You're listening to the labor radio podcasts weekly produced by the labor radio podcast network, labor radio network.org. Um, Chris Garlock. On this week show. I knew what we had under Donald Trump when he was president. The last time I knew how well I lived, um, economically when he was president. So I voted with my wallet On AFT's union talk podcast. Randy talks to union members who supported Trump and searches for common ground.
something happened somewhere in the 80s, I'm not sure when, what it was, but somehow progressives came to think that it's all about getting somebody elected and ideally a Democrat, no matter what Democrat. Eight off read and mark demonstrating. Discuss their 20, 24 election and its aftermath. Um, class matters. I'm a dad of five kids, and I wanted them to look up to me in such a way that they wanted to emulate me when they're growing up.
And so I wanted to have a noble quest, uh, as delusional or as crazy as it might be. So I started waking up at 4 a. m. every morning the last two years. Putting in ridiculous amounts of hours going from never playing soccer before to my life to playing for a professional team Then on the teamster view, Zach duke who plays for the inland empire strikers team at Toyota arena. So you take a deer that's being attacked by a cougar.
There's not many things that could be more traumatic than almost, um, near death experience by getting attacked by a cougar. Lauren Picard talks about becoming a licensed psilocybin facilitator on that P F F a pod. hello. I'm your teacher. My name is Mr. Reed. And it's very nice to meet you. I'm from Chicago. I love eating pizza and I dress to impress, but I still rock sneakers In our final segment, read and wrap across America with Dwayne Reed on the schoolmate podcast. That's all ahead.
Plus Herald shows you should know on this week's edition of the labor radio podcast, weekly. We'll start with Harold, literally phoning in his rundown of shows. You should know. Thanks, Chris. Social media guy Harold Phillips here again, folks, and you're right. I do sound a little bit different. Like so many of you, I am at the airport getting ready to get on a plane. Now, if you're in the same boat that I'm in, or on the same plane, you could watch the in flight entertainment, I suppose.
Or You could download some podcasts, and if they have Wi Fi, maybe even stream some radio shows that have to do with working people's issues. Here's a few shows you should know for the week of December 15th. Two Power at Work blog casts were released over the past week. First, Seth lays out a worker power overview of the next Trump administration, and answers listener questions.
Then, Seth talks with Suba Wahid and Rebecca Sylvan about some of the most significant worker power stories from the past year. Working People features three residents who live near and have been directly affected by the September fire at the Conyers Biolab facility in Conyers, Georgia. Sean discusses Friedrich Engel's concept of social murder. And how it relates to the media and internet reaction to the murder of CEO Brian Thompson on the Tribunus Plaibus podcast.
Elliot and Michael talk about Teamsters working at Amazon planning to strike against the company prior to the Christmas holiday. And you know what? That just started today. On Labor Radio on KABU. And Gabe and Sam talk with transit YouTuber Alan Fisher About the successes and failures of public transportation and how it affects the working class. Whether Robert Moses was the devil. And more on Labor John. And you know where you can find links to all these shows at laborradionetwork. org.
And if you're looking for the latest episodes of Labor Radio Shows and Podcasts, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and yeah, still, x slash Twitter for now. At Labor Radio Net. All right, I'm going to have to get on the plane. I hope all of you have a safe and happy holiday season. look forward to talking to you in the new year. Back to you, Chris. Thanks. Harold safe travels brother.
All right, let's go to the union talk podcast, hosted by American Federation of teachers, president Randi, Weingarten. Welcome to Union Talk, I'm Randi Weingarten. Welcome to Union Talk for a truly unique episode. And in fact, as we're thinking about Union Talk and. How to not just analyze this election, but also what we want this podcast to be about.
I think what you're about to see or hear right now is what we're going to do a lot more about because in our union, we got 1. 8 million amazing people. Who agree on a lot of things and disagree on a lot of things. in this election, we just did some polling of our members. About 65 to 70 percent of our members voted for, depending on where they were, voted for Paris as for president, and about 25%, 20 to 25 percent voted for Trump to be president. And Donald Trump won this election.
I have an amazing member who is with us today. Who voted for Donald Trump. And I have an amazing one member who's with us today, who voted for Kamala Harris. One is Scarlett Ahmed and one's Karen Tulley. And I'm not going to tell you until they speak who voted for who, because you're going to be able to figure that out fairly easily in terms of how they talk. Scarlett. Ahmed is a supervisor with the New York State Department of Labor. She is a member of PAFT.
She served, has been part of the bargaining team for PAFT. Karen Tully, also a member of PATH, served honorably for about five years on active duty. In the United States Marine Corps And she is in Albany, New York, So I voted for Harris vice president Harris, mostly on something very basic.
I trusted that she would appoint people to the national labor relations board and to any court vacancies, whether it's the Supreme court or lower courts who I felt that she would appoint people who are not hostile to workers, hostile to unions, hostile to collective bargaining. Now, that's a very basic thing. I honestly have stopped watching cable news because I find it so toxic.
So I don't know if she gave a lot of speeches or if that was on the news a lot, but I just knew from her record that this was likely. I knew that she did discuss certain economic measures that would have been pretty good, like the child tax credit, but mostly it was union stuff. Like even if I disagree with her with any number of things, which I do, I trusted her on basic union related stuff because Being, um, part of the labor movement is my ideology, that's my values.
Karen, who did you vote for and tell us why? And can I just say thank you for all your service, from your military service to your legal service for the state of New York. Oh, well, thank you. I mean, you're in the trenches for unions every day, so it's not wartime, but you know, it's not. Well, who knows anymore with the way people are, but well, let me just preface by saying I am an unaffiliated voter. I do not toe party lines.
It just depends on what the, how they convinced me, but I did vote for Donald Trump. My biggest question was, am I better off now than I was prior to president Biden coming into office? And I realized that. Vice president Harris didn't have a whole lot of say of what president Biden did. There just wasn't enough time for her to give me more information. And I knew what we had under Donald Trump when he was president. The last time I knew how well I lived, um, economically when he was president.
So I voted with my wallet and consequently in my head. And probably in other people's heads, uh, I figure if the country is more prosperous, we have more bargaining power to say to, you know, in our case, New York to say to the governor, Hey, you've made a lot more revenue from taxes from the cut from the economy being so well, you should give us more of it. That was one thing. The other thing was that I felt like Donald Trump was courting more of the union votes this time around.
I felt like he was a little bit different than the first time around. And I felt like he was courting more of the unions. And then, I mean, me pulling that lever actually has been confirmed because he did recently announced a labor friendly prospective Labor secretary. He did. He has suggested for appointment. He picked the former Republican congresswoman, Lori Chavez de Ramar to be his labor secretary. Uh, she, uh, was one of the few Republican Congresswomen who endorsed the PRO Act.
And um, he's also, since the election, he's also backed dock workers. Longshoremen's union in their striking in order to help them secure better benefits for them. So I feel vindicated by my vote with respect to labor, because of those two things, I'm waiting to see what else he does I want to say to both of you, thank you for having this conversation with me. and thank everybody else who listens to Union Talk.
Hope Yeah, this one's for the workers who toil night and day by hand and by brain to earn your pay who for centuries don't pass for no more than your brains have bled for your countries and counted your days. Welcome to class matters. The podcast where we ask the question, what would our country look like if it were governed by and for the working class? I'm Katherine Isaac, Executive Director. President Demenstein and Adolph Reed Jr. are here for a post election episode of Class Matters.
Adolf, you wrote in a recent op ed for Nonsite highlighting the importance of organizing a real constituency for a different way of talking and thinking about and doing politics, and both you and Mark have expressed the need for independent politics outside of the two party system and organizing working people beyond simply turning them out for elections. Can each of you talk about what you mean by a different way of doing politics and what you mean by independent politics?
So yeah, I mean, that comparison is there, and when Mark was talking about the immigration issue, I was reminded. A buddy of mine who used to run the worker center down here said that, well, one of his lines was that, no, the immigrants aren't taking your jobs. What's happening is that your employers are trying to redefine the job that you currently have as a job that only somebody with no rights would be eligible for.
And that's one of the ways we ought to encourage people to think about this, right? This is like a mantra for me now. I've been saying it so long. I've probably been saying it more than half my life, but I think that the best way for us to look at the electoral realm is that it's the domain for consolidating institutionally victories that have been won basically in the plane of social movement organizing.
And for most of my adult life now, something happened somewhere in the 80s, I'm not sure when, what it was, but somehow progressives came to think that it's all about getting somebody elected and ideally a Democrat, no matter what Democrat. And through the experience that the three of us shared in the 90s, like we saw, you know, people came down a lot of different ways on that.
Question in the abstract, but we needed to understand that the point is to alter the terms of political debate, and I think when we can do that now, I think, especially, you know, considering the advance of neoliberalism, we've probably got to do it more outside the electoral realm than in, but struggled to change the issues that people talk about, you know, for politics. Also change the way they talk about 'em.
And one last thing I'm gonna say about this is I've been struck at how many different stereotypical ways there are that people have of disparaging what would they consider to be the working class. But the fact is, I go back to the ballot initiatives, but the fact is that that the working people want basically the same stuff. And we'll make it clear. So if I can jump in, Kathy.
So independent politics, I guess, could have a few different, you know, when, when people hear the term, they could think some different things. For us in the American Postal Workers Union, it's largely centered around the idea of being independent from the two dominant mainstream parties. They're both corporate parties. They generally are. will represent those interests first and foremost. It doesn't mean that there's never working class issues that get addressed, but they're not primary.
And so independent politics is the idea of the labor movement and working people having their own agenda, their own demands.
And not just when a democratic party leader says jump, the labor movement says, And that should be applied to all sorts of working class issues, whether it's living wages, whether it's trade, whether it's the right to organize, whether it's how to deal with the question of, and it's not an easy question, the question of immigration and its impact on the working class and how to unite and thrive rather than allow us to be separated and isolated. Divided, All right, there you go.
There's some music. Randy Corgan and the Worker Power Hour are back. It's been a couple of weeks. Uh, good to see and hear everybody. Uh, good to be back. Longtime organizer, first time radio host. Got a lot of good guests lined up for today. Our Teamster Advantage program has more than a thousand small businesses connected to it throughout the Inland Empire.
It's most one of the most that's, that program is one of the things I'm most proud that we've built because it's built an integration for us into the community that normally unions kind of aren't in that space. And it really does a good job of showing small businesses and, in all these entities that, You know, all we're trying to do is make sure that our members have good wages and benefits and that they spend their money locally.
And all of these different partnerships that we've built out have been, uh, just, just so much fun and they're, and, and they're unique. Like today we have the empire strikers and, and so I love the fact, I mean, it's my favorite soccer team, right? Like this is a this football club. Yes. This is the real football by the way This is that I'm sure they'll chime in here in a minute, but they're named strikers What better thing for us to sponsor right?
Like if you're gonna sponsor anything, I'm glad we're sponsoring something called strikers And so with that I have a couple individuals here that I'll let them introduce themselves. Hey Randy Yeah, yeah, we take them out to Amazon Oh, we should. Hey, let's go right now. Come on. Let's go professional strikers right there. And so Zach, you're a professional soccer player, right? Yep. I'm a professional soccer player. And first of all, Randy, it's just an honor to be on the show.
Just even hearing you speak about equipping and inspiring this next generation has me fired up. I know my grandpa was an electrician. Part of the union. And so not only are we professional soccer team, but we also really care, carry ourselves as a professional community investor. We want to pour into the community, want to raise them up. And, and so to us more, I think more than any other professional sport or team in the country is genuine to us.
We want to really pour into this community and see them flourish and grow and whatever is best for them. Where'd you, where you been hiding this guy? That was the best, like 38 seconds I've ever heard anybody say sit on the show. It's the end of the year. I thought I'd bring in somebody good. That's right. my story is, is quite the strange journey when it comes to soccer, or should I say football.
So I actually grew up playing American football at a division one level, had a tryout with the Ravens and Redskins. I never started playing soccer until two years ago and I really hit rock bottom at my life. And in that moment, I wanted a challenge so big and so bold that would change me mentally, physically, relationally, spiritually. I'm a dad of five kids, and I wanted them to look up to me in such a way that they wanted to emulate me when I was growing up, uh, when they're growing up.
And so I wanted to have a noble quest, uh, as delusional or as crazy as it might be. So I started waking up at 4 a. m. every morning the last two years. Putting in ridiculous amounts of hours going from never playing soccer before to my life to playing for a professional team. And I hope that even if this inspires 1 percent of kids to not only be dreamers, but to put the work behind it to do it, then I feel like I'm doing my job on and off the field. No, that's, that's amazing.
So You obviously, you know, just applied yourself, got to work on it, and, and just don't kick me. You know, obviously, yeah. Um, and, so what position did you play in football? So I was a slot receiver in football. I was the short little guy that got beat up by the line captions. Had a blast. Absolutely loved it. There's nothing I love more than getting Absolutely rocked by a safety or linebacker than standing up and handing them the ball. Tell me how to hit me a little harder.
This is Randy Corrigan and KCAA 1050, the Worker Power Hour, 1050 AM, 106. 5 FM, the Teamsters 1932 Broadcast Network, longtime organizer, first time radio host, live from San Bernardino. Signing on Good morning. Welcome to the PFFA pod. I'm your host, Collin McLeod. Very excited this morning. I'm here with Laurent Picard. How are you doing? Morning, Kyle. Great to be here with you. Good to see you again. It's been a minute. Um, so we're doing something today that we have not done before.
And I'm pretty excited. We're going to be talking, I'm going to be listening, learning from Laurent about his sort of new journey into the space of, uh, becoming an organ licensed, uh, psilocybin facilitator. I met two incredible women, one of the shamans and a psychotherapist from Manhattan who, uh, was very, very high level. She was like top 10 psychotherapist in New York magazine. And she worked with Broadway actors mostly and high level performers. Yeah. And both of those women.
told me on different days, the same thing. They both told me, um, we're in school right now to become somatic experiencing practitioners. And we think that you would be really good at this and you might want to get into this program. And I had no idea what somatic even meant. I had no idea what somatic experiencing practitioning was. I had these two incredible women that I really admired who told me that I should do this.
So I applied in 2018 and got into a three year program in somatic experiencing therapy, which is. basically a modality for releasing trauma that's held in the body. And it's called SEP. And it's a modality that many therapists are adding to their practices, similar to how they'll add EMDR. Um, yeah. And so I went through this three year journey, um, Um, not even knowing what I was getting into. It was a three year certification? Yeah, it's a three year program.
Okay. And I became a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. And I'm now taking on a few clients. I didn't know any of that. So that, so the Somatic Therapy Specific to a psychedelic assisted therapy, or is it something that can be done just through meditation practice or some other mode? It doesn't have anything to do with psychedelics essentially. Um, and it's taught worldwide and it's, uh, it's basically, uh, the doc, Dr. Peter Levine invented this model.
He's a, he's a well known psychologist. And basically what Dr. Levine, um, based it on was kind of what he called the wild animal model. So he noticed that, um, that wild animals don't suffer from PTSD. And there's reasons for that, you know, their, their, their, their prefrontal cortex is not as developed as ours, but we both share the same reptilian brain, the amygdala. Okay. So you take a deer that's being attacked by a cougar.
There's not many things that could be more traumatic than almost, um, near death experience by getting attacked by a cougar. So a deer gets attacked by a cougar. And if they escape, they, uh, that there's nothing more scary than that. And what a deer will do in that moment is shake. Their entire body will shake, shake, shake. Yes. Yes. And then they will release that, that energy that's stored in the body. in the moment.
And then after a few minutes of shaking, they'll go back to eating leaves and they wouldn't be able to eat leaves if they were, if their sympathetic nervous system was still activated, they released that trauma in the moment and then they don't think about it again. Got it. And what we humans do is we don't allow our bodies to do what they call completion and allow our bodies to do what they would do in that moment. And sometimes our bodies can't do What they wanted to do in that moment.
For example, if you are assaulted your body, what it wants to do is run or fight. And now if you get the opportunity in that situation, to run or fight, you're going to have a lot less long term PTSD develop. And so this, this, this, this therapy basically increases your window of tolerance to triggers and it works by, um, by regulating, um, your nervous system. Interesting. Thank you so much for your time. And thank you for the work you're doing.
I think you can tell I'm pretty passionate about this work, and I can talk endlessly about it, and I'm always open to conversations. Thanks Kyle. You bet. Hello and welcome to School Me, the National Education Association's podcast dedicated to helping educators thrive at every stage of their careers. I'm your host, Natika Samuels. Today, our guest is Dwayne Reed, a Chicago educator, author, rapper, and viral sensation who's made a name for himself as America's favorite rapping teacher.
His book, Simon B. Ryman, is the December pick for middle grade readers on NEA's Read Across America calendar, which is NEA's year round program to celebrate reading and diverse books. My name is Dwayne Reed. Yes, Dwayne Reed, like the Dwayne Reed stores in New York, but spelled differently. I'm from Chicago, Illinois, born and raised. I decided to become an educator because I really like being around kids. I feel like I'm my best self whenever I'm around kids.
They allowed me the freedom to be a kid at heart and they're just really funny. So I was like, man, I can get paid to like be around little comedians all day, every day. Let's do that. But I also took a couple of aptitude tests that communicated that service was the industry that I should go into. And I did not disagree.
And 2012, 2013, I went back to school after having dropped out for business administration at Purdue and got my degree from Eastern Illinois University to become an elementary teacher and middle school as well. And then in 2016, I just got the ball rolling, came out the gate with a music video and everything and introducing myself to my students and staff mates and the world and been doing the dang thing since 2016. And I currently teach in Chicago public schools on the South side.
So, Your welcome to fourth grade video went a bit viral while you were still student teaching, right? So can you talk a little bit about that video, you know, why you decided to make it and how that shapes your career and your relationship with your students? Even today, when I was student teaching a professor at my college, Eastern Illinois university, Ms. Faye, she was a gym professor, actually. So she taught us how to do. physical education for our elementary students.
And in that gym class, he played a video of a teacher introducing himself to his students. You know, it was this, you know, guy who was just rapping. And I thought, Wait, hold on a second. I'm me. I rap. I do this. I does this. So I was like, I'm gonna do this when I didn't teach. So I went and then I had a friend who shot the music video. We shot it in one day with one camera with terrible lighting. It was just, Hey, let's just see what happens.
And the magic of it is people gravitated towards it. I'm hello. I'm your teacher. My name is Mr. Reed. And it's very nice to meet you. I'm from Chicago. I love eating pizza and I dress to impress, but I still rock sneakers. And I go on to tell more and more about myself as an introduction, but also letting my future scholars know. This is what you're going to be getting yourself into when you come into Mr. Reid's classroom. This is the craziness that is Mr. Reid.
This is a smiley up in your face on top of a desk. Hoorah! Hoorah! Let's go! Chanting Mr. Reid. And I wanted them to get a little sample of that before they even step foot into the classroom that I was going to be teaching in. And the reaction was just wild.
I mean, Good Morning America, literally, the day after I released the Welcome to the Fourth Grade music video, there was a Good Morning America Chicago producer, because you know they're based out of New York, Chicago producer knocking on the door of the school that I was student teaching at. Wow. Like, they, man, they got to me. I'm really glad that you were able to join us today. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Yes, and thank y'all for having me. Thanks for listening.
And that is a wrap for this week's edition of the labor radio podcasts weekly. Just a tasty sampling of some of the amazing programs they would over the last week. On more than 200 labor radio and podcast shows, they are all part of the labor radio podcast network shows that focus on the working people's issues and concerns. We've got links to all the network shows, labor radio network.org. You can also find them use the hashtag LIBOR radio pod on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
And just a reminder, let us know what you think of this show. Drop us note [email protected]. And you can be part of the network. You don't even need a microphone. Labor radio podcast network t-shirts are available. They're union made. You will find them in all sizes and two [email protected]. This podcast is recorded under a sag after collective bargaining agreement. The labor radio podcasts weekly edited this week by Patrick Dickson.
Before he headed home for the holidays, I produced a show. And our social media gurus always and forever is Mr. Harold Phillips for the labor radio podcast weekly. This has been Chris Garlock and the entire team here wishes you all safe and joyous holidays. And as always stay active and stay tuned. To your local labor radio podcast show, we will see you. In two weeks.