The Final Countdown: America’s Last Chance to Save the Labor Movement
The Final Countdown: America’s Last Chance to Save the Labor Movement
March 8, 2021
“I still believe in ideals. I am not for a return to that definition of Liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few. I prefer and I am sure you prefer that broader definition of Liberty under which we are moving forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man than he has ever known before.”
In this 1934 Fireside Chat, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in no uncertain terms, proclaimed the democratizing and equalizing power of organized labor in the United States. In the face of the largest economic crisis in history, with millions of Americans out of work and impoverished, union strength grew to unprecedented levels.
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“Hi guys, welcome back to Book Club,” the model Kaia Gerber said with a California lilt. Seated in her bedroom in Malibu late in February, Ms. Gerber watched as thousands of viewers trickled into her discussion with the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, recovering from an all-nighter.
“It’s great to wake up and get energized hearing someone speak so kindly about you and their experience with your work,” he said.
Over the next hour, Ms. Gerber and Mr. Harris discussed the racial and sexual politics of his Tony-nominated “Slave Play,” the Reconstruction Era and the impact of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Federal One arts program. At one point, Mr. Harris shared a list of Black and queer theory texts including “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” by Hortense J. Spillers, which Ms. Gerber promised to pass along to her millions of followers.