Latest / The Rick Smith Show / The Rick Smith Show 9-29-2026

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The Rick Smith Show 9-29-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, here is the voice of the working class, Rick Smith.
0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:16
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the Rick Smith show.
0:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Today on the big program, lots to get to, lots to talk about.
0:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So John Fetterman over the weekend said that he's a lifelong refut in Republican, and that after being reminded, no, you're in Democrat.
0:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, yeah, Democrat.
0:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But he also said that he has no reason to abandon the Democratic Party, which, you know,
0:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I know Freudian slip perhaps we'll see, we'll see, he also said that chances there's a chance Democrats could take the Senate, let's hope also this week supposedly the administration saying that talks will continue between the U.S. and Iran, I guess this is the deal, now the Treasury Secretary has come out and said that Iran's economy will have nothing left.
1:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got to be honest, I'm asking, you know, the amount that we're being hammered here at home.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I know the administration's like small price to pay, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, especially because I don't think we're going to get that great of a deal because understand the Iranians aren't really moving.
1:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is one of those moments where you kind of go, what are, what are they going
1:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And it will it be worse than what we had because we had a deal with them Trump pulled us out of it And I got to tell you my favorite thing my favorite news one of my favorite news stories over the weekend is that Donald Trump actually asked Xi Jinping the president of the communist China If you know If they wanted to buy some some weapons
2:05
[SPEAKER_02]: let it sink in, let it sink in, because remember, remember, communism is the number one threat.
2:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the biggest threat to America.
2:12
[SPEAKER_02]: By far, biggest threat, there's nothing else.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, we're now running ads as taxpayers for the administration.
2:20
[SPEAKER_02]: The White House has expanded the tax payer ad campaign because you know, we're going to, you know, it's those, those commis.
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Now,
2:32
[SPEAKER_02]: If really that is true, if Communism is the greatest threat to America, does it make sense to so arms to the Communists?
2:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you really want them having our tech, I mean anything that they would want to buy from us?
2:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Would probably be the technology so they could steal it and I got a wonder if Trump would be dumb enough It's part of me goes yeah, probably But if Trump would be dumb enough to sell him stuff that they would want to steal because I understand They're not stupid They don't start wars for no reason I mean Give them credit where credit is due.
3:15
[SPEAKER_02]: They're very serious about dominating the global economy Whereas we're just kind of ready.
3:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess to fret it away
3:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we're we're more interested in making billionaires instead of dominating the global economy like we had done for for a couple of generations.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And and I'll tell you the all the the embarrassment that was the the state dinner.
3:41
[SPEAKER_02]: That Trump put on for Xi Jinping is kind of stings a little bit because again the backdrop being communism is the greatest threat ever by father greatest threat.
3:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And the image of him wencing as the plain wet over, you know, optics matter, especially back home for for Xi Jinping, optics matter.
4:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you got Trump, you know, basically walking him around his broken ballroom, you got Trump saying, oh, there's this, this wall of porters, I stole from you guys.
4:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And then here, why can you buy some weapons from us?
4:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Are we gonna start selling them to Iran next?
4:25
[SPEAKER_02]: How crazy, how crazy.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Wanna hear your thoughts?
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Wanna hear your best moment of the Xi Jinping visit?
4:27
[UNKNOWN]: Do you think Trump held his own?
4:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Or like always, Mr. Art of the Deal got his hand handed to him.
4:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Back after this.
4:30
[SPEAKER_02]: [♪ music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background music playing in the background
4:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you be willing to stand up in solidarity with your fellow workers even if it cost you your job?
4:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, on this day in Labor History, the workers at Mercy Docks and Harbor Company in Liverpool, England, answered that question.
5:03
[SPEAKER_02]: The year was 1995, 329 Mercy Dock Workers refused to cross a picket line that was being walked against another company on the Docks.
5:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The workers at Torside had been fired for protesting against erosion and job security and increasingly unpredictable scheduling.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They were speaking out against the casualization of their labor.
5:27
[SPEAKER_02]: When the mercy dock workers would not cross the Torside picket line, they too were fired.
5:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Doc workers across the world stood up in solidarity with the mercy workers against this unjust treatment.
5:40
[SPEAKER_02]: They knew if it could happen in Liverpool, it might happen anywhere.
5:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Pickets sprung up from Norway to Japan, from Australia to Italy and into the United States.
5:50
[SPEAKER_02]: it was a global outpouring of solidarity.
5:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The strike war on for 850 days.
5:57
[SPEAKER_02]: One year into the strike, Doc Worker's held an international day of action in support of the Liverpool Workers.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, two and a half years after they were fired, the Doc Worker's agreed to a settlement.
6:09
[SPEAKER_02]: They did not get their jobs back.
6:11
[SPEAKER_02]: but they did get severance pay.
6:13
[SPEAKER_02]: A film was made about the struggle.
6:15
[SPEAKER_02]: The proceeds were used to purchase a bar in Liverpool.
6:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It is known as the Docker's Pub, and has become a space for working class organizing.
6:24
[SPEAKER_02]: The International Docker's Council was also born from this strike.
6:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, the Council has 90,000 members, a lasting movement of solidarity.
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: 20 years after the strike, Docker's from across the world gathered in Liverpool
6:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The struggle, labor history and too, brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith show.
6:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith show.
6:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
6:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to tell you, of all the stuff that came out over the weekend.
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Tommy Tupperville had the top to less.
7:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Look there was all this stuff.
7:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It will get to it You know, she in in DC for the big love fast all the craziness around Trump and of course the center night live opening You know, we've got the right wing media said was you know, they took down maimed on me and I'm like I did I guess I missed that
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: My favorite, my favorite Tommy Tubberville, the dumbest guy in the U.S. Senate by far hands down, dumbest guy.
7:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought the free thing was, I thought that was the dumbest thing, but evidently I had a, he had a, Tommy Tubberville had a conversation with a capital hill reporter and somewhere in there, he said he avoids reading because you know what, he didn't want to,
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: you know because you know all that learning could be bad for you um i don't wow that's why fastart good friend Sarah Burris to come share some thoughts she's seen your editor over there at alternate alternate dot org the website Sarah thanks for taking time for us thank you so much for having me so he doesn't read because he doesn't want to screw up
8:17
[SPEAKER_02]: his opinions.
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which if you watched the furry thing and went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what he was really trying to say, like what exactly was really going on in his head and how he made these jumps from, you know, pilots to costumes to furries to, you know, oh my god, there's a fox in your cockpit.
8:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went down that rabbit hole and then my buddy last low who used to be my writing partner Met up with him and just started asking him random questions and one of the questions he asked was what do you read you know like what what kind of
9:01
[SPEAKER_00]: news to you look at what magazine's newspapers, websites, whatever, like what is your and like you know a lot of folks will read their hometown newspapers first and then you know read the times and whatever.
9:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This guy was like, I don't know how to read anything.
9:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to evade a change my opinion.
9:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when I realize that's the Republican party though.
9:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't, he's just dumb enough.
9:29
[SPEAKER_02]: He's just dumb enough to say it, Sarah.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is exactly what happened where he made this bizarre jump from, I guess, there are two different conspiracy theories that I'm going with on this.
9:43
[SPEAKER_00]: One is he heard some story about there being an aviation caucus at a furry convention.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The second piece of it is there was a video that went viral several weeks, maybe a month ago about these pilots
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And apparently, this is an old meme.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like a funny old joke.
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something about like, when you're flying into Washington, DC, it is the most restricted airspace that there is.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you have to have a certain kind of clearance level.
10:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you have to have it together.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to be able to stay in this straight line from.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't want you to do that.
10:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they don't want to have to shoot you down.
10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So they have an emergency frequency.
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess you're supposed to do something or make some kind of noise to indicate like to figure out which correct frequency you're supposed to be on.
10:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess the noise instead of saying, you know, testing or whatever they just me out, which comes from the movie super troopers nice.
10:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess the other her safety is on a stupid is based off of a joke from a dumb movie.
10:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I got it and look I like the movie.
11:01
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a dumb movie
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I, I mean, my theory is this video went viral, somebody went down a Google rabbit hole that turned into, oh my god, this is Furry's, oh my god, there's a furry conference the native Asian caucus.
11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And then all of that maybe got jumbled up in his, you know, adult brain.
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And,
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's how we got here.
11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
11:27
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because I read the kind of the same things you did in the aviation caucus, I'm like, could that just been like instead of, you know, the plushies and furries being, you know, bears, could it have been birds?
11:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Not pilots?
11:39
[SPEAKER_02]: See, I want a different direction.
11:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, you know, look, if that's your thing, it's weird.
11:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's weird.
11:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't get me wrong.
11:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I think it's weird.
11:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But if it's your thing, God bless you.
11:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Do what you want.
11:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe in life, liberty,
11:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, to have a senator, you know, without really any information, just kind of spewing that as some bizarre justification for some weird policy, and then to come out and say, well, I don't read anything, because it'll just, it'll cloud my opinions, is right in line with every conservative that I know personally.
12:17
[SPEAKER_02]: because they always fall back on well you can't tell me I believe and as soon as someone says I believe I don't talk to them anymore because you cannot have a conversation with somebody's beliefs.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Tommy Tubberville basically saying well I did my own research.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: He, I did my own research on the furries, you know, I, I mean, like you said, it could, it could have been, you know, some sort of bird caucus or whatever, but wouldn't it be funny if he go, you go went back like 30 years and he was a, he got thrown out of a plushy convention or something.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be surprised because I mean, they're, and the funny thing is that then Doug Jones, who is running against him in Alabama for governor Doug Jones posted a picture of him with the mascot.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're just like, slow clap.
13:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Well done, Junk Jones.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Well done.
13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That is somebody who's paying attention.
13:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Now look, it's not just Doug Jones.
13:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I said, I'm going to go with every conservative that the flag, the people who stake the flag in the ground, I'm conservative.
13:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And these are my values.
13:22
[SPEAKER_02]: The I believe crowd, they don't read it.
13:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And if they do read, it's only specific things.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And nothing that disagrees with what they all
13:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That brings me back to the White House and I look at Donald Trump and I'm going, I don't think Donald Trump reads much.
13:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm wrong.
13:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe he's somebody who has read an entire library of books.
13:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of doubting it.
13:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But I got to imagine that this kind of plays into his world and if you're someone introducing maybe a new thought or something that you want, it's got to be really, it's got to be near impossible to get a rational thought in his head that he hadn't already had.
14:03
[SPEAKER_00]: fair.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think the biggest problem with Trump is that I don't know that his brain can necessarily handle the activity of sitting still and reading something.
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it seems to me, he has that sort of hyperactivity thing and he can't just stop and pay attention, you know,
14:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that like one of the major things that we had talked that we'd heard about with she coming into Washington was all of these, we have all of these things we need to accomplish.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a laundry list of stuff that we need to figure out with China.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And Trump is basically spent the majority of his time in office first term in the last few years, trying to go to war.
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I mean, one of the things that you've got to figure out is how do you, as a foreign policy person, like an expert in China or your Marco Rubio and you're in the Secretary of State, like how do you then talk to Trump and tell him, we need to accomplish these things before she leaves.
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And how does that even work?
15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like?
15:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where Michael Wolf started talking about it.
15:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And answering some questions about it.
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically, it was like, yeah, no, the dude can't hold more than two thoughts in his head.
15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you're able to get him to hold two things, where it's like, we need to negotiate trade, and we need to do something on time on.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Or we need to have a discussion about AI, we need to deal with the trade thing.
15:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Those two things, you only get two things.
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I mean, can you imagine like having a president who could accomplish like who read the briefing book?
16:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Like these kind of things, they prepare for this stuff for weeks.
16:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what we got was a president who showed off his hell of a pad and a half in the forum.
16:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And but that's his jam.
16:17
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what he's into.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the kind of presidency he has established is he's just going to legislate via true social post and then take a much a world leaders into his.
16:31
[SPEAKER_00]: not finished ballroom.
16:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you said something.
16:35
[SPEAKER_02]: He has to do something before she leaves.
16:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, right at check.
16:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was a bad thing.
16:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a bad pun.
16:44
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what popped into my head.
16:46
[SPEAKER_02]: But a friend of mine, you know, it'd raise a bit of a piece over the weekend that I liked.
16:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Keith pocheck is his name and he kind of described where we're at he says no less sobering now that it wasn't late 2024 to recall that a critical mass of wolf of willfully a critical mass willfully chose the sentence and a lot of us
17:06
[SPEAKER_02]: to suffer the inevitable disaster of an 80 or 80-year-old sociopaths, sun-downing regression, back to his childhood, his childhood's sadistic tantrums and catter-walling his ephids.
17:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought that's kind of bits where Trump is.
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can't imagine what it is like to try and prepare him for a meeting like she.
17:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, I mean, nothing got accomplished other than back home in China,
17:34
[SPEAKER_02]: They were looking really favorably on their guy while the rest of us were coming.
17:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was another it was another national disgrace And it was funny like a bunch of the foreign policy experts that were You know speaking or writing about this in the week leading up to it.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We're kind of saying You know, here's what we need to accomplish What we hope is accomplished is nothing bad happens like if you the baseline is just don't make it worse
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, the thing that he did accomplish is that we now have two more months before the trade, the tariffs are going to go up again, like we're in a two-month holding pattern.
18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We got that extra two months before, you know, it all hits the fan.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You're really going to experience maybe not immediately, but in
18:34
[SPEAKER_00]: the next few years is just how bad his presidency has screwed up our relationships with everybody around the world.
18:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep, everybody.
18:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And how much that will hurt us?
18:44
[SPEAKER_02]: The weird thing is, you know, you got Germany, the the auto lobby in Germany now calling for some tariffs and not just from Germany, but from the WTO to maybe rethink its mission and maybe start thinking about, look, I was against the TPP because we've had some really bad trade deals.
19:01
[SPEAKER_02]: But I even I knew back then that if you were going to use this as a vehicle to organize the world You know to take on China.
19:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on board with that, but that's not how I saw the TPP being rolled out I saw it as just another bad trade deal if you brought in other countries and it was it was more comprehensive Then I could have gone yeah, maybe I can get behind another bad trade deal But we're in a moment where we better figure out how to organize the world or it's gonna organize without us
19:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's what I'm kind of worried about in the next two years is it seems sort of like the train is leaving the station and we're not on it like the United States is
19:40
[SPEAKER_00]: is not on it.
19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not jumping into the door.
19:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not the side car.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We're probably not even on the platform.
19:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we're still out in parking lot.
19:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So what do you have a poor friend said?
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Because look, you know, I watched, I watched as much coverage as my stomach could tolerate.
19:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the reality is, look, I've listened to him talk about China for, you know, 10 years now.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, I'm with him.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm look, we've got some problems with China.
20:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We need better solutions.
20:07
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... but there's a real pro hello used in there's a problem but then uh... to then you know and then call everybody a communist and then when a real communist shows up you're basically kissing his behind saluting him meeting at the airport roll it off the red carpet showing him your favorite toys i mean um...
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: What do he call the journalists who came with she, the Chinese journalists who are really just, you know, Chinese communist party.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Mal pieces.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just they're their communist or some companies.
20:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're still media.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: They're who Trump TV will hire.
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He said that they were nicer than the US press.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just kind of like.
20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know that he even knows that China is communist.
20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, honest to God, like, I don't know that he, that he either remembers it, or, you know, that that's even ever a current to him, like, made the connection between, you know, the Chinese Communist Party and Xi Jinping.
21:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't, who knows?
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What has been crazy kind of over the weekend is, you know, after we had this huge throw down with the press,
21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess the funny thing that happened is that she didn't know what was going on with the whole pressing and started his like his officials that were with him started asking like, why is they're not press here?
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this not getting covered?
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this not all over television?
21:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And
21:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, can you imagine the embarrassment that the White House had to go through to be like, well, so let me ask you, let me ask you the honest question.
21:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Because do you really think she didn't know?
21:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Or do you think it was a jab?
21:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Because look, I don't think the Chinese don't know any.
22:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they know everything.
22:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they're watching everything.
22:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that would could have been just kind of a jab, no?
22:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that she necessarily would.
22:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I think his people that he brought absolutely new.
22:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that very well may have been a jab.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: She, I don't know, he just basically went through a crazy week with the whole international thing and then he had a stroke.
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, the fact that the dudes even standing up, I was waiting for him to show up and be like, is that really him?
22:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is there a,
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a mask thing on or like, could be, but the ball room, the ball room, it's half done.
22:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess we stole some secrets service funding for it.
22:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, boys, it way.
22:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so bless her.
22:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I guess, Matt, Senator Maggie has then is.
22:53
[SPEAKER_00]: When we found out that Trump took money from Secret Service to put into the ballroom, which is why Secret Service is asking for more money now, because basically their budget just got hijacked by the president.
23:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Maggie Hassan, Senator Tomom, was like, I need to know how much was taken, what's it going to, what is it not funding, who is it not funding?
23:16
[SPEAKER_00]: How many people have you either had to lay off or let go?
23:22
[SPEAKER_00]: operations.
23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you typically do?
23:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you no longer fund and continue as a result of this?
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this wasn't a small amount of money.
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This was like $367 million.
23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I mean, that's it.
23:39
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a chuck.
23:40
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a chuck of change.
23:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you remember when this was going to all cost $200,000 and it was all going to be paid for or $200 million, it was always going to be paid by a whole bunch of other people.
23:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Even at one point, I thought Mexico was going to pay for it.
23:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, I mean, you know, I guess the wall, the ball room, the hell, the pad, why not?
23:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And now the last numbers I saw were over 400,000, it's going to cost.
24:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I even saw one more outrageous number of 600.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
24:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's over.
24:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's at 600 now.
24:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I keep it in.
24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is is that the the the money that Congress tried to allocate for it was like 900 million so they I mean this was on top of what they had already spent so far Congress tried to give him another 900 million for it and and they weren't going to the budget wasn't going to pass.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they basically were like, well, we're stripping this out of the bill because we can't get a pass and we need to keep the government open before in the election.
24:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got a way that there's a bipartisan solution here.
24:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a way that I could give Trump his ballroom and and we can we can contain him.
24:47
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants the ballroom.
24:48
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants his little toy.
24:49
[SPEAKER_02]: He wants his little pay.
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Play, Pat.
24:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I say we build it for him, but we strip his secret service away and he can't leave the ball room.
24:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So the ball room is perfectly secure, but he has to stay in the ball room, so you can save all the money from the secret service because he's never going to leave because it's going to be perfectly secure.
25:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to have its own drones and keep an eye on him 24-7.
25:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We can keep him in there and then maybe we could do some things that actually matter.
25:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe.
25:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That'd be nice.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, at this point, I'm just trying to figure out
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: where the money for a stupid arch is going to come from, you know, like, and I'm trying to figure out, like, okay, if we're, if he said, we're going to, you know, he and his buddies, we're going to fund this thing and they haven't.
25:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's this leftover massive bill that has to be paid, who do we go after for that?
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we go after him.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And oh, no, he has immunity.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: True, but that's criminal immunity.
25:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just have the IRS garnish his wages.
25:56
[SPEAKER_02]: But does he have wages?
25:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess what he defined his wages?
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're people who continue to get paid after he's a president as if he was still the president.
26:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Every president after they're finished continues to get their salary.
26:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but you know, all my red hats will tell you, he hasn't taken a dime, he doughnates that back.
26:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, BS.
26:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you questioning our dear leader?
26:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, God forbid.
26:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess the last question.
26:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What are we looking for last week was fun?
26:23
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the coming week gotten store force?
26:25
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you pay an attention to?
26:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So CNN is still kind of battling with him over the pressing.
26:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to know how that's going to work out.
26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, what?
26:40
[SPEAKER_00]: know exactly how Trump decided, you know, okay, everybody else can come in.
26:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, maybe not CNN, you know, and so I'm kind of confused about how that happened and CNN didn't make a big deal out of it and they didn't say, oh no, like this is the line we're back to the boy caught and whatever.
26:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't understand what's happening with that.
27:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be the main thing I'm watching.
27:05
[SPEAKER_00]: The other piece of it is he's going to start going on his little campaign
27:10
[SPEAKER_00]: to her.
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to the great side of Oklahoma.
27:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, more him speaking.
27:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't wait.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And Alabama.
27:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So two places where he's the least likely to be booed is very scary.
27:24
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
27:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to see him in in Senator Fluffy.
27:27
[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing their their sun-downing regression and and just idiocy campaign.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait.
27:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Can't not wait.
27:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Sarah,
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: My pleasure.
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a great rest of the week everyone.
27:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Great stuff.
27:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Want to hear your thoughts email me, Rick at therixmithshow.com.
27:44
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think of the idea?
27:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Ballroom, like a little crib, a little playpen, keep it in there.
27:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Would you go forward?
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Could we then build it?
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to build it anyway.
27:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to pay for it anyway.
27:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Want to hear your thoughts Rick at Therixmithshow.com.
27:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Right back.
28:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_02]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1965.
28:07
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the day the Delano Grape Strike began in California.
28:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The strike came a year after activists had forced Congress to end the Brissero Contract Labor Program.
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: The Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Larry Italong, Philip Vera Cruz, and others called the strike against the Delano Growers and the Coachella Valley Grape Growers.
28:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It had been a record harvest.
28:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Farm workers demanded higher wages, humane working conditions, and union recognition.
28:35
[SPEAKER_02]: When the Growers refused, thousands walked out of the fields.
28:38
[SPEAKER_02]: A week later, the Mexican-American National Farm Workers Association led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores
28:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a historic moment, within a year, the two unions would merge to form the United Farm Workers.
28:53
[SPEAKER_02]: The Union sent strikers to the Oakland docks to persuade the Longshoremen not to load non-union grapes.
28:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Many of the Filipino workers in the San Joaquin Valley worked in the Alaska Fish Canaries, organized by the I.L.W.U in the offseason, and so the I.L.W.U honored their union brothers request.
29:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Thousands of cases of grapes were left to rot on the docks.
29:15
[SPEAKER_02]: This initial victory led Chavez to organize a great boycott against Heavyweight's DeGeorgio and Shennley Industries.
29:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Six months into the strike, Union leaders marched 300 miles from Delano de Sacramento to bring attention to their struggle.
29:30
[SPEAKER_02]: They hoped to pressure growers to the negotiating table and legislators to act on their behalf for five years, the strike and boycott continued with marches, organizing and picket line arrests.
29:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Gradually, the UFW began winning higher wages, union recognition, and hiring halls.
29:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Finally, in 1970, a collective bargaining agreement covering 10,000 workers was reached.
29:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what you hear, check out more at laborhistoryintu.com.
30:00
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the fall harvest season when many farm stands and homes decorate with pumpkins, cornstokes, and maybe even a straw man.
30:09
[SPEAKER_04]: How to make a straw man?
30:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Easy.
30:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Stuff a couple of burlette bags with hay and dress your men in an old flannel shirt overalls and straw hat.
30:18
[SPEAKER_04]: But today's billionaires corporate elites and other political mega donors have come up with their own version of this creature, stuff a couple of silk pillows with $1000 bills, dressing in a fine tailored suit and voila, they turn a common straw man into a congressman.
30:36
[SPEAKER_04]: That's how corporate powers create a government that routinely serves their average at the expense of the rest of us.
30:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Indeed, in this election season, they've already stopped about $2 billion into Congress creatures who will support their AI data centers, tax breaks, and other boondoggles.
30:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Who are these money-stuffers?
30:57
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, that's the secret to their corruption.
31:00
[SPEAKER_04]: In 2010, America's partisan corporatized Supreme Court handed a legalistic anti-democracy weapon called Dark Money to giant corporations.
31:10
[SPEAKER_04]: By judicial dictate, the courts Republican majority rule that executives can give unlimited sums of corporate cash to superpacks to elect their straw man.
31:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Without telling us commoners, who is buying which slowmakers and at what price?
31:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Secret Money equals secret government.
31:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Yet, both parties are going along with this corruption, claiming to be powerless to overturn the court's edict.
31:37
[SPEAKER_04]: This is Jim Hyder saying powerless.
31:40
[SPEAKER_04]: What about asking the people to intervene and overwhelming majority of Americans of every political strike despise the dark money trick and will rally behind any serious effort to kill it?
31:51
[SPEAKER_04]: A bipartisan effort to do just that is now underway in Montana.
31:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Learn about it from transparentelection.org.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: welcome back to the Rick Smith show now here is Rick Smith so 1934 was was kind like the year for organized labor
32:23
[SPEAKER_02]: workers struck from coast to coast all across the country and like I remember my grandfather telling me stories about the country literally being ripped apart brick by brick as workers were you know struggling through the Great Depression demanding some some ability to put food on the table as the businesses the corporate the bosses were doing fairly well.
32:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of those stories, because look, you know, I've been a team, my entire working life, my grandfather also a teamster for his entire working life.
32:55
[SPEAKER_02]: These stories mattered in the 1934 strike in Minneapolis, was really the
33:02
[SPEAKER_02]: really what brought the national master freight agreement all that I spent most of my working career working under and well taking for granted so to find a book that went back and looked at it again not just from an academic this is what happened but from kind of a first hand account
33:20
[SPEAKER_02]: made me go, yeah, this is a guy you need to talk to and that's why I've asked John Hanson to come to share some thoughts with us.
33:25
[SPEAKER_02]: John is the author of Fight and Win, Minneapolis teamstress strike 1934.
33:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a story of his father who was a part of all this and kind of in the leadership of all of this telling the story, John, thanks for taking time for us.
33:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, thank you and good evening.
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, John, I appreciate the story because, look, as I was reading through it, I was thinking to my own grandfather's sharing moments of, hey, don't tell anybody, but this, but this is what we did kind of stuff, and clearly the statute of limitations are over.
33:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I could probably tell some of his stories, but this was an interesting time, wasn't it?
34:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And in Minneapolis, the businesses started recover actual during the depression there, faster than the other businesses in other parts of the city.
34:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And as that's all happening you still have families like your like your father like yours who are struggling and I remember I grandfather telling the stories of you know, you see the you know the the boss living in the big house They're kids you would new clothes and them eating all month long and and the workers just Just struggling to get by and there was that breaking point which you know enough was enough Did your father walk you through some of that?
34:45
[SPEAKER_05]: who, yes indeed, we in fact, he had grown up on the farm and expected to be a farmer all his life long in 1920s in the 1920s, there was a farm depression and his father was by 69, 70 years old and couldn't afford to pass the farm onto four boys and so,
35:08
[SPEAKER_05]: my dad ended up having to find something to do.
35:10
[SPEAKER_05]: You know how to farm and he wrote the Rails to find places to work all the way from Texas to Northern Canada.
35:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because you do what you got to do, right?
35:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, now as I understand and reading the book your father served on the committee of 100.
35:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of the organizing committee, the the the the leadership, right?
35:27
[SPEAKER_02]: They were voted on to that committee as I get, right?
35:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
35:38
[SPEAKER_05]: And during a strike had complete control of the union.
35:43
[SPEAKER_05]: There wasn't an executive committee, but the executive committee served on the strike committee 100.
35:49
[SPEAKER_05]: And the beauty of that is you had 100 people going out to talk to the rank and file and the rank and trial could talk back to them.
36:05
[SPEAKER_05]: and it was a two-way communication and so you can make adjustments as you go and they had to do a lot of that.
36:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember a guy named Dick Boyd who lived close to me here in Pennsylvania.
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: He tells the story about when him and his father would have those kind of meetings.
36:21
[SPEAKER_02]: They'd meet it like one o'clock in the morning under a railroad trussle bridge outside a town.
36:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So nobody would know what was going on because you could get blacklisted for even talking about unions at that point.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it this kind or was it this kind of meeting that you know people were concerned who knew who was there or was this more out in front?
36:42
[SPEAKER_05]: He'll well it kind of was out in front of the car said we're spies The hired by the Citizens Alliance which was the organizations of the business and wealthy and they had spies and so they had to be careful about this But they planned very well.
36:59
[SPEAKER_05]: They had two weeks
37:02
[SPEAKER_05]: been on a lot of strikes and usually not successful but they came up with a strategy as a whole of a whole group on how they were going to make this work and they rented a building to be their headquarters and they could meet in their headquarters.
37:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you mentioned the citizens' alliance, and I'm not going to make sure I got to that because, you know, we think that all of the anti-union, all of the union-busting, all of the things that corporate America is doing now through, you know, their front groups and, you know, all of these, these euphemistically named Facebook pages who seem to now care about workers from a business perspective.
37:39
[SPEAKER_02]: We think this is kind of new, but the citizens of the alliances, these were the strike breakers, these were the union busters of days gone past, right?
37:48
[SPEAKER_05]: I did just definitely true.
37:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Walk me through who they were and what they did.
37:54
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, but for over about 50 years, they had were union busting.
38:01
[SPEAKER_05]: And one of the plans they'd have is they'd create a company union.
38:04
[SPEAKER_05]: They'd make some of the workers that were a lawyer to the loyal to the bosses.
38:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And they'd make them the executive committees of these unions.
38:11
[SPEAKER_05]: And they wouldn't do anything.
38:12
[SPEAKER_05]: And there were Teamsters unions that were probably just exactly like that.
38:16
[SPEAKER_05]: And so they had kind of a control and kept the unions of that wanted to strike or do something.
38:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you also mentioned in the book that that local 574 was basically, you know, on its own, that the international had pretty much done away with it.
38:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Walk me through with that look like when the international just kind of, is that accurate?
38:43
[SPEAKER_05]: The core of which was probably like 75 members decided they wanted to organize and they wanted to get to a point of having a strike.
38:53
[SPEAKER_05]: And so they started planning and then they had big mass meetings where they had big name speakers, the governor and other people like that.
39:01
[SPEAKER_05]: To get people to join the union and survive.
39:05
[SPEAKER_05]: I'd say on.
39:08
[SPEAKER_02]: January of 74 of 34, they had 175 members and they grow big, they did organizing and they grew that union to 5,000 members by July that's impressive something we could use today and lessons we could learn today because back then it was almost illegal in this country to be a union or at least talk about it because yellow dog contracts were still legal right.
39:34
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, as far as we are concerned, that's what they were doing, and those kinds of problems left the members of the union with all kinds of risks, and they were willing to take it.
39:46
[SPEAKER_05]: They were organized, and they were going to make it work.
39:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Because at a certain point, there's a breaking point, isn't there?
39:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got to imagine your father who was a farmer, and I can't imagine how today they would be painted
40:05
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, he was labeled a communist.
40:09
[SPEAKER_05]: It probably was a communist.
40:11
[SPEAKER_05]: He went to a socialist hall, and they had varying degrees of socialist, probably four different kinds.
40:16
[SPEAKER_05]: And so it was affected by all the groups, but the communists from Northeast Minnesota had been blackballed.
40:24
[SPEAKER_05]: They moved to the cities, and they went, they had a big voice.
40:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So walk me through what did your father talk about that because look, you know, we're reliving some of that red scare that's going on right now and what I like to do is I like to look at the history and I love the fact that you wrote this from, you know, from a, you know, a son, you know, hearing his father tell stories perspective instead of just a boring history.
40:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, did it was there any guidance on how, you know, that kind of division played into the organizing played into the, what, what happened in 34?
40:55
[SPEAKER_05]: This is the big thing about organizing and solidarity, you know, stronger together.
41:01
[SPEAKER_05]: In my dad, though he had differences with other people that were in the union at the Executive Committee and those that might have been in the committee of 100, his goal was it didn't matter the politics.
41:16
[SPEAKER_05]: He was in great one big union.
41:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So the IWW model, yeah, so is there a story that sticks with you?
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there something that you go, dad was particularly proud of this story that he told more often because, oh, look, I quote my grandfather all the time and he's been dad's probably, you know, 15, 20 years now, you know, but there are still things that I remember that he he constantly as those moments of pride, is there something that sticks out in your mind?
41:47
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, the thing that stuck out in my mind because you mentioned it so many times is these mass meetings that you call them that they were different things they might be a meeting in a park they might be a meeting in a theater hall they might be in the headquarters of the union and they would gather and and I can't miss the point that they had a woman's auxiliary.
42:11
[SPEAKER_05]: that ran the headquarters basically and they planned these meetings in the park where they'd be the big speakers, there'd be executives, the committee, and maybe guests, and they kept inviting all the rank and file and their families out to these events and they'd have dances in the headquarters.
42:31
[SPEAKER_05]: The thing that's stuck in my mind is he mentioned that so many times in the biggest of all,
42:38
[SPEAKER_05]: as they had a parade on July 6, 1934, where they marched from the Mississippi River, the Minneapolis Convention Hall, was 18 blocks and they filled the whole distance all the way.
42:59
[SPEAKER_05]: It was a big deal.
43:00
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that's what Salvadoria looks like.
43:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And you jumped my questions because the women's auxiliary was next because, you know, in all of these strikes, you go back to the mind, the coal mine wars and, you know, all across this country, it was the women who were really the backbone of, you know, continuing those strikes and being able to make them possible.
43:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that recognition has to be part of it.
43:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you talk about in the book about Bloody Friday, what did your father tell you about that?
43:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And how did your approach writing about that in that?
43:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That event that he lived through.
43:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, he would only talk about that at certain times.
43:38
[SPEAKER_05]: Other things he could talk about more, but buddy Friday created a lump of the throat if you want to call it that.
43:44
[SPEAKER_05]: He and my uncle was also a member of the union.
43:48
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, my uncle was actually called in to be on the picket line on foot at that particular day.
43:58
[SPEAKER_05]: And they've been writing on some pickup trucks at the union hand, but usually the pickup trucks would say, you know, we got only have so many people in the back.
44:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And so some of you got to get off.
44:09
[SPEAKER_05]: So my uncle and dad got off and they walked behind the pickup truck, truck for a bite of the lock.
44:15
[SPEAKER_05]: And the pickup truck made a left hand turn, and they started hearing shots of guns.
44:22
[SPEAKER_05]: And so they kind of hurryed to the corners so they could see what's going on.
44:27
[SPEAKER_05]: But being careful not to get too close and he saw the police with shotguns.
44:35
[SPEAKER_05]: I suppose get her guns with fuck shot shooting at these guys that have been in the pickup truck and anybody and the thing I think that struck the most is that one of the guys that went
44:52
[SPEAKER_05]: And the guy bent down to help him and he got shot in the back.
44:58
[SPEAKER_05]: And when there had been all this going on, my dad and my uncle kept going to guys that were shot down and helped find a vehicle, a truck, or a car, to load them in the car, to bring them to the Union and Firmary, the Union had an infirmary, a little hospital in their headquarters.
45:19
[SPEAKER_05]: and they didn't want to go to Hemp and County General Hospital where the police would follow on.
45:25
[SPEAKER_05]: And they picked up or managed to get 67 guys who were shot that day.
45:32
[SPEAKER_05]: Two of them died.
45:34
[SPEAKER_05]: And the first they pulled out 38 buckshot slugs in him.
45:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Wow.
45:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
45:45
[SPEAKER_02]: You bring up the fact that they had their own infirmary, but they also had their own food banks.
45:49
[SPEAKER_02]: They also had all kinds of surround wraparound services as well.
45:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It kind as it's what I've talked about for years where unions did in the past.
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: to take care of each other because a lot of the times they were they were blacklisted a lot of times they were you know they were ostracized you know in Illinois I you know I went to the one minors cemetery that the mine union had to buy land to bury you know minors who died in a mind disaster in Illinois it was that kind of period that I don't think people today understand just how bad it was back then
46:25
[SPEAKER_05]: It's hard to imagine.
46:26
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, the amount they made for working 60 hours a week, six days a week, was not enough to feed them.
46:37
[SPEAKER_05]: My dad wasn't married yet at that point and he had two brothers that weren't married.
46:42
[SPEAKER_05]: The three of them lived in an apartment and the three of them living together could have enough to buy some cheap food.
46:51
[SPEAKER_05]: It was that a difficult
46:53
[SPEAKER_02]: so let me ask you this john because you know i've said you know we're in a tough spot right now uh... things aren't great uh... i've said a number of times that you know people thought bled and died for the things that we take for granted like the eight hour day and weekends and vacations and sick pay all of the stuff that ultimately out of the thirty four strike i got to benefit from uh... what as the national master for a degree mid-became uh... the lthl trucking industries bible
47:18
[SPEAKER_02]: which is now again we've we've completely destroyed by allowing the new citizens alliances to rise up in crush unions.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But I've often said that we're going to have to refight some of those fights at the past and we're not quite desperate enough.
47:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think I've seen, I think I saw you say something along the lines of, you know, depression, ear, a thinking is making a comeback.
47:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think that's true and do you think it has to get worse before?
47:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe people are the next generation of your father and his brothers.
47:50
[SPEAKER_05]: I think it is true.
47:51
[SPEAKER_05]: We're seeing it happen.
47:54
[SPEAKER_05]: We're talking about affordability in the campaign.
47:57
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, can people afford to live the way they are?
48:03
[SPEAKER_05]: We're seeing more and more people not be able to do that, and that's coming around.
48:07
[SPEAKER_05]: We're also seeing actions by the government to keep people from complaining down.
48:13
[SPEAKER_05]: And so we had in the Twin Cities, we had the metro surge over the winter.
48:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And we saw people willing to gather together in a huge distance,
48:31
[SPEAKER_05]: 100,000, and in a night at 20 below zero.
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are some hardy folks.
48:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So any stories that your father recalled of working with people that he didn't necessarily agree with, because I look at a moment right now, the wealth class of this country has done an incredible job of slicing and dicing and pitting us against one another.
48:55
[SPEAKER_02]: white color blue color green color pink color ring around the color you know they've done a great job white black gay straight male female you know whatever they figured out how to get us to eating each other or the old jagool that can pay half the working class to murder the other half
49:12
[SPEAKER_02]: What would this book, and I'm hoping people will go take a look at it, fight and win manyapolis teams to strike 1934.
49:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find it at hardballpress.org.
49:23
[SPEAKER_02]: What lessons from this book can we take today as we have to refight the battles of yesterday?
49:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I think the lessons, and at the end of the book, I, some of the tips that my dad told me about organizing in the heat, organized, even, unemployed workers.
49:41
[SPEAKER_05]: I put it at the very end of the book, and it says things like this, get involved, start small, talk, call.
49:51
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I put text, have coffee, lunch, and drink together.
49:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Speak out on blogs and social media.
49:58
[SPEAKER_05]: He didn't say that, but he would at today, foster good relationships with other workers and other unions.
50:05
[SPEAKER_05]: He kind to one another.
50:08
[SPEAKER_05]: We don't know the struggles they face.
50:11
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's kind of what he went by.
50:13
[SPEAKER_05]: He talked to guys that there were two different types of communists.
50:18
[SPEAKER_05]: He talked to guys that were Republicans.
50:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Democrats, they even had guys in the union that thought the Nazis were a good thing.
50:33
[SPEAKER_05]: And that was the whole thing.
50:35
[SPEAKER_05]: And then be persistent.
50:37
[SPEAKER_05]: despair only feeds the bosses interest.
50:42
[SPEAKER_05]: Be firm about the cause of the worker, organize all workers have a solid plan, avoid violence, stick together.
50:52
[SPEAKER_05]: The strike is the last resort, but it's the most effective tool.
50:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the last tool.
51:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, it's the last arrow in the quiver.
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I've said it a million times.
51:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been on strike in my life.
51:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Didn't want to do it, but sometimes you have no choice on it is the last arrow.
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the only power workers really have the ability to fold your arms and mark your feet.
51:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And the hope is is that in this moment that we learn the lessons from the past.
51:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe we don't have to relive them.
51:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm curious from your perspective, having lived the life you've led.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have much hope for the future, the organizing that you're seeing happening?
51:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Are we learning the lessons from the past or has the pendulum?
51:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think swung too far in the side of corporate interest and the money interest?
51:40
[SPEAKER_05]: I have hope.
51:42
[SPEAKER_05]: I gave a speech at the solidarity picnic.
51:46
[SPEAKER_05]: And that was the summer in August.
51:50
[SPEAKER_05]: And I gave a speech taking some stories from bloody Friday, telling the story of my dad told me.
51:59
[SPEAKER_05]: And then I brought in the hope because the union was successful, they won the strike.
52:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we have the Labor Relations Act, we have Teamsters growing phenomenally.
52:12
[SPEAKER_05]: And
52:15
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't know what people would think, but that's kind of the way I ended it.
52:18
[SPEAKER_02]: No, look at the story of my grandfather, you know, as the LTL, as the trucking industry became more powerful and got more organized and wages went up.
52:27
[SPEAKER_02]: My grandparents went from being basically homeless to leading a solidly working class middle-class existence and they died in their home with dignity.
52:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never wanting for anything with savings, pension, and social security, the three-legged school at school, they lived what was the American dream.
52:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And it all, my grandfather always said it, it's sprung out of this strike that made his life or at least the path that he was on possible.
52:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So I hope folks will check it out, fight and win.
52:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Many Apple's Teamsters strike 1934 hardball press.org the website, John Hanson the author, John.
53:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Great talk with you.
53:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazing book.
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Hope folks will check it out.
53:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for your time.
53:08
[SPEAKER_05]: Good to talk with you, Rick.
53:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear your thoughts.
53:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You got any stories like that?
53:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone in your family share some union history.
53:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We should be doing it every day.
53:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I do all of my kids.
53:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear it.
53:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Rick at therixmithshow.com.
53:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Right back.
53:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
53:32
[SPEAKER_02]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1904.
53:36
[SPEAKER_02]: A woman was arrested for smoking a cigarette in a car on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
53:42
[SPEAKER_02]: While women in the United States are no longer likely to be arrested for smoking cigarettes in public, they continue to face unequal treatment in the labor force.
53:51
[SPEAKER_02]: When women started working in factories in the mid-1800s, most notably textile mills, owners paid them far less than men for similar labor.
54:01
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, it was because they saw women as a cheap labor pool that many textile factory owners favored female workers.
54:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, a woman will earn about $0.80 for every dollar a man earns.
54:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though women have increased their presence in higher paying jobs, traditionally dominated by men, women as a whole continue to work in low paying occupations.
54:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Women are about twice as likely as men to say that they've been discriminated against at work because of their gender.
54:30
[SPEAKER_02]: In January of 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
54:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It was named after a woman who fought for 10 years against gender pay discrimination at the good-year tire and rubber company.
54:44
[SPEAKER_02]: She was awarded a $3 million jury settlement.
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But that ruling was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
54:52
[SPEAKER_02]: The 2009 Act strengthened women's ability to seek legal recourse over pay discrimination.
54:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Still, today, the rate of women's compensation lags behind that of math.
55:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Labor unions must continue to play a role in fighting against pay in equity.
55:08
[SPEAKER_03]: This union made was vials to the effects of the company's spines.
55:12
[SPEAKER_03]: She'd never be fooled by a company's student.
55:14
[SPEAKER_03]: She'd always organize the guys.
55:16
[SPEAKER_03]: She'd always get her way.
55:18
[SPEAKER_03]: When she asked for better pay.
55:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
55:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what you hear, check out more at laborhissfreeenties.com.
55:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
55:44
[SPEAKER_02]: hardballpress.org, the website by John Hansen.
55:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, on 1934, and I've talked about this before, we need our 1934 moment here in this time in our history.
55:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, because you go back and you learn about the history of that year, you had about one, about a million and a half workers.
56:05
[SPEAKER_02]: who took part in more than like what like over 1800 strikes across the country they were literally striking at every opportunity and the big ones the Toledo auto light strike the Minneapolis teamster strike you go you'll get the west coast water front strike in the San Francisco general strike there were tons of this the great textile strike the uprising of 34 were basically all of New Year from New England to the deep south went on strike
56:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, there were tons of the coal or strike out in Wisconsin.
56:36
[SPEAKER_02]: There were tons of these, uh, where, you know, just the taxi strike in New York.
56:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, the the lettuce strike in California, the from coast to coast east to west north the south of Birmingham, Alabama, you had 8,000 or miners shut down every or mine in Birmingham in the whole region black and white workers they couldn't they couldn't go back and you know do the old things that they used to do let's bring in the black folk to get those white folk all upset.
57:07
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, they figured it out.
57:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Milwaukee, you had the street car strike.
57:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there were tons of this stuff going on and as the National Archives points out that it was the 34th strike.
57:20
[SPEAKER_02]: That got Robert Wagner to pursue the Wagner act of the National Labor Relations Act, which then set the groundwork for everything that came after that.
57:32
[SPEAKER_02]: for all of the organizing that my grandparents generation took advantage of when they came home from World War II, they took advantage of building strong unions to fight for strong contracts.
57:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I said a minute ago, I spent most of my career
57:49
[SPEAKER_02]: working under this this contract called the National Master Freight Agreement at one point covered you know like 400,000 truck drivers in the less than truckload trucking industry.
58:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like 85,90% of the industry at one point.
58:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, obviously, 34 is when this strike happened, the National Master Friday agreement didn't happen.
58:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It'll 64.
58:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But when you go back and you look at the history, Jimmy Hoffa cut his teeth on that 34 strike learned a lot in that 34 strike and began putting together the idea of having this national
58:29
[SPEAKER_02]: which came out of this because the longshoremen got, you know, a west coast contract, and the east coast got to go, he's, you were able to start building across across jurisdictions, you know, a living wage, kind of the beginnings of sectorial bargain, to where you're going to look, we're going to bargain across industries.
58:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was the great thing about the master free agreement.
58:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It didn't matter which company you worked for.
58:53
[SPEAKER_02]: the wages, the benefits, all of it was uniforms.
58:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So you could go walk across the street, go work for somebody else, and you didn't lose your health care.
59:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You didn't lose your pension.
59:03
[SPEAKER_02]: The wage was the same.
59:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It was all, so companies could then compete, not on who's willing to work for cheap wages, but on which one innovated, which one used people better, which one was more efficient, which one had the best service, the best quality.
59:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I argue the right things.
59:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Not anymore.
59:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Today it's all about who can we could do what for cheaper.
59:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm gonna hear your thoughts, we're gonna get the ricksmithshow.com.
59:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Miss any portion of the program, podcast, and as always, thanks for being here.
59:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been listening to the Rick Smith Show.
59:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Email Rick.
59:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, this has been The Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We're working people, come to talk.