In this fifteenth episode of Black Work Talk, our guest is Lauren Jacobs. Lauren is the Executive Director of the Partnership for Working Families – a national network of regional power-building organizations. Lauren and I have been friends for over 15 years…I remember when she was a union organizer in Boston. I have always loved the way Lauren combines things: race and class…theory and practice. That nuanced and rooted way of engaging the world is key at building real power to transform the world.
We had a wide-ranging conversation on a variety of topics including:
- Working with unreliable partners in the united front against authoritarianism
- The importance of working with everyday people to building the capacity to see themselves as social change agents
- The intertwined nature of race and class
For more background on Lauren Jacobs and her work, here are links:
https://www.forworkingfamilies.org/
https://forgeorganizing.org/article/building-united-front-against-authoritarianism
https://forgeorganizing.org/article/organizing-economy-we-want
And during the podcast, Lauren mentioned an important article by Stuart Hall, “Gramsci and Us”:
http://www.banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/87_06_16.pdf