Labor Heritage Power Hour

Christopher Garlock
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Politics
  • Updated Semiweekly

A weekly radio show celebrating the cultural heritage of the American worker. Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant and produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation; broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM

  1. 5d ago

    Art Is a Hammer to Shape the World

    On this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour, we bring you highlights from the 2026 Great Labor Arts Exchange at Labor Notes in Chicago, where thousands of labor activists, artists, musicians, writers, and organizers gathered to explore how culture helps build worker power. Our featured segment is Art Is a Hammer to Shape the World, a panel moderated by longtime union organizer and author Ken Grossinger (Art Works: How Organizers and Artists Are Creating a Better World Together). Panelists include textile artist Tabitha Arnold, Puerto Rican labor organizer Edwin Morales, artist and organizer Josh MacPhee, and Labor Heritage Foundation board member and DC Labor Chorus director Elise Bryant. Together they explore how art and culture strengthen movements, build community, preserve memory, and help workers imagine a better future. We also sample two of the new Labor Culture moments introduced at this year’s Great Labor Arts Exchange—brief performances woven into Labor Notes workshops and panels—including appearances by Jordan Bridges of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice and singer-songwriter Joe Jencks. Plus: Harold Phillips with Labor Arts & Culture News, Labor History in 2:00 visits Chicago’s historic stockyards, another installment of the People’s 250 project, lifting up the stories of working people who shaped America, and music from the Great Labor Arts Exchange. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is heard Thursdays at 1 p.m. Eastern on WPFW 89.3 FM in Washington, DC and on stations across the country via the Pacifica Network. The show is also available through the Labor Radio Podcast Network. For more photos, videos, reports, and interviews from the 2026 Great Labor Arts Exchange, visit laborheritage.org. Broadcast on June 18, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  2. Jun 11

    Solidarity, Mr. Frodo

    This week on the Labor Heritage Power Hour, Chris Garlock checks in from Chicago, where the Labor Heritage Foundation is joining thousands of activists, artists, organizers and union members at the Great Labor Arts Exchange and the Labor Notes Conference. Follow the action all weekend on Labor Heritage Foundation social media. We start with Harold Phillips' Labor Arts News, featuring SAG-AFTRA's new contract, a major union victory for public library workers in Kansas City, and a preview of labor arts events around the country. Then we hear an inspiring AFL-CIO convention address from SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin, who reflects on his journey from actor to labor leader and explains why unions remain essential to democracy and worker power. Next, we visit Seattle's remarkable labor mural with the Labor Archives of Washington, uncovering a story of preservation, solidarity, and anti-fascist labor history. From America's Workforce, historian and union activist Max Krochmal discusses organizing higher education workers across the South and the lessons today's labor movement can learn from multiracial organizing campaigns in Texas and Louisiana. We'll also visit Barre, Vermont's historic Socialist Labor Party Hall, one of the last surviving labor halls of its kind in America, and close with Labor History in Two on the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the labor movement's struggle against the Red Scare. Broadcast on June 11, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  3. Jun 4

    Remembering Kent Wong

    This week on the Labor Heritage Power Hour, we celebrate the life and legacy of labor educator and immigrant rights champion Kent Wong. Friends, family, and fellow organizers reflect on Kent's lifelong commitment to worker justice, immigrant rights, labor education, and international solidarity. We also continue our People's 250 coverage with a story about whose histories are remembered—and whose are forgotten—as Native leaders and scholars discuss removing a harmful monument and creating a more inclusive public memory. Then we head back to the Labor Archives of Washington, where founding archivist Conor Casey explains why preserving working people's history matters, how labor records are often at risk of being lost, and why archives remain essential to understanding the struggles that shaped our world. Plus Harold Phillips has this week's labor arts news, including new union organizing in gaming, publishing, and bookselling, and upcoming labor arts events around the country. Broadcast on June 4, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  4. May 28

    Art, Archives and the American Worker

    On this week's Labor Heritage Power Hour: As America approaches its 250th anniversary, whose stories get remembered? This week: Jay Youngdahl talks with labor artist Fred Lonidier, we visit the Labor Archives of Washington, plus a People's 250 story from Mary Louise Patterson, “The Mother of All Strikes” from Labor History in 2:00, a favorite labor song, and the latest labor arts news and calendar. Broadcast on May 28, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  5. May 21

    Joe Hill Walks Into a Starbucks

    On this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour, What does labor culture actually do? SEIU President April Verrett accepts the Labor Heritage Foundation’s 2026 Solidarity Forever Award and delivers a powerful reminder that “culture moves people before politics ever will.” We bring you highlights from the evening, featuring music, storytelling, and reflections on why labor arts remain central to organizing, solidarity, and movement-building. Then Harold Phillips heads to Bellingham, Washington for a conversation with playwrights Lantz Simpson and Victoria McCallum about The Last Words of Joe Hill, a contemporary theater piece imagining legendary labor organizer and singer Joe Hill walking into a modern coffee shop union drive. Through clips from the play and a wide-ranging interview, they explore labor memory, Starbucks organizing, songwriting, storytelling, and why working-class history still matters to young workers today. Along the way, we hear new stories from the People’s 250 campaign, including the story of Virginia Snow, the rebel educator and organizer who helped defend Joe Hill during his 1915 trial, and a remembrance of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis. Plus: this week’s labor arts calendar, labor arts news, and Labor History in 2:00 on the Matewan Massacre and the road to Blair Mountain. Broadcast on May 21, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  6. May 14

    Labor Is Art

    On this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour: SEIU President April Verrett declares that “labor is art” at New York’s worker-powered “Ball Without Billionaires,” an alternative to the Met Gala celebrating the people who actually create culture. We also preview the DC Labor FilmFest screening of Late Shift, the acclaimed Swiss drama about an overwhelmed hospital nurse confronting the human cost of understaffing and burnout. Plus, historian James Benton joins the America’s Work Force Union Podcast to discuss how NAFTA and decades of failed trade policy devastated working-class communities across America, and we hear another organizing story from the People’s 250 campaign, featuring a Georgetown student and restaurant worker fighting for a union in Washington, D.C. We also mark labor history with stories from the 1968 Paris General Strike and the 1975 La Tolteca strike, where undocumented Mexican women workers in California organized, fought back and won. Broadcast on May 14, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  7. May 7

    LIVE with Amy Goodman at “Steal This Story, Please!”

    This week on the Labor Heritage Power Hour: highlights from last weekend’s sold-out screenings of Steal This Story, Please! at the DC Labor FilmFest, featuring Amy Goodman, Tia Lessin, and voices from WPFW’s powerful post-film Q&A. From the station that helped launch Democracy Now! to today’s fight for independent, audience-funded media, we explore what it means to “never sell out.” Plus, Labor Arts News on the Ball Without Billionaires, SEIU’s cultural organizing under April Verrett, major union updates from IATSE and SAG-AFTRA, and a new newsroom union in Madison. We head to the University of Maryland’s letterpress studio, where workers can print their own strike signs, and dig into the legacy of the Haymarket Affair with historian Peter Cole—who asks: who controls history? We also feature the May 5 Bay View Massacre in Labor History in 2:00, and a story from the People’s 250 campaign reminding us that working people’s history is still being written. Broadcast on May 7, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min

  8. Apr 30

    From Union Hall to Art Studio; Building Worker Power

    On this week’s Labor Heritage Power Hour, we preview the 2026 DC Labor FilmFest—already drawing packed houses—with classic strike documentaries and sharp new films tackling layoffs, automation, and life in the modern workplace. We also head to Detroit for a new UNITE HERE arts residency that gives union members paid time to develop their creative voices—an innovative effort to build solidarity and expand the reach of labor storytelling. (Deadline to apply: May 15!) Plus, we dig into labor history with labor historian Rudy Batzel talking with America’s Workforce Radio Podcast about how race, class, and strikebreaking shaped the movement—and still do today. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, historian Joe McCartin introduces the #Peoples250 campaign, lifting up working-class stories and inviting everyone to help tell a more complete history of the United States. This week’s Labor Landmark takes us to Birmingham, Alabama, where two Black union leaders stopped a Ku Klux Klan bombing—an extraordinary act of courage rooted in labor and civil rights organizing. And in Labor History in 2, we look at the ongoing fight for workplace safety. Our music this week is Hope by Carsie Blanton, a reminder that solidarity, courage, and care—put into collective action—are what keep the movement moving forward. Broadcast on April 30, 2026; hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant; produced by Chris Garlock; engineered by Kahlia Chapman. The Labor Heritage Power Hour is a member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and syndicated on Pacifica’s Audioport. @LaborHeritage1 @wpfwdc @aflcio #1u #unions #laborradiopod

    55 min
See All (99)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

A weekly radio show celebrating the cultural heritage of the American worker. Hosted by Chris Garlock and Elise Bryant and produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation; broadcast on WPFW 89.3FM

Information

  • Creator
    Christopher Garlock
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    99
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2023 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Labor Heritage Power Hour

You Might Also Like