Labor Days

thought the cash and start turning, started getting determined. I tell that I started learning with all the effort I am served, thinking that it might just work. Broke my leg. They made me off. This fucking stage is right to work now that the unemployment they nobody noticed. I can't even get my check on times. Motherfucking COVID and these kids all in the house. And you know the ship is not the dopest. I've passed it off to link

with Franker. She gonna drop some mo ship workers ship the boxes they Slipper and Chipper whenever talking and whipping the shock of carts. It's active beer in the walkings and tact them with legal cart and to keep our king at him for the stock and not financial market solvent. They're clocking for fifty fitty bucks in there, the coping of like sixty fifty chucks and gets spit on my sitting ducks. And they are sick getting fucked. So if you ever wanted to honor them, he has not asked

for all mohammedans. We boy Cotton, Amazon and Target and FedEx and Walt Martin and Cicario Hope Foods until the fucking boss's bargaining workers won the company. That is in any arguments, So argue with them, are you with a alright, alright, alright, alright, welcome back. I'm dope nice, I'm lingua franca. We're waiting on reparations. Hurr. Yeah. We're here to talk about a little bit of politics from the lens of hip hop.

Hip hop from the lens of politics, and particularly today we are talking about the labor movement in America, the way it affects black people, the way it affects rappers or doesn't uh. And we're gonna have of my good friend ironmy o s from Pong, a community organizer, host of the YouTube show The Black Athenians and a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Georgia here to talk to us today about the labor movement's history, it's importance,

and the promise of a federal job guarantee. And I want to start off talking about some shitty jobs that we've had, our own personal experiences with the necessity of workers coming together to organize for better working conditions and better pay, because I've definitely had some jobs are just like what the fun So wait before you we get into what the jobs have been, what was your first job? My first job ever? I was a I worked at Sonic. I was one of those people that brought you the

tray out to your car. I did not wear the roller skates, yet I could not keep this movies from hitting the parking lot pavement even just standing. No, no, I would routinely drop things like on my own two feet sands like wheels beneath me. So I never got to that level of like skating around. But uh yeah, just like sat in the back ate a bunch of fried macaroni and cheese nuggets. I was there for like a couple of months. Yeah, yeah, I got I got sick one time and I couldn't come in and they

and they fired me and that was it. I was sixteen, Yeah, yeah, yeah, my first job was I was sixteen as well. I wish it was like something like Sonic Goes for the State Department. It was that the the US for the embassy in Singapore when my father was stationed there. It was like a summertime thing. They just had me doing like clerk stuff. Okay, that was like my first experience

in the job market. You know what I was thinking when I was looking at the notes for this and you were saying that we should talk about like shitty jobs. It's gonna be hard for me just because like being like sitting down there and like really recollected. I haven't had many jobs, just a couple for a long time, you know. So we worked on the service and straight from yeah, I was always bartending and serving off and on. Whenever music was slow, that was what was paying the bills.

So it's like, you know, that was always my steady thing that I had while I was pursuing, you know, other creative artistic ventures and ship. But as I was touring and releasing music and stuff, that was I must have split a ten year span between like two different places as a bartender or waiter, and it wasn't shitty Like I liked it. I like the people that I worked with. For the most part, it was like you know, it was. It was a lot of work in very high demand. But over the years, the grind of it

made it shitty. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So it's not like it grinds, it grounds you down, you know what I'm saying, and you start getting that, what then am I doing with my life type ship? You know? Yeah? Yeah, I've worked all kinds of jobs. I was like a door attended at the cafeteria in college. Also in college, I was in the summertime somewhat of a carney. I worked at a ball toss booth at the Asheville Tourist

Baseball Stadium. So I pretty much just stood in the hot sun um with people that drunk, unamused white people trying to throw balls at this thing for hours and hours as a clown or something. Did not have a dress up like a clown. I have this little polo I had to wear in like khakis. It was chill. I pretty I think they've hired me for the job because I looked somewhat like a clown, and my brother like, oh, sounds great, she'll be perfect. Um. Yeah, I've always worked

multiple jobs. Worked in a print shop here, I worked as a bouncer at a bar in town. I worked as a wedding caterer. Like, I've consistently had multiple jobs just to like get it all together rant wise and everything. And I'm still work like three or four jobs, like and then like this is the first time in my life I'm like above like the median income for like

the area. Like you know, it's still taking you know, being on the commission, working on this podcast, freelance music stuff, teaching it's teach to the University of Georgia, all this stuff. Like I still and I probably, oh, I feel like I always will because I have that, like say, on your grind mentality of like you have to always hustle, you have to have multiple things going on in order to like to live. And I just think it's it's part of that capitalist mentality of like your worth is

measured by your productivity. It's the grind of life. It's it's the grind of life. Yeah, but I mean it doesn't have to be this way? How do we get here? The Wagner Act, officially the National Labor Relations Act, established the legal right for most workers most workers to organize, enjoy labor unions, and bargain collectively with their employers, which

was a huge deal. You know, finally people could negotiate with their employers about health insurance, about pensions, about working conditions you know, we don't have we like, we have hours that are too long. We you know, work in the heat, we work in the snow. We don't like that.

So people are actually able to like collectively come together to say, like, yo, without us, without the people running this shop, y'all don't have a paycheck either, So let's come together and decide what's going to be best for everybody who's actually running this whole place. It was also a huge deal that predominantly black workers in the farming and domestic sector, like our cultural people the help you know, like your your nurses aids, your people, like that your

housekeepers were accepted from coverage under the Wagner Acts. So while people in mainly white professions unionized and collectively bargained for better working concisions, pensions, medical insurance, job security, better pay, and without this bargaining power, black workers were trapped working grueling hours for next to nothing at the whims of the season. When it comes to you know, they're determining their economic security. In the beginning of labor in this country,

there was this racial divide which has expected. They always want to divide and conquer when it comes to the working class. Like, okay, if black and white people come together to negotiate, we're but like, if we can make it so that, oh, the white the poor whites are just a little bit better than the poor blacks, and they can like have this reason to be like, oh, we're not so bad and none of us actually take on the big money interests that are screwing everyone, screwing everyone. Yeah, so,

speaking in big money interests. A number of bills have passed since then, notably the Taft Hardly Act in n and the land Rum Griffin Act of that we can the Wagner Act establishing right to work laws, banning secondary boycotts, and limbering the right to pick it. In February nineteen sixty eight, during a violent rain storm, to black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, were killed when heavy rain caused barrels of heavy garbage to crush them. That sounds like

a fucking terrible way to die, it really does. It sounds like some fucking final destination ship. Their death jump started the most important civil rights and labor rights campaign in US history. In response, sanitation workers went on strike and took to the streets and with signs bearing familiar

phrase of civil rights struggle, I am a man. They went without pay for the duration of the strike and faced the wrath of the mayor, Henry Loeb, who had declared the strike illegal, and sick racist cops on them in mass for sixty five days. Hundreds of black sanitation workers demanded safer working condition in fair pay. Martin Luther King Jr. Was actually in Memphis supporting that strike when

they shot him on the balcony. And it's been positive that like when he was talking about rights for black people, like he was hated and he was feared and the FBI was trying to get him to kill himself and all that ship. But it was when he started to turn his campaign towards okay rights for workers, like labor rights for all people, the poor wife as well as the black. So that's when they were like, Yo, we got to stop this motherfucker. We needed to, yeah, take

him out because this is getting really really dangerous. One of the things when like you go back and actually like watch a lot that stuff to read a lot of stuff is like how much of the your communist attack was used against m Okay specifically because he was, you know, I mean working on behalf of like working people and stuff like that. But you would think that It's almost like at some point they started realizing that just simply going at him under like the racial you

know side of it wasn't going to be enough. That they started like throwing it, Oh, he's a communist, he wants to say, you know what I mean, he wants to bring him Yeah, they had to bring him labor. They had to bring in economic policy in order to

like make him are true threat. Yeah. Yeah. So ultimately the sanitation workers were successful, achieving unionization, say if we're working conditions, some of them gaining promotions at their jobs, and for many Black Americans, unions have ever since been a life changing ladders to the middle class. Working unionized black women, according to the Economic Policy Institute, or paid just nine point nine percent of what their black male counterparts make, while non union black women make just of

their counterparts. Yeah, and this is according to the Economic Policy Institute, which also showed in a separate study that unions helped raise the wages of women in black and Hispanic workers, whose wages have been historically lagging behind those of white men. As well. They showed that black union workers more likely to have employer provided health insurance and roughly more likely to have employers sponsored retirement plans. So unions work, and the benefits are even greater. For black

union workers who haven't completed high school. The study shows that they have nineteen point six wage advantage over their non union union peers, and are more likely to have health insurance and tent more likely to have retirement plan, respectively. So if y'all niazeta make it through high school, join

a union or organizing workplace for real. Even in the right to work state like Georgia, I mean, like so here in Athens, we have a chapter are a local of the Communication Workers of America that represents everyone that works at the University of Georgia. I say everyone loosely, because in a right to work state, you can't be forced to pay dues to a union that is still organizing on your behalf, even if you're not a member UM.

But nonetheless they've been working on stuff like fairer health insurance conditions, even down to small things like the fact that employees have to pay to park at their place of work. It's like forty bucks a month, which like, if you're not making ship is a big deal. Yeah, and it is. It matters because the University of Georgia is the biggest employer and Athens UM, which has a nearly it is it is, and it has our town

has a nearly poverty rate. Of course, they have all these statistics on like the students and how well the students do, but when it comes to the quality of life and other such facts regarding the folks that actually work there and keep the campus running, not as easily

found UM. So there's a lot of discussion of like there has to be some sort of connection between the fact that the largest employer in Athens is the University Georgia and we have one of the highest poverty rates in the state and in the country for a city of our size, So like, what what is that link?

What is that link. Is it possibly that they're not paying people in I mean that's the argument recently movement that grew out of a controversy related to slave graves that were desecrated in the in the renovation process of one of the academic buildings. They claimed so some of the demands made by the group that was raising awareness about that issue, it was like living wages for all the employees of the University of Georgia. I think of

whom are like black. Like if you if you look at, um, the maintenance workers, the lawn workers, the custodians, like the

folks working at the bottom. The folks working at the bottom, um, So those are the those people are the descendants of the slaves that they found under the fucking building when they were renovating it, right, you know, if they have lived here generationally, and this all getting paid pretty much slave wages to maintain the University Georgia, just like slaves used to be least to the University of Georgia to like maintain their campus and work for the faculty, etcetera.

I mean, I'm not an economist or anything like that, but if it's the largest employer and they're still afforded. I mean, there's something weird about that. I mean, but I've definitely heard that like dynamic described when when people are talking about like Walmart or something like that, where it's like, oh, well, Walmart, um, all of their employer, you know, a large percentage of their employees are on food.

As a result, then the taxpayers ends up paying for the employee instead of Walmart giving them a living wage, right, yeah, exactly exactly. And it's like if they're keeping people in poverty with the wages that they pay, that the onus of dealing with that poverty then falls on the local government, which I work in, and so then that's our problem.

And then why that why that is additionally interesting is that the University of Georgia owns the land and Athens and they don't pay any fucking property tax on it. And so not only are they keeping people in poverty with the wages, they are also not paying into the solutions for poverty through taxes to the local government. So it's like doubly on us to racket. It is a racket.

It's completely racket. I mean, at the end of the what the fund is the point of working if you're not going to get paid enough to even live, you know what I'm saying. I mean, is that part of the plan, you know, because because it's obviously not like this is just like some coincidental works out. It's warfare, it's class warfare. It's like, we hate you that you live, so we're gonna make it so you can't live because we just despise your existence, gonna make your life as

hard and uncomfortable as possible. So I'm proud. I'm proud member of c w A Local three two oh three, you know, organizing for better conditions, better for folks at the University of Georgia, because it's been theorized that like if they were to raise there is that organizing Is that something specific to UM so I think they organized

for University System of Georgia employees all across Georgia. Yeah. Yeah, But like it's tricky us being a right to work state and everything, you know, right to work laws like we live under in Georgia have been a rallying point for the right wing throughout the twentieth century. Who we can work or power and the interests of big business. And as I stated, and I will continue to state, motherfun class warfare, white supremacy, and rights to work clause have gone in hand in hand for a long time.

In fact, Vance Muse, who is often credited with popularizing the term right to work, probably told the Senate Committee here in I am a Southerner, and I am for a white supprescy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the games made by the black labor movement in places like Memphis of Kundor under attacked by Donald Trump, who in two thousand and eighteen signed a series of executive of orders that stifled the

ability of federal employees to organize. So, nonetheless, there's been renewed interests in labor strikes since the pandemic and racial justice uprise and began. It's more and more working class folks realize how essentially they are to keep the economy running and consider the way that work stoppages and labor disruptions can distruct the economy and draw attention to issues and important ways that can't be done through mass mobilizations

like marches protests on their own. In April, Amazon workers were reporting crowded spaces required rate of work that does not allow for proper sanitizing of workspaces of empty containers that are meant to whole sanitizing wipes and workers who were testing positive but told by human resources to keep it on the down though, and they got fed up, so said an Island Amazon fulfillment center worker, Christian Smalls, but a group of colleagues from the building during lunch

hour to call for the building to be temporarily closed and for it to be stringently sanitized, as well as for workers to be paid during the hiatus. Several had become sick and he was pretty immediately fired for standing up to them, which is a very real outcome when people organized in their workplaces like this. If you're not under a contract that permits UM organization, if you're not

represented by a union, this the thing cantially happen. And for example, when we were organizing the strike for Black Lives here in Athens, there were some very real concerns among some of my fellow organizer. It's about what protections would we put in place to make sure striking workers UM would not be retaliated against what happens if they get fired and they lose their income. Especially during a pandemic, there's so many UH people looking for work that they're

very easily replaced. We all just really regardless ultimately expendable. But we have to kind of put this in the context of the massive amounts of unemployment that we're having

this country right now. Unemployment is jumped into the double digits since February when it was around I think like three and a half percent, with now about three About thirty million or so people plucked the unemployment betterments and state governments struggling to keep up with all the payments given a glutted and overrun unemployment benefits system as well as state revenue shortfalls. And on top of that, six

hundred a week boost unemployment benefits expired on July. So between essential workers agitating for better protections to pay and those who have been laid off and left out to drive by Congress that can't seem to pass or dude benefits, it wouldn't surprise me if we see even more people

in the streets in the coming weeks and months. But at a time when we have so many unemployed, it puts workers at it in an even more precarious situation, it is arguably, and they could be easily replaced by the many who are currently unemployed if they rise up

to demand better from their employers. And so while some have responded to underair working conditions and unfair pay by taking the streets and demanding them, others have turned to wrapping truck as responses to the economic exterity of times like the Reagan era. And I bring us up because it was really interesting when we were doing research for the music portion of our show. You were looking for songs that pertained a labor that pertained to the nine

to five that we could discuss. It was interesting that most of the work that is discussed within hip hop culture pertains to like street corner work, like night night jobs, like you know, running running things. Yeah. But anyway, we'll come back to that in a moment. First, we're going to bring in our guests. My friend I ro M e O s a Frompong, labor activist and hosted the

YouTube show The Black Athenians. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Hello, Hello, student of philosophy, I do study philosophy at u g A Yeah, and general Rabble rouser, host of The Black Athenians on YouTube every Friday. I have been known from time to time to raise rabble Yeah he does, yes, he does yes. So how are you today. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. We're gonna talk about freedom and music. How's that time? Yeah, that's that's great to me. That's

all I want to talk about. Yeah, so let's start big. We've been talking about, um, the history of labor movement. But why why should labor issues matter the black folks of the hip hop and post hip hop generations? Well, black people work for a living. I don't know. There's this great staple singer song when when we get paid for the work we've done, like, we work for a living. Working people. Everybody in the United States works, but Black people have always been working, and a lot of the

Black experience is a work in person's experience. So to pretend that we don't work for a living and we don't work hard, whether we're hustling or like working for some man, is just a lie. So we need to figure out honestly, as black people, we need to know what it means to both be free and work, and especially be free and work for somebody who's not us, right, because we don't get treated like employees in these United States,

We're still gonna getting treated like slaves. And there's a difference. There's a difference. Employees get big cation time, they get weekends, they get time off, they can clock out, they get sick days, they get they get healthcare of the employed. Being an employee isn't a bad thing. We want employees in the United States, like we have an advanced economy. I want Amazon, I want grocery stores, and all of that takes employees. I don't want to be growing my

own food, like not all the time. I want to be able to go to store, buy an avocado, have money in my pocket because I work and get a paycheck like I want, we need. This is a nation of employees in the United States. A small business, according to the government, is five hundred employees or a fewer,

which means most people work for other people. So how can you both be free and be an employee at the same time, and especially if you're black, how can you both be free and an employees because quite white employees get plaid. Fine, they got four one kids. I want, but I want all of that stuff too, I want,

I want, I want, I want all too. So the idea is that America has made it so hard for black people to be employees that we just assumed that will I guess we've got to start our own business and then right, And I really want to talk about that because especially with the hip hops emphasis on being an entrepreneur, because the hustle being like I am my own, my own, my own boss, because I'm out here on the street corner, I'm not here hustling, and so like why like where why do you where do you think

that came from? Well, the problem is being a black employee is so bad in the United States. It's just taking the shine off of work. I can taking the shine off being employed like we go. It's so the question is being a slave or um being out there hustling, you know, and hustling you you're just a slave to the market. It's just another form of slave, another form of tunity because if you don't hustle, you don't need but you're also eating risk because what you're doing might

be quasi illegal. So um, black people actually start more businesses than our white counterparts. They just go under faster. But because we live in a capitalist economy, which means that in order to start a business and have it actually succeed, you need investment capital, right, and you can't we don't have the investment capital. We just don't have it like that, and our cousins don't have it like that.

So um, we start more businesses, but they go wonder because we actually don't have a labor floor that one can purchase our wares too, that can float us the investment capital you need. I see, I spent time in Silicon Valley. I did my undergrad out in Berkeley, spent a lot of time Silicon Valley. UM, And you gotta understand, those guys are funded for their fourth business. That means the people who give them money expect them to lose

three times. So like, do you have thirty k black Man, or anybody who's watching this video, do you have thirty k to just try something and then lose and then go back to that same source since it were I guess you'll never believe it. You'll never believe it happened. But I tried, real heart, Just give me another thirty kye and and I think this time I'll do it again. So when you're fine, when you're really serious about getting in the business, you need money to lose and to

try stuff. If it's just well, I got this, you know, I saved up about five K and I think I could try something. And then when you get wiped out because you needed to try and you took a chant and it didn't work, it takes you ten years to get to scrap up another five k to try it again. You're not gonna grow that way. Are you gonna try it again even the first time around? Like, if it's gonna take you ten years, if it just wiped everything out,

you can't date because you're too busy saving. So we need an employment floor where like you can work, save up money, have a steady job, be black on the job because a lot of people might think that's the thing, right, So a lot of people might not know this, but you can be fired for being black and caring about black people. I'm sure a lot of people who might listen to this podcast might have been fired or having a talking to you for standing up for black people.

Because standing up for black people is day us in this private market. So if you so, you have to also you have to do the job, but then do the job in the way that makes your white boss comfortable. And that's an extra whole job. So on top of that job. And that's why you know, we die a stress because that second job is a lot of job. Um, but you have to understand that that is a second job that we shouldn't have to do. We should just

be able to do the first job. Right. So we need a world where we can just do the first job and not the second job of making white people on white white people comfortable. And then that way we could sustain the job. And the job needs to be paid so much that we could work the job for a while, save up and then like do a project, right, you know, going a nice vacation'll save up for a business. But that means it can't be at like nine dollars

an hour. You're ten dollars an hour. You're just working to work and then you die, You stroke out and die and at the end, and that's not freedom, that's not self determination. You're still and you can't clock out like you got a bad back because it's nine dollar an hour. Job is bad for your back. So I

heard I read this great book by Elizabeth Anderson. She wrote a book called Private Government, and in it she has a story about Amazon, this Amazon warehouse where uh, they had a choice, right, they had a choice to either have an HVAC system installed or for heating and cooling to keep the workers you know a lot, or they could just park um emergency vehicles outside so when like now and then and pass out, they could just rush them to the hospital. Right, so let me guess,

let me guess what happened. You can imagine how that happened. Right, So they were just like, well, we'll just have emergency vehicles outside so like we can just rush them. That's not that's not like I'm I don't want to get rid of Amazon because I like clicking on things and having it delivered. But I need to know that the people in Amazon as workers are treated with dignity. So

I'm not against big businesses. I just don't organize them so that they can um come together and negotiate their conditions about uh, you know, how much to set the HVAC system, Like it doesn't I like sixty eight, but I can negotiate up to seventy two. That's fine, but this hundred and four and just wait till I pass out. Then you get it just a new Negro to come take my place. I don't want that. I don't want

that to be our life. And then the idea that well you can just quit that job and get another job with the same conditions conditions. That's not that's not a success. That's not freedom. Right. So freedom means being able to work your job, work, have like some sort of say in your working conditions, be able to clock out, be able to be stacked in cash as you're working to then do something else. If you want to do something else, I'll hop to another job. But try a business.

You've saved up because you don't make nine dollars, you can actually save because you make twenty two. Um, you saved up. You try something, it fails, you have another job to go to. UM, you can fail and try things.

And that that's that's what self determination looks like. And I just want to say real quickly that you have to understand that when the Constitution of these United States was organized, in mind the founders had when they said, like, well, you know, we're gonna restrict suffrage to UH to property owning white men. That's both racist and sexist. But more importantly, in their mind, they had the idea that everyone was

going to be self employed except for slaves. Everyone was going to be self employed employee like employment was seen as a season right, you do it when you're young for a little bit. Then eventually this is pre industrial Americas, the seventeen seventy six industrial the Continent and all. That's not until the early eight hundreds, right, So they were organizing the United States for a nation of people who are self employed. The problem is these United States that

we currently live in, the workforce works for somebody. So we need to understand what freedom looks like in a world when most people work for other people. And that's why you need labor law. That's why you need, um uh, just a sense of freedom. I think you need a federal job guarantee. Let's talk about that because I mean, we have a culture here within hip hop where like people are people are working nine to five, So we're

gonna derectly we're gonna have to talk to you you. They don't want to talk about it in their music, and so it's obscured. It seems like everybody's out on the street. But it's like, nah, I know you're working over at Very Queen when you do the studio. So we're not talking about the fact that we're all working. We're all working. We're all working, and so we need to shift that culture.

But I think a federal job guarantee could be a huge boon to black Oh yeah, because before that, and I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about that, why, why it works, what it be. So a federal job guarantee just understands that you can't be free in a market society unless you have one a valued, recognized place in the market society, and two you have

money in your pocket. America's got to drink minimum. Like, if you don't have money, you're always you spend half your time in these United States trying to get away from the bouncer, trying to pretend that you've already have two drinks, just taking you're taking up and pretending edit yours. So um, you have to understand that America cost money. We have loitering laws in Georgia made four black people

pretty much because America costs money. And if you don't have money, you don't belong here, So we need you shouldn't exist. There was no place for you here. So we need if we're going to have a market society, which I think we should, we need a way to secure people the means to actually make money and not just money so that you know they can live, but money. That's so that they can actually determine what they do money so that they can have hobbies and make moves. Yeah,

the extra money right. So, um, so this federal job guarantee would be a job doing the market infrastructure. Um, that's not being that's not being taken care of by the private market as it is. For example, right now, to get into an elder care facility, some people might know at home, it's anywhere between like three eight thousand

dollars a month. So are you telling me that everyone who grows old has access to three and eight thousand dollars a month, or it's the case that the only people who get to grow old with dignity are people with access to three and eight thousand dollars a month. So what happened that the black people? That's at us? So that's not us, right, So what I'm saying is like, you need a federal job guarantee to secure the rights and the dignity that's afforded to everybody else for everyone.

So you're talking about having Okay, let's elder care, yes, other care wellness checks because people are growing old alone with their house growing around them, like elder care deferred maintenance. In the American South, we have a hookworm problem. Hookworms hookworms because you know what, it turns out that if you're living out and renting a trailer and someone's and someone's um spot and the septic system breaks, Yeah, that

ships coming up. That ship literally is coming up to you're playing and ship like and so you pick up with hook and the American South has a hookworm problem. Is just google it and um and your landlords in Atlanta, so they don't care. And so it's twelve thousand, twelve K to fix the um septic system. And if you're living in a trailer, you might not have access to an extra twelve k. Yeah, would you believe you might not have access to that extra twelve k to fix

a sective system. So pretty much people are like walking around in their own poop. And this is all over the American South. Lead pipes like that's like people just talk about leaded water and flint. Now, no, look anyway, you see a congregation of black people check the water because like, these public services haven't made it to the neighborhoods that can't pay the property taxes or for some reason, like we just decided not to give them the goods.

So we need these federal jobs that will rip out the pipes, that will fix the septic system, that will do all this deferred Maybe we have, like I don't, We have about sixty years with a deferred maintenance in the American South. And the South is actually a pretty great if you give me a cultural and material infrastructure. The South is a pretty great place to live because the weather is nice. Yeah yeah, but I need a cultural and material infrastructure I don't want. I don't want hookworms,

I don't want leaded water. I don't want to live around black people who will also don't have hookworms and leaded water. So like I need an infrastructure, and that means we need like this work done. So there's work to be done, and the federal job untee would provide the material and cultural infrastructure, not just material about the cultural infrastructure. For example, in order to have this fantastic podcast,

you can't just be someone with great ideas. You need like a studio and an engineer and a distribution network and nice microphones and someone to maintain all of the information and then and then someone to process this when it's all done. Those are all good jobs. Um, and those are all good jobs that will actually sustain that that makes places livable, that makes places livable. An you think of federal jobs are and he comes into play

with a cultural infrastructure. The only reason we know who Arthur Miller is or Orson Wells is if you do know who those guys are is because they got their start in a w P A theater and writing. Arthur Miller is a playwright, wrote Death of a Salesman and some other things. Orson Wells its Citizen Kane. You might have heard of it. It was in all the papers. Um. But they were both w P A Works Progress Administration. Um,

there's a big government jobs program. And the thirties started by uh FDR and the guy started like three point five million jobs over the course of two months. And that's when they had information technology was was it rotary phones and like carving copies? Right, So like we could get an infrastructure, a cultural infrastructure, because culture is how you learn how to what to do with your freedom. Right. Nature teaches you what to do through biology and its think.

Culture is what teaches you how to manage your freedom, how to make choices in a responsible way and in a way that actually like supports the people around you and treats people like people, because people who are uncultured have a hard time treating other people like people. So like, culture is what teaches us how to use our freedom responsibly.

So you need cultural artifacts, not just clean water, but also music studio is a community music studio right now and Athens is this great space called Newtie Space is great if you can pay, but you can only pay Newti spaces. I've never actually been there. You have, you's been there space. It's got music studios there. Nonprofit. They fund uh, they take the money they get from running up the space for on equipment and they fund mental

health care for musicians, um and so. But yeah, you need money in order to come in and get the rehearsal space, get the recording space. That would be great if that would like a library, so like we had, it would be like the equivalent of what this great

nonprofit us. But for people who can't rent space, for people who just because who mind doesn't need it, because you know what, Apparently people who don't have the resources to rent space sometimes have ideas that might need to be expressed and could use the space and then to rent practice rooms for musicians, because sometimes you don't want to rent your practice in your apartment it might be a loud so. Um, so the idea is that something like new t space shouldn't just be available for people

who can pay a prohibitive amount of money. And people say, well, you're talking about giving these goods away from free, And I'm like saying, like, look, man, if we already didn't have public libraries, do you know how hard it would be? What do you mean? So I got this idea, so like, hear me out hear me outright, So if we're gonna be in a democracy, we all need to be able

to like get information. So I think we should like have this building and then pay people to call them librarians to sit in this building and have like all the books so that people can get But then how do you make profit? Now? Okay, so wouldn't be for profit. It would just be like a cultural infrastructure, but you're just giving it away for free. But like, for sustaining our democracy in a responsible way, you need people to

actually get information. And so yeah, so like these ideas sound radical, but um, also I'm gonna I'm gonna mention one one great book that just came out called They Were Her Property, by um professor out in in Berkeley, and uh, she was like, look, we have all of these histories of you know, postbellum South, like you know, early twentieth century South, but they're all the only histories we have for women are from like the elite diaries

of white women. So it's possible we're getting a skewed view of the story because all we have is like Scarlett O'Hara like. So she went back into the archives and went to a w p A project because in the thirties one of the cultural products was taking all histories from people who used to be slaves or were born right and the right at the aftermath of the Civil War. So she got all of their domestic help. So she had access to the archive, the old archives

of the domestic help of these women. And it turns out that some of these white women were lying about themselves. They were they were not the best bosses, and would you believe what do you believe? You believe? And they didn't mention that in their little diaries, but you talked to their domestic help and they told all the stories.

So she wrote this whole book called they were Her Property, because it turns out a lot of these white women slaves were were owned by women, so like so they talked about it was it was the story of life in America from the viewpoint of you know, slaves. And the only reason this happened was because of this w P, a project that was providing a public cultural infrastructure. That book just came out last year. So a project that happened in the thirties provided the subject material for us today.

Like if you're up to me, I think every person as soon as they hit seventy years old, you get three people. You get a knock on the door with a sound gat, a sound person, a videographer, and like you know, a mixer. Three people that come to your place, and for one hour you get to tell your side, every single American. And then it's just putting a digital archive stored at the Library of Congress, every single American. Because now we just get the side of the people

who can afford to have their story told. I want every person. You earned it because you hit seventy you just tell and you just tell them and we just walked through the day. All right, tell me about the sixties, Tell me about the seventies, tell me about the eighties, tell me about the nineties. You just walk through the decades and you get an hour, and you I want three hours, right, So they come back the next week.

All right, we just and and we do it exactly and that person just gets to tell their side, and then it's archived, stored at the Library Congress anybody who wants. It's just a part of public archive. That's an interesting idea. I think it's a great idea, and we actually have the resources to do it, and that would be one of the public jobs, being a videographer. So from nine to five, you just drive around to old people's houses, you set up the microphone, and you get their side.

So this is actually an interesting take that I had not thought of with the Federal Jobs Guarantee before because I was thinking about like public utilities and like infrastructure that can cultural infrastruct So like these people who are currently working at Dairy Queen and who have these videography skills but don't have the money and perhaps by the

equipment and all of that kind of stuff. Now they have a job with the federal government going around recording the life stories of yes, And I think that's a very important job. I think that's a very that's at least as important as whatever you're doing at dairy Queen. I think that like that archive will actually sustain our culture in a way and kind of tell us about who we are in a way that maybe we don't know. Yeah, and and while also giving this guy a good job,

I want Bernie sand does it. Talking about a federal job guarantee at fifteen are very up to me would be twenty two. I have reasons for that. Well, okay, so up until nineteen seventy three. Um, and I don't know why. I mean, there's there's the hypothesis and why this is the case. But if wages match productivity from nineteen seventy three on, we'd be at an hour, right right, But at twenty two, I mean, but in nineteen seventy three the productivity skyrocketed, Well, we just stayed the same.

So like now we're just making more and just getting paid. Left. Yeah, it's so maybe it workers are not more productive, like they get lesser share of the profity. So I would have this federal job guarantee be at twenty two doll an hour and that would be a job. So you do that, you get the skills of like you know, going around, you're useful part of the community. You have a dignified job, and you had at twenty two dollars an hour. You can save, you can you can buy

your own equipment, your own studio album. Yeah. And if it doesn't and if it goes south, it's a job guarantee, which means you just go back to the office and you get Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about the impact that the Federal Jobs Guarantee has on the private market. Well, it would be jobs. It would

be doing jobs at the private market currently isn't doing. Right, So, the private market currently isn't providing elder care for people who can't pay between three and eight thousand dollars an hour a month, three and eight thousand dollars a month, right, So the job would be that it would be like you're working an elder care facility because apparently poor people grow old sometimes too. From time to time, they do age.

So it would be doing jobs that i wouldn't necessarily compete with the market, but would extend market services to people who can't afford it because like they can't afford what it is on the private market, right, so um yeah, and the like I said, wealthy people have the disposable

income to get their septic system fixed. If you don't, then either we have in America where people live in poop, or we have a federal job guarantee that includes like someone going to your place and ripping out your septic system, right Sam, with elther cants and with lead and water. Right because right now there was no plan for flint. And like I said, it's not just flint. We both know it's not just flint. It's not just flint. I think, well,

we know it's in Baltimore too, It's in Baltimore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it's not just flint. Like everywhere there's leading pipes that should be ripped out. But right now, the only people who can afford to get their pipes swipp out of people who can afford plumbers, right, who had it ripped out already you know, gave their child like brain cancer.

Yeah like wait wait wait wait, So like one of the federal job guarantee would be like you know this kind of work, right, So what JO is doing back there? You'd be producing like podcast for the people. So we need to think about what kind of services are already available to the Mike Bloomberg's of the world, and think, well, maybe they should be available to nanny's. Also childcare, child chalthcare needs to be universal and this is a childcare

and Nathens, Georgia right now. Yeah, you because like people like to have kids and they shouldn't have And I think, honestly, if you get rid of some of these other impediments, like the abortion rate will go down because a lot of people have to choose between living in abject poverty or having a kid. So suddenly if you have all the services you need, is like, I'll have this job, you know, raise this childishment when we punished for having

this job. So if we like, if we make having a child be less punishing, you'll, I think you'll see the abortion might go down, and I think you'll have better parents because like you know, it turns out then when your parents twenty two jobs, they fight less. But going to vacation to Disneyland every year, that's lots of

pictures and you can bring back in mouse ears. And if you have a twenty two dollar now a job that you can clock out of that means you can also, like when you're off the job, you can go coach your kid's team. Right, So there is a quality of infrastructure that I think that we just need to extend

to everybody. American has a matter of right. Because the Founders, and I'll bring this back to the Founders before we tied this up, the Founders understood that tyranny because they were thinking about the tyranny of King George, the tyranny of a foreign parliament. I don't want some foreign body telling me what to do, so I want to govern myself. But that's not the tyranny most people feel like in their in their in their day to day life as Americans,

right now, we're under the tyranny of our bosses. Like, well, that's the same, it's the same kind of tyranny. It's just not King George. It's like, what do I have to I have to worry about my boss? Like, weren't like feeling some sort of way and getting into mood and then all of a sudden I'm fired. That's another kind of tyranny. That definitely is a tyranny. So what do you need to get rid of that kind of tyranny? Like I said, this book Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson.

I think it's really good on this score, but we need to understand that as a form of tyranny, and if we're going to be free and self determining in these United States, we need to get rid of the tyranny of the boss. That doesn't mean get rid of employers. That just means empowering employees and democratizing power, like on the job. Well, how do you feel about like cooperative development and actually having no bosses? Well, the thing is,

I actually like I don't mind big companies. I don't mind Walmart, I don't mind Amazon, I don't mind Kroger Um. I maybe I don't want to be a boss. That should be a place for people who don't want to be bosses either, and don't want that boy, they just want to work them, They just want to work. I think there are efficiencies that you get from bigger companies. I just don't want the people who work for these bigger companies, the black people who work for these bigger companies,

to be treated like slaves. Right, So I think co ops are fun. I don't think they work in a modern industrial economy. And like I said, I don't. I don't want to get rid of Amazon. I don't want to get rid of big grocery stores. I think they're efficient. The scale issues that like, for example, I don't want small farms necessarily. I don't mind big agriculture. We just need sustainable big agriculture. We just need to agriculture that

doesn't also damage the environment. Right. So, um, we we just need to get if we're going to understand that we live in a world within our heart media, we just need to make sure that everyone has access and that the employees of these big companies are treated with dignity and they're not punished for for working. Yeah, a

couple more things before we go. Um, I feel like I've heard you say before, and excuse me if I get this wrong, but something like, um, the reactionary attention that's paid within black culture and within hip hip hop culture, in my view, especially um to police brutality and criminal despers perform kind of takes away from attention that we could be spending on jobs. So why is so, Like, how does that happen? First of all, how do we get caught up on like reeling in the aftermath of

police brutality? Incidents is rather than creating sustaining conversation about labor. I mean, we have such a confused labor discourse that, um, it just kind of gets overwhelmed by the spectacular. I mean I was, I was in Los Angeles and two were at you know, and at five o'clock, seven o'clock, and nine thirty you saw Wadney King just get to

the ship be out of him. Like I was in l A when that, Like, when that happened, um and the riots have in nine I think I was maybe I thought it was after No, No, you're right, yeah, yeah, it was in the late eighties, still in l A. And then I remember when the verdict got kicked out in the vertict So anyway, yeah, but anyway, it was on it was on television all them. So there's something

spect occular about that kind of violence. And this is one of the reasons why, UM, pret last brutality was such an important part of the civil rights movement, Like we needed to dramatize the terrorism that black people are living under. So the conversation doesn't end there in terms of what sorts of violence we're experiencing. No, no, it's a terrorism and depression actually of just being a disposable population,

we are a disposable population. And here's what happens. I think Los Angeles is actually a great example of what happens. If you just kind of handle the um mass incarceration part but don't do the economic part. You end up with a blood of black homelessness because they're still kicked out of the economy. The silly they might not be in jailable, they're not in jail anymore, they're still extra negros. We just have superfluous negroes because the private market doesn't

want In New York, they put him in jail. In Los Angeles, maybe they don't put him in jail, but they have no other place in the economy for them. So that's your your homelessness population. It's black in the nation, and I think in l A it's eight A mean, California is about eight percent black. But the homeless population, I want to say it's like fourty or fiftt so, so homelessness United States is black. There was because there

is no place for us in the productive economy. Yeah, so you know, if you're going to secure us freedom, you need to secure us a place in the productive economy.

This is what credit Scott King was talking about when he was on like after Martin Luther King died and he was talking about a federal job guarantee and byod Wrestling was talking about one, and Martin Luther King was talking about one in his great speech, uh showdown for non violence instead of in this Black History Month of whenever you guys watch, listen to this instead of reading the I have a dream speech, look for showdown for

non violence. That's where he lays all of this out and in the need for a federal job guarantee because the homelessness is it's black because there's no place for us to actually work to get enough money to sustain you know, a house, so like you get a house, but then the property taxes get you because you still

don't have money. So the spectacular nous of of police brutality kind of masks the fact that there is no place in the economy for us because I know, I know a lot of drug dealers and I and they don't like the risk. They would rather be working a good job, not a job they're not working. They don't want to work nine dollars an hour and break their back for that, But they would take. They would take a federal job guarantee of twenty two dollars an hour

doing public works rather than sling Kane or whatever. So like, I don't, I like a lot of people get into that life because there's no other place for us in

the productive account and productive economy where that's not abjectly degrading. Because, like I said, these guys are gonna work for nine dollars an hour, but if you give if you offer them a twenty two dollar an hour job that's actually like providing material or cultural infrastructure, they would much rather do that than eat the risk, right, And so we were we were debating whether or not the risk of slaying Kane or whatever, like if that is a part

of the appeal. I was like, it was like, exactly agree with you that the prospects of being an employee and how terrible that is has pushed people into the streets.

And that's it. That's the only appeal, Like being a black employee is so bad that we end up like doing these awful things to make ends meet, because it's either you work for some man at nine dollars an hour who still treat you like garbage and you're still vulnerable, and you're still vulnerable because like that white boss comes in is in a bad mood and then there you go, your job's gone, yeah, or or you you end up on the street, like doing what you can on the

street to make money and there's a little bit more flexibility, but you're eating a lot of risk. So like that's not white life. Yeah, that's not like there's no uncle who's gonna get you on a job, like no, like at a good wage. That's like that's white life. But the black life, that's just not the case for black life.

So you end up like taking these incredibly risky like positions and then you end up in jail or you look like someone you look like someone that might be in a risky position because yeas to every black president is under that in the private economy, that means that you look like the other black people on the street. Right, So I think, as I want to say, seven years ago, I haven't seen the most recent number. I think ten percent of black men between nineteen and thirty nine, those

are prime working age are in jail. I got this pervision. Yeah, that's ten percent of nineteen thirty nine. Ten percent. That's a chunk. That's like, yeah, that's a lot of people. That's so much that it screws up the entire economy. We can't get labor statistics. That's so much of like

the working classmen are in jail. And so the question is do you let him out of jail but still out of the economy, which means you're on the street like homelessness or intensely that's Los Angeles, or do you just round them up and put him in a cage, because at least in the cage are out of sight and out of mind. Right, geographical solution to socio economic problem. But and you know, if there was a great the movie what you call it, Sorry to Bother, that was

very well done. He was like, we haven't talked about it, Yett in this podcast. Well I'm just thinking that, Like there was a one scene one of the characters is like, look, it's so stressful trying to keep this house and live in Oakland that I don't know, jail doesn't look so bad. There are three hots and a cot, but I don't like insta bill and like it's very stressful. I like Oakland, California, if I grew up in I mean I went to college in Berkeley, so like I always a weird and

I would live around there. But now that I'm in Athan Georgia, you know, I moved out and I can't really move back. It's not for me, so because like I can't afford everything costs and I don't have money, so like that's not for me. But the idea that it's less stressful in jail, why do not go to Yeah that that yeah, exactly, not an extraneous negro outside of jail. So it's not like it's not like what I'm You're like, well, if you go to jail, you can't take care of your family. It's not like I

can take care of my family anyway. Yeah, this is what I'm thinking. So like that that I thought that was dramatized pretty well and so bother you and it's just like it's really a problem. And the way do we secure people their dignity and secure them a value place in life is to create this infrastructure, a job guarantee that says, like, you know what you get out

of jail. We got to twenty two dollars an hour show up and strengthened labor unions and strength of labor unions and like these jobs will be unionized, so like yeah, you just get to negotiate your working conditions or else some some mid level upper manager will look at a spreadsheep or higher consultant from McKenzie or whatever to look at the spread team and say like, well, you know, we can save a little bit of money if we just have like medical vehicles outside and didn't get rid

of the air condition because we're losing a lot of money and keeping the warehouse cool. Like like, no, you want to be able to negotiate that. You don't want that decision to come down top down. But so we want black employment in the United States to actually be like a dignifying experience because we want to embrace the fact of our advanced industrial economy. So we're gonna have employees. Let's pay employees, and the interesting ways you could do this, right,

So we subsidize farmers um with farm subsidies. That's if anybody knows anything about American oak culture, the only reason we got food is because of farm subsidies. It's right. It gets rid of a lot of inefficiencies and just we just wouldn't have food um without farm subsidies. So we subsidize farmers to either grow or not grow food. Maybe we should. We could also subsidize farm workers, right, So farm workers get paid twenty dollars an hour, but um,

the employer, the farmer only pays like you know seven. Right, So it's it's a direct subsidy too, is proposing right now? I don't not really, But we were so comfortable subsidizing owners. Were it's not comfortable with subsidizing workers. Subsidizing workers, all right, So you need these many workers to fulfill this farm. We want your food. That's great, this is a public good that like we're gonna allow you to have as

a farm. That's good. It's still your farm. But I'm gonna need your workers to be paid you know, twenty dollars an hour. Well, you don't want to pay twenty dolls an hour because they drive you out of business, that's fine, you pay seven. We'll get the other third team, and we'll tax Bloomberg for it. Right, And people say, well that might lead to inflation. First of all, why is every time nobody ever talks about inflation when you're

talking about like me, like wealthy people getting right? Uh? Second, all Trump nobody about also talks about the deficit when Trump cuts taxes for their wealthy. Right, so Trump is ballooning deficits. Yet ballooning deficits, we still don't hit inflation targets because like we haven't hit max productivity and you know as well as I do, we are under producing

in the American South. You get the hookworms out and the water out and get everybody internet to and like I'm I'm in Athens right now, and people like, well doesn't everybody have internet? Now you go about six miles in any direction, I've minute driving like you're back on

dial up and you've got like modem shah. So so we are like you get those people clean water, you get them a cultural infrastructure, some newspapers and internet in the internet, and you know, and you know what they have, the productivity goes up, right, So right now we can like we've been ballooning the deficit, but since we haven't maxed out productivity, the costs haven't gone up because of UM,

supplier diversity and supplier UM. Yeah, supplier diversity is keeping brought the prices down, right, So we don't have to worry about inflation until we have to worry about inflation, and there's a lot of There are a ton of indicators, and it's not generalized. Inflation is good specific because right now, like the press of most things is either staying stead you are going light me down, like like microphones, it's actually going down, yeah because I'm going yeah yeah, yeah.

But the price of healthcare, college tuition, those are going up. But those are that's that inflation is a matter of bad politics. That's not like that. Yeah, that's that's not more money in people's pocket. That's just bad politics. We have bad health care policy. So like healthcare costs of going up because like their private industry has taken our

government so um. So the idea that if you pay workers sometimes like if you pay workers, prices of things will go up, like assumes that all of the people are as productive as they couldn't be, or they wouldn't be making new things that will compete with the old things that will bring the whole price down for like all goods, which is which has attested to happen, it happens.

And and and if you agree with me listening at home, that America's under producing in the South is underproducing, and that if you give people clean water and clean air and um, you know internet, they will actually be more productive than they are right now with their hookworm infest itself. Then then like for example, if you actually forgive student and just wipe it, wipe it clean, wipe it clean,

clean the economy, it will people be more productive. People will be more Productivey'll be able to start businesses, our chances taking like they'll be able to actually produce things as opposed to like, well, I was gonna buy this this microphone and start a podcast, but I gotta pay Sally May like, that's a decision. I was gonna get

married and then like married, so business. I was gonna start a contracting business, but like you know that thousand dollars a month to Sally May like, so you wipe that away and like that will like take the chain off of an entire generation who's under producing right now because like they have to all their money goes over to like the a half million dollars debt or quarter. You know what's your name, Uh, Stacy Abams. That's Stacy Abram. I bet her a few times one on one we

had he like a t She is smart. She's smarter though she's as smartest of us. She's the best of us. Like Stacy Abams is smart two d K and it's not like, well, you know, if she just tried harder in school, she went yeah, yeah, yeah, get out of here. Well she just tried harder, you know, she would like she spent all the money helping out her parents and

like things the un expensive. So like Stacie Abams, the best of us, better than I am is two hundred k and debt because like black life kind of sucked it in and like and then being if you're related to black people, it's expensive. It's not as expensive being black. It's expensive being related to black people because like you know, maybe you gotta cover cover your friends dead, or maybe you got it, like something something happened bailing people out

of jail. Someone got a heart palpitation, so they went to jail. But then they got an ambulance and oh they got that ambulance. So now, how much is an ambulance bill? At least I want to say it's higher than that. So you got people going to uber, Yeah, I don't know it's gonna be now now yeah, because like that's no way to live. That's the way to live.

So so the idea that, um, if you take away that kind of stress, people won't be more productive is ridiculous because it's it's not proven out and coming to economics and and so yeah, we pay people, they'll be more productive. And anytime there's an inflationary good, we can have a policy that takes care of that, just like we did with with food. Right, So like we shouldn't have to, we shouldn't. This is like the inflation argument,

a bad argument. We need to pay black people for the work they do, because it's not as everyone can't be a boss. Because sometimes I want someone else doing my childcare, someone else's. I have three kids. I can't both have three kids watching them while doing this podcast. I need someone else doing that I want and I want else And if they're paid very well, that makes me happy. Yeah, because they've taken better care of my kids. Yeah. But so I wanted to ask you two quick questions.

We're getting over time. So do you do you need to go? No? No, no, go? Okay. So, um, we talked a little about the Wagner Act and subsequent tippings away at it. We talked about black sputation workers for Memphis and do you guys talk about how that started with the with the guy who got killed in the trash compattor got die What a fucking terrible way to die. I found out about that two years I was shocked. Shocked.

That's how that whole thing got started. They were trying to get out of the rain, yeah, in a trash compactor that wasn't working right, and as a result of the strikes, didn't have to work in the rain anymore. So I was wondering, I was any other tidbits from black labor history that people ought to know. There's a great movie called ten Thousand Black Men Named George. Just find it. I got, I got my copy, and I like I had to get like a DVD turned out

the Black Men Named George. It's about a Philip Randolph and uh him starting the Pullman workers union, right, and just what it actually captured very well. It's like normal ray for black people, right, So it's it's it's it captures very well about the stresses of actually like organizing for worker justice and what that looks like because like it's not like we don't want pullman port Pullman where the people who got your uggage and all of that stuff.

And when you're traveling sometimes you want people to get your luggage. That's that's great, right, But we also want those people to get paid. Right, So it was just a ten thousand black men named George. It's a great movie and I think it really just dramatizes what it is like to go from like not having dignity do you work on your workplace to having dignity on your workplace. Yeah, and they'll be helpful for people watching who are for listen,

who are listening who have no idea how this works. Right, Okay, I'm pissed about everything you've said, and I feel you. But now what do I do? Well, what does that even mean? Well, the funny thing is like shell Samberg came out with that book a few years ago, lean In, Right, I got so many black people fired. The tried to lean in by themselves and then well it wasn't for me. You try to negotiate you with your boss one on one, it turns out like, well, you're not good fit for

the company anymore. So like you can't lean in one on one. You need to lean in as a group. You need to lean in as a group because that's why you bounce a power, and that's why you can negotiate, because the rule of thumb is unless you could shut it down, you don't have negotiating power. So you need just enough power to be able to stop the machine. You don't need more than that, but you need that. So if you get enough people to just be able to stop the services, then you have um bargaining power

to go get it, to go get it. Get it, folks, you'll get it. It's been great having you. Where do we find your work? All right? So I have a podcast I run doing local politics out of Athens. It's so just go on YouTube and you put in Funky Academic or the Black Athenians. I'll be there. Or you can just go to funky academic dot com. Well do you got cash at PayPal? How do they send you money?

Funky academic dot com. You'll find a nice little panel on the left side and you could scroll down and give me five, fifteen, or fifty dollars a month would be great, Or give me a one time huge donation. Or you can leave me. Just go ahead and email me and leave me in your will. Yeah, yeah, I could get a piece of that inheritance because you know what, given money to me to spread the word would be

good for America. And maybe your kids have enough, so so and like maybe you want your better kids friends, so you give you just leave me, just leave me your inheritance, that would be nice too. Appreciate you being

hire man. Thanks thanks so As a Lingua Franco was saying earlier, when we were doing like the initial research to try to find songs that had labor as the topic or were about the topic of working at nine to five or that working man's grind, we're having a hard time finding it because, Um, for the most part, when we searched for it, most of the references to working we're either broad or vague concepts of hustle or working hard, or I'll put in the work in general

like ethic. Yeah, it is general, like almost like gatorade commercial type ship. You know what I'm saying. Um, whenever jobs were reference, it was never in any sort of positive sense. So I think that's why, well, yeah, like

I think that's why it's hard. It was hard for us to find like examples of rap songs that were for or about working men and women, just because that's like a topic that like people literally don't give a funk about in hip hop, like people people get it into hip hop to not have a regular shop, you know, Like people people do rap so that their mother doesn't have to work anymore, you know what I mean, so that their family and their friends are straight. Yeah, quote

unquote straight and nobody has to you know. So with that, it makes it it makes it kind of expected that you wouldn't find a lot of m c s dedicating a song topic to their job, right, right, at least not in the mainstream sense, um right, because it's aspirational. Even if somebody is working at nine to five and like on quote unquote on the side of their like

wrap aspirations. They're not gonna wrap about that. They want to wrap about like something that is inspiring to them, something that is like where they want to go, who they want to be, fashioning themselves as a different kind of person in their music, so they don't have to deal with they're not too ship And let's be real, I mean, like getting a nine to five isn't attractive, you know, based on these the weakening of like labor unions and stuff like that that we talked about earlier.

If you have to work fourteen hour days and a boiling hot kitchen getting screamed at by your sous chef about you know, you gotta flip the burgers quicker or whatever if you have to be on the back of that sanitation truck in the rain with getting garbage juice spilled on you, and like you're only making you know, an hour, Like why why, Yeah, it's not anybody's like dream, it's not anybody's dream. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean the line that epitomizes how I think the j O. B

Has been like dealt with in hip hop. It's from a Eminem song eight Mile Road, was on the eight Mile soundtrack, but regular, and it's like it's it's in the middle of the song, you know what I mean. There's a bunch of stuff that he says before, but it's like the whole song is about you know, it's it's eight miles on the eight Miles soundtracks. I'm going to battles, grinding them right every day and all that ship. So when he gets to that line, it's kind of like, damn, yeah,

it would suck if you just it would all that hustle. Yeah, And it's early as early as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five on the message they're talking about. Uh, my son said, Daddy, I don't want to go to school because the teachers are jerky, must think I'm a fool, and all the kids smoke reeper, And I think it would be cheaper if I just got a job learned to be a street streeper. So like already they're talking about like school, like you know, I just it's probably

more lucrative if I just get a job. It's one of the few I guess positive reversences to getting a job that it's out there. Well, I mean it's positive, it's dark, it's um, it's realistic, it's realistic, it's realistic. But I mean, do you you know that I kind of feel that somehow the Fox school aspect and Funk a regular job or connected, Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's like an anti establishment push on both sides. Both of these institutions. Fun a corporation, UM government job and fuck the public

school system. All of these ship is run by white people. So I don't want to do it. Word. So what we got next? Oh? Great, Kanye? Yeah, I want to talk about spaceships by Kanye, which I feel like has the most one of the most interesting anti labor, not anti one of the most interesting commentaries on labor in the In in hip Hop, he talks about work in this grave ship and I made ship. Wish I could

buy me a spaceship and fly. And then he says, you know, if my manager insults me again, I will be assulting him after the manager and I'm going to shorten. Let's go back back to the gap. Look at my check. Wasn't those scratch So if I stole it wasn't my fault. Yeah, Stoll never got caught. Take me to the back and pat me asking me about some khakis. But let some black people walk in. I bet you they'll show off. They're talking black. Oh now they love car. Put them

all in the front of the stone. So I'm on break next to the no smoking sign with a blunting them all. So we're talking about literally working at the gap, working at the gap and how much that sucks, and the manager getting on you and then tokenization dragging you out of black people come in the store, So how do how do you feel? Like, how do you feel about just that string? They're like it sounds like in

your voice that that hits that hits that hits. I mean, I think it's critical for like the very beginnings of developing class consciousness. I'm like, yo, like we shouldn't have to live like this. We shouldn't have to work under these conditions. We don't shouldn't have to like put up with this ship from our managers. I should be able to smoke weed in them all, like I steal because they're not paying me enough. Like this is this is the reality. This is the reality we live under right now.

And so um, it doesn't get into like a critique of like labor, you know, to a like technical extent, but like it's got the it's got the bait, the blaze, the bones, you know, just like oh yeah, don't you doesn't resonate with you that like this nine to five suck,

these managers sucked, these hours, suck this paycheck. I think this is kind of almost you know, like indicative of like a lot of the examples that we found where it's not necessarily that anyone is dedicating the entire song or even the entire verse, but it's just like little commentaries about jobs and labor and just the condition, you know, I mean of working and what that's like that you

hear throughout rap music and yeah, yeah. The next example what I want to talk about was mad City by Kendrick, which maybe like probably wouldn't jump out to you as like a labor song, but it says my pop said it needed a job, but did you already going for He ended up leaving back. I got fired because that was just fired. My friends stay Robbery the third Saturday

at Clacton. So it's like, do I hold this job down or do I engage in a lista ship that like we'll get you pay quicker and harder and also to your point, like has that illicit like that dangerous bad boy element to it that is appealing arguably to people within hip hop. Yeah, I mean because I've you know,

everybody knows somebody, you know what I'm saying. But it's like I've got the family and friends you know what I'm saying, who are doing show who are like yo, there's certain aspects of this ship where it's like you might as well just get when you weigh out, like the risk, like you're you're working like hard, harder than you would Yeah, you're working in fast food and if you get caught you going to jail for like twenty seven of life, So it's like, what am I doing? Right? Um? Uh?

The next one, this one kind of shifts in a bit because this one actually is about working in the corporate environment. But that's because it was made for the soundtrack of a movie. We're talking about the Cannabis and Bismarckie song Shove This j O B. It was on the soundtrack to a very funny movie, Office Space. It's hard to almost pick out a single line from this one,

just because that's the whole song is about that. It's just about pretty much the plot of Office Space, the grind of going the job every day, the repetition being in a cubicle, um, not being treated right, not even being considered as like a person or a commodity. You're just like they're you know what I'm saying, all that sort of stuff. My favorite session is it is um Cannabis says, you wonder why your workload is so enormous because the boss just laid off the quarters of the

whole office. You get depressed and get also stressed by what the corporate environment causes. Pretty much the whole song is about that. It's so it's a lot more comedic. It's not really somber critique of ship, but even that makes it effective in the point that it's trying to make that it brings levity into it, and that it's funny, and the beats really quirky, and you got bis Markey on the hook. Take this job, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like these lines later on the song. You have some occupations.

It's like slave gigs. The boss is favored and get placed in some spacious all the most hated get placed in some small s people, well, the most hated get placed in some small cubical spaces or get thrown down in the base. When get to just Stapler confiscating, that's like directly, I love it. No, that's good, that's good ship. It's fun. It's hard to find songs that are about

like picketing, about striking, about coming together. It's where girls, because let's be honest, most rappers, like most every day or nary rappers on the level of like Mac and I have other jobs. They have other jobs, and there's very few. I mean, like you might occasionally find a song like Spaceships, or find a song like Shove This j Ob, or find snippets like from Kendricks Mad City where people are like critiquing, like, man, that's what sucks.

But really do you hear someone actually say like, well, let's do something about it. And so, um, well, I'm of the Jacobin article that I was going to reference. Um it was just talking about how there's a there's like a long tradition of strike strikes from going from the eight hundreds up till now, you know what I'm saying, And it's just it's just like none of them are really rap songs. Say, granted, absolutely been around since like, but that's a seventy nine. It's not exactly like we've

been living in a utopia since nineteen seventy nine. But again, that's not necessarily a critique on hip hop. That's just it's it's where the music is coming from. You know what I'm saying. The music is just not coming from a point of view that is like, yo, I'm trying to work work within an establishment system. And it's also I think the case that like white labor unions have

a much longer history than black ones. To just give him the way the Wagner Act work, and so you have within white culture more like artistic offerings that rose out of the labor movement, whereas our you know what was it nine sixty eight where we had the black sanitation workers striking like we we gotta catch up, We gotta catch up still. And I think also the way is that economic austerity during the Reagan era affected black communities. It put us behind in terms of engaging in labor

and and either way that the ship. What did I just do? I just hurt my ear m. Yeah, I don't know what I just did. Sorry, I don't know. Yeah, just like here for a second, um, the way that labor rights have been chipped away at since then, just the combination those factors has put us behind as a culture in terms of engaging labor stuff in the music. So I think that's another reason why we don't have

a lot of strike songs. But do you think that in two thousand twenty that like a rapper could could emerge who is like a like a Bob Dylan of rat you know what I mean, just like some sort of like champion of the working man, but like become like the biggest thing in the world, the biggest thing in the world. NA have a mainstream have a mainstream platform. Yeah.

I mean, we're gonna end up talking about him a lot in this podcast, but I feel like Killer Mike is like a working class hero that yeah, yeah, and that champions working class causes and has a pretty big mainstream platform. That's a good example. Yeah, that's a really good example. And took him a long time to get there.

So maybe we have some some current talents bubbling under that, you know, in the next decade or so, or could it blow up and like bring those causes to the fore, especially as we have a political revolution in this country.

But there are some strike songs. One notably a GMAC Detroit rapper has the song on Strike where he stands in solidarity solidarity with union auto workers striking against general mortors who took grievance with the fact that they planted and have air conditioning, that they were there so called permit temp workers who didn't qualify for full wages or benefits and didn't have a clear path to being hired

full time. And in the video it's set on a picket line with a rapper joint striking autoworkers by hoisting the picket signs and mugging with them. On the camera. Let's listen to a little bit of that. We go,

so he's better listen. We ain't about to keep working under the terms working like, so get I gotta like it more now the second again, Yeah, actually, because before my my critique of it was I was I was saying, I like the verses, but I don't like the hook or the beat, and I think that it's so simple we're going on strike, and this was just like, this wasn't anything that I was even going to mention, you know what I mean, Like in all honesty, I was

just like, oh, that's what I thought, But the sentiment of it is important. So it's like I've kind of let that slide. But just like critiquing it from like my rapper nerd side, I've got like critiques in the song, and I feel that that affects the effectiveness of the message if the song isn't on point. But listening to it just now, I mean that beat, it's kind of hot, like the simplicity of the rhyme schemes, and like it's not super densely like lyrically rhythmically, it doesn't need to be,

because like it gets the point. Clock cross really clearly what their demands are. They're working in plant with no air conditioning, these tempts, working like slaves and never get higher. Like it's really like it it comes through crystal clear. What. I don't care whatever your ship is about. I do not like hooks or motherfucker's just say the same thing over and over again. Hey, it's not for me. It's like it's like it's like a protest. It's like a rally, chap.

I'm not going on strike. We're going on strike, like just filling the spots. It's more easier to say that ain't no power like the power of the people, because the power of the people don't stop. Like, let's be real, if we were going to go to a picket rally, a picket line like that ship, catchy, that ship say it all day, I feel you. I look, I'm not saying that it's not catchy. I just think there could be more to it. I don't know if there were

more to it, would it be as mass appealing. That's a kind of rapule you like ship that it is a little more dense, a little more technical. That's I didn't say anything else. Then that's what I like, all right, So the next example we wanted to talk about was Astbrox Labor, which is almost twenty years old now um asad Rock. It's a hip hop recording artist, a producer

who resides in Portland, Oregon. He was at the forefront of a new wave of underground and alternative hip hop accent emerged during the ninety nineties and nine In early two thousand's Thank You Wikipedia Wow this album Labor Day. This is a concept album involving around the life of the working class in the United States. He was one of the best, some would say one of the best albums in hip hop in two thousand one, and rightly regarded as one of the most important records of the deaf.

Jux Era was a indie hip hop label early two thousands run by LP and I want to look particularly at the song nine to five is Anthem and which he has this kind of like spoken wordy outro or hook rather um where he says, now we are the American working population hate the fact that hate our job. So like he's got it's kind of like this manifestoe.

The the way that the the vocals are layered, it sounds like a like a like a like a chance, Like there's like many voices coming together to proclaim this, like we the American working population hate the nine to five day and day out, and we'd rather be supporting ourselves by being paid to perfect the past times that we have harv but based solely on the fact that it makes a smile and it sounds dope, which I've

always loved. I've always loved that line. I mean, that's pretty much is that's that's that's the thing right there, that is that is like, that is the hip hop relationship with the work I think right there, although you know, going back to my last critique, I think that he could with that hook could use a little bit of the simplicity, Yeah, simplicity of going on a little bit to get in the studio. Yeah, we need to link these two and they need to make the BA strike

protest working. Yeah. Yeah. And then he has this interesting critique of like of the working class and how they get sucked into the prison, the how they get sucked into the military industrial complex. In the second verse, he says, it's the year the land shark, dry, sand parched down. Get these men some water. They're out here being slaughtered, and the meaning its war, so you don't have to bother so you can sit and soak the idiot box

trying to funk their dollars. So it's like this relationship between the people at the top and the people at the bottom, where we have these generals, these politicians, these folks that like fucking Raytheon or whatever, that are getting all the money for war, and then these working class folks that are getting sucked into it so that they can send and soak the idiot box and trying to sunk their dollars. I was interesting. The whole album though

in general, like has like the theme of Yeah. One quick thing though that I think is so that I wanted to mention for heads that maybe didn't notice this for the outro samples Dolly's Partners nine to five, Yeah, cup of Ambition and yawn, It's runch and my life is a medicine anyway. Another thing. I never knew that

before I looked at it recently. The thing is my mom, who is the weirdest thing, like born and raised in Liberia, huge country music fan, like like old country, like Conway Twitty ship like that, you know what I'm saying, Like like she and she got into it while living in living Yeah, like so growing up, I've heard the song nine to five like a million times. I didn't even notice. That's like a perfect sample for the song because she's pretty much on the same themes that he is. All Right,

well that's it for us today. Thank you for listening, and please go watch Irony's show, The Black Athenians. It's on YouTube live every Friday, I think like four or five pm. And yeah, I think we should end this the way we end everything. Let's wrap Huh going on strike? What what shout out to go on strike? Going on strike? Hey st Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going on Yeah. I'm representing for my neighbors and all the other people trying

to get that paper. All the late birth that we get to our employeers is really really getting kind of motherfucking annoying, and I'm geting kind of over it. I need to get a lawyer. I need to bury these employers I love in the soil because I'm tired of it. I need to get strike it. Other people know that we'll be striking lights some light lights and lighting and you know what's about to go and hear the huge surprise. I need to tell everybody going union noise. You need

to go and just get up and harp again. Then you need to go and make collective bargainness. You could get a huge new contracting if they want to let you down lay your moll flat because you don't want a regular job. Don't want that. We're just screaming at the sky like a tom cat, skipping up the sky like a tomcat. I'm up the picket line asking where

my mom's Everybody come here. We're about to be bombast, about to have those bomb blast against the employers that don't have that contract in my fucking name with the pen on the paper. Yet this ship might be so we are waiting on reparations. We got one Cosby on the beats. He did the beats for this episode to check them out. Um see you guys next week. Waiting

on Reparations as a production of I Heart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.