Socialist Night School: Home School Edition (Week 6)
Start: 2020-07-07 20:00:00 UTC Central Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)
This is a virtual event
St. Louis Teamsters
For our July 7th discussion we're going to delve a little bit more into St. Louis's rich radical history. There are two pieces for this session, one is a little long (but the prose is lively), the other very short, about the post-war social democratic unionism of Teamsters Local 688, and its principle leaders Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway. Championing an expansive, community-oriented vision of trade unionism at a time when many unions were limiting themselves to 'pure and simple unionism' the St. Louis Teamsters offer lessons into both the possibilities and limits of progressive trade unionism and of the post-war liberal state more generally.
The longer of the two pieces, "A Trade Union Oriented War on the Slums": Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway and the St. Louis Teamsters in the 1960s," by Bob Bussel provides an overview of this community unionism project; Bussel later expanded into the book Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway and Working Class Citizenship, the release of which occasioned the alternate piece offered, a 2015 interview with Bussel on St. Louis on the Air.
Hope to see you on July 7th!
