Steve Early

In the early 1970s, when many student activists were migrating from campus to industrial jobs to promote working class radicalization, no labor film was more influential than Salt of the Earth. This pioneering docudrama was made two decades earlier by<br> Read More »

Review of Three Roads: Labor, Music, Ecology, by Joe Uehlein. Any book bearing blurbs by Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, and Tom Morello, with a foreword by Si Kahn, is pretty solid evidence that the author has music world friends of<br> Read More »

The Rise of a Socialist Mayor Forty-five years ago, a socialist, who previously couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Vermont, walked into his state’s largest city hall and claimed the office of mayor by a landslide margin of ten votes.<br> Read More »

Review of Keep Going: A Guide to Organizing When It’s Hard., by Ellen David Friedman. (PM Press, 2026.) Six years ago, Labor Notes ran a contribution to its popular “Steward’s Corner” column by Ellen David-Friedman, a long-time labor educator and<br> Read More »

During World War II, the shipyard workforce in Richmond numbered one hundred thousand—and 20 percent was non-white.  By 1945, Richmond had the largest public housing program in the nation, with seventy-three thousand residents. Eighty percent of Richmond’s black residents lived<br> Read More »

As a union rep who worked in northern New England and upstate New York for more than three decades, I became very familiar with down and out working class “spaces.” De-industrialization in the northeast spawned a service sector that didn’t<br> Read More »