidarity: Vote in the Labor Oscars

The Labor Heritage Foundation’s annual Labor Oscars are heading into the home stretch—and there’s still time to have your say.

Voting is now in its final days, with just one more round after this before the ballots close. You can check out all the nominees in this year’s competition in the Labor Oscars playlist and then cast your vote for your favorites. Winners will be announced soon, so now’s the time to watch, listen, and help choose this year’s standout labor arts.

Here are the top 3 nominees: 

What We’re Reading

As Video Podcasts Boom, SAG-AFTRA Looks to Organize the Industry

The Statues Were Mostly Men or Nude Women. So These Knitters Got to Work.

Book Review: Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in Fractured America

By Beth Macy, Penguin Books, 2025

When the holidays loom, what’s a safe conversation? With deeply held beliefs about politics, the nation, gender, race, and other issues, casual conversation can quickly turn into an argument. In Paper Girl, Beth Macy returns to her childhood home in Urbana, Ohio. Now a journalist based in Roanoke, Virginia, but writing extensively for the national media, what’s different back home?

Read the rest of Mike Matejka’s review here.

TODAY’S LABOR HISTORY

1912: The Westmoreland County (Pa.) Coal Strike – known as the "Slovak strike" because some 70 percent of the 15,000 strikers were Slovakian immigrants – begins on this date and continues for nearly 16 months before ending in defeat. Sixteen miners and family members were killed during the strike.

1933: Spurred by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress begins its 100 days of enacting New Deal legislation. Just one of many programs established to help Americans survive the Great Depression: The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put 2.5 million young men on the government payroll to help in national conservation and infrastructure projects.

1974: Work begins on the $8 billion, 800-mile-long Alaska Oil pipeline connecting oil fields in northern Alaska to the sea port at Valdez. Tens of thousands of people worked on the pipeline, enduring long hours, cold temperatures, and brutal conditions. At least 32 died on the job. 
photo: A Civilian Conservation Corps crew erects a telephone line in Fremont National Forest, Oregon.

Women Workers Carry Forward the Fight for Justice

On this week’s Labor History Today, we continue our look at the legacy of A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major Black-led union in the United States.

Recorded at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, SEIU International President April Verrett reflects on what Randolph’s legacy means for workers today.

Posting on International Women’s Day, this conversation highlights the role of women workers—especially in care and service jobs—in carrying forward the fight for dignity, organizing rights, and democracy. Verrett connects the porters’ struggle a century ago with today’s battles over worker power, immigration, and the changing nature of the working class.

PLUS: Remembering Lucy Parsons on Labor History in 2:00 and We Were There, from Bev Grant and the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus. 

Can the Victims of Slavery Save Democracy?

This week on The Labor Heritage Power Hour: SEIU President April Verrett on worker power and democracy, The Pitt star Noah Wyle on unions, Kathy Newman on Pittsburgh labor history, Sean Duffy’s favorite labor song, Labor History in 2:00 on Frances Perkins, plus the latest labor arts news and events.

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Striking At Kings (2/13)

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A Brick and a Bible (1/30)

CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE LHF CALENDAR

GOT A LABOR ARTS EVENT? email info@laborheritage.org