← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Communities of Women Build a Movement
00:29:54
On this week’s episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on the non-profit reporters that are unionizing in Ohio, the Hilton Hotel workers striking in Houston, Canada's third party with radical leadership, and Canada's postal...
Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:20]
A
Welcome friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. As usual, I want to begin with announcements. A few bear with me, please. One has to do with an upcoming event on the 11th of October at the Women Building Up Building in Brooklyn, New York. We're going to have a guest later today, Kim Westcott, and who will be telling you about that. I think you'll be very interested and urge you to listen on the second half when she discusses it with us. I also want to remind you that we have a volunteer, Charlie Fabian, who takes your suggestions, comments, criticisms, responds, shares them with us, and so on. We are very grateful for your engagement in that way and want to remind you charlie.info438mail.com and finally, I want to thank you for your communications about the fake videos that work with likenesses of me, but they aren't me. It's one of the sad side effects of AI, etc.
- [01:51]
B
You're sending them in.
- [01:52]
A
We're getting Google to remove them. Please continue. Sorry that we're all burdened with that, but it is an unfortunate part of modern life. Before going into the regular topics, I.
- [02:06]
B
Also want to give a shout out.
- [02:08]
A
To two union struggles that I think are very important indeed. They're heroic. The first one has to do with Signal Ohio. It's a nonprofit collection of nonprofit news gathering services.
- [02:25]
B
It functions in Akron, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
- [02:31]
A
And the reporters that work for them, like for other independent nonprofit groupings, which is a growing phenomenon in America, have recently unionized with the News Guild. And that's part of the Communication Workers of America AFL cio. And that's an important movement and it's an important thing that it's solid with the labor movement as well. And likewise, the Hilton Houston Hotel, actually owned by Houston, which owns that hotel and lets Hilton run it, just like it owns the convention center and lets another private corporation run most of it. Workers are on strike there, 400 of them. They get paid among the lowest wages in the country. It is a travesty. They're asking for $23 an hour, which they should have been paid anyway, but.
- [03:37]
B
They'Re having the strength to get out.
- [03:39]
A
There, organized by Unite Here, the important union of these kinds of workers. And I wanted to acknowledge the courage it takes to go out on strike when you know you're in the right. They've been extremely profitable at that hotel. There is no excuse except the normal capitalist commitment to maximize profits, no matter what the cost, both to their workers and to the larger society. Okay, let me turn then to the stories today. You'll notice they have a particular focus on Canada. And while I would not have to say anything about that, Canada is an important audience for us and an important country, becoming more important as it takes on its own independence imposed by what Mr. Trump has done, but nonetheless, I think powerfully stimulative to Canada's own development. But many of the problems, as you'll see that Canada struggles with, are problems elsewhere as well.
- [04:56]
B
So I'm going to begin by noticing.
- [04:59]
A
That Canada, unlike the United States, has a large third party. It's not just a two party duopoly. It has something called the New Democratic Party, the ndp. And Avi Lewis, perhaps better known as the husband of Naomi Klein, has announced that he's running for the leadership of the NDP and wants to make it a real progressive alternative to the two major parties. Hello. Where else might that be a useful thing? He wants it to be a socialist alternative, although he uses other words. He, he's both a son and grandson of people who were leaders of that party before because it's been in Canada quite a while.
- [05:59]
B
He's running against corporate control of the economy and he's running against not only.
- [06:05]
A
The old political parties, but against the bullying his term of Mr. Trump. Interesting things happening north of the US border.
- [06:21]
B
Then also in Canada, there's a postal strike going on.
- [06:25]
A
And I want to tell you the story of that strike because, boy, is that typical of capitalism. Why are postal workers on strike? Well, the argument of the government, the postal system is partly private, partly government in Canada, the story there is that the postal system is losing money and that therefore it needs to cut its workers their wages, their working conditions and cut the service it provides because it's losing money. And one of the services, hear this please, is to end home delivery of the mail. Yeah, you heard that right. They're going to substitute boxes at various locations, big boxes in which lots of little mailboxes are contained, and you're going to have to leave your home and go to wherever that box is to open your little mailbox and retrieve your mail so they don't have to pay the mail delivery personnel whom they used to pay. What is going on?
- [07:49]
B
Well, here's the answer.
- [07:52]
A
And this has happened to many other government run operations. Canada, as you probably know, is a vast country and it has many, many fairly remote rural areas. A postal system there has to cover the rural areas in the little villages and towns as well as the urban concentrations. It is much cheaper to deliver a package from the Toronto airport to downtown Toronto than from the Toronto airport to the hinterlands all over the place in a huge country like Canada.
- [08:47]
B
So what has happened is private package.
- [08:51]
A
Deliverers, you know them, United Parcel Service, FedEx, DHL and others have come in and poached the profitable routes. That's right. They go where the traffic is dense and the costs are lower and the profits are higher. Now, when you have one postal service in a country, it takes the profits from some routes to subsidize the routes that are not so profitable. Because a postal system unites people in very different parts of the country in very different circumstances into one national community. And that is thought to be an important function of a post office. But capitalists don't care about social functions. It's not their job, it's not what they're paid for. They're looking to make money. And they can make money by cherry picking the profitable parts of the post office, taking those over, and what's left for the government? All the unprofitable routes. So when you notice that the government's postal system is now unprofitable, there should be no mystery. This is not about workers not doing their job or technical.
- [10:22]
B
It's nothing to do with that.
- [10:23]
A
It's that you've allowed the privates to take the profits and leave you with the subsidy.
- [10:31]
B
You know, this happens in education systems.
- [10:34]
A
This happens in school systems of all kinds.
- [10:37]
B
It happens in taxi services.
- [10:40]
A
Private companies come in, make money. You've developed a taste for the thing. You've developed the roots. The country has built the roads in part so that the postal vehicles could get through.
- [10:53]
B
You've spent the money.
- [10:55]
A
Now the privates can swoop in, make their own money, and you're left with the public sector not making money. And then corrupt politicians who don't go to the people and say, here's the reason, we've got to do something about this. We don't have to let private people siphon off the profits to the detriment of the workers and the people served in the rural area. Because the capitalists take the profits for themselves. Whereas before, when the government ran it, the profits it made off the downtown.
- [11:36]
B
Urban areas was used to provide the.
- [11:39]
A
Good service for everybody else. That was a social use of the profits. Instead, now we have a private grabbing of the profits. And those will go, of course, to the shareholders in those companies who are already the richest people in the country and who you can bet your Bottom Dol whether it's a Canadian dollar or an American dollar, are the rich people who don't live in the rural areas and therefore don't worry about mail delivery. This is an ugly capitalist grab. It's not good for the people as a whole. Not at all. And the government, instead of opposing this, is serving its capitalist bosses by doing exactly what they care, not cutting the workers and cutting the home delivery and putting the whole rural area at enormous risk. How far will you have to go to get your mail now that home delivery is in question? This is a classic kind of story about how capitalism works. It's the same when Uber and Lyft come in and take over taxi riding and on and on. Don't be fooled. The reason public jobs and public corporations are a feature of every capitalist society is that they have been crucial in the development of those societies, and they usually still are. But they can be poached by private capitalists wanting to siphon as much of the wealth there into their own hands. And when that means a lack of jobs or a lack of public service, they could care less. We've come to the end of the first half. Please stay with us. We'll be right back. Kim Westcott is our guest and we'll be talking about important solidarity economic activities when we return. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@info democracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do.
- [15:39]
B
Welcome back friends, to the second half of today's economic update. I am very pleased and proud to bring to our cameras and microphones Kim Westcott. She is an attorney and currently the Managing Director of Community Collaboration and capacity at a very interesting organization called Women Building Up WBU in Brooklyn, New York. This is a community organization focused on supporting and providing resources to carceral systems, impacted women, girls and gender Expansive people and communities.
- [16:28]
A
And in a moment, I'm sure Kim.
- [16:30]
B
Will tell us what that means. She served in senior roles at the Trinity Church on Wall street, the Community Service Society of New York City, Columbia University, and the New York City Transit Authority. So, first of all, Kim, thank you very much for joining us and sharing your time.
- [16:53]
C
Thank you so much. It's just an honor to be here. Thank you.
- [16:58]
B
Okay, for my audience, I think the first question we need to ask is, what exactly is Women Building Up? What is its mission, and what is it that you do there?
- [17:11]
C
Wow. Thank you. So Women Building up is a community organization, and you shared pretty much the core of its mission. It advances women, girls, and gender expansive people who are directly impacted by carceral systems. And when I say carceral systems, it includes the prison system, but there are other systems that are carceral in nature. And this can include the family regulatory system that includes foster care and other kinds of mental health systems. But we are very, very, very centered on punishment and the formerly incarcerated. And really, our focus is to support grassroots groups that are active in the movement.
- [18:01]
A
Okay, why did you produce this organization?
- [18:05]
B
Give us a sense, you know, because in our country here, we have so many social problems that people more or less understand, but what they rarely do is form organizations that can really do something about those problems.
- [18:24]
C
So.
- [18:25]
A
So part of why I wanted you.
- [18:26]
B
To be with us today is to tell us, how did it come about that there is an organization in a.
- [18:34]
A
Building in Brooklyn, New York, doing this kind of work?
- [18:38]
C
Absolutely. Well, it's kind of an amazing turn of events. And the first thing I'd like to say is Women Building up is grounded in a movement. And as a result, we are the stewards of our community's resources. And I'll get back to that a little. I don't know if many people had heard about the Bayview Prison in New York City that was on the far west side of Manhattan in 2012. It still housed women. And when Hurricane Sandy hit that year, the women were evacuated and the building was closed for repair. What that really prompted were women activists from all over the spectrum. Formerly incarcerated, gender expansive, the women's movement, women laborers. And they took this opportunity to call into question, you know, does it really make sense to put more resources into a 200,000 square foot facility that's really a deprivation box? And the questions that were asked were, what do people need to live and heal and grow? And this coalition of women, they activated over the years. They gathered, they hosted block parties, they had meetings with Elected officials, they talked to their community members, and most of all, they organized with each other. And what they were able to do is attract a major funder, women's groups, and they were committed to transforming the prison, that prison, into a site of healing and growth. And so you can imagine there are a lot of twists and turns that took place over the course of this time, and there were some cost overruns. And as a result, this funder pulled out of the project. And it was a devastating experience for the community and for the core activists and also for the movement of women that they funded. They left the field. But what this funder did was pretty remarkable. They had a foundation office that they had just renovated in downtown Brooklyn. And what they did is they gave that office. So we own the building. And it's important to understand that the core activists that were part of that, they continued and they were supported with money to come together and vision what this organization would be. You know, so they did this, and it resulted in a 501C3 around the end of 2023. Our inaugural executive director, Susan Shah, came on board in 2024, and many of us came on in 2024 and 2025, mostly to try to resource and support the women in this grassroots movement. And what I will say is we are committed to community voice in that we are stewarding the community's assets. We have a grassroots advisory council, we have a women's circle. And the aim is to hear from them what it is that they are looking for and what they need to support their work.
- [21:53]
A
All right, I'm going to ask you.
- [21:56]
B
A question which I wish I didn't have to, but which is now obligatory for me much more of the time than I wish it were. How have the Trump administration's policies affected what you and WBU are doing? Can you give us a sense of what difference in your daily work, what.
- [22:21]
A
Difference did Trump government make?
- [22:23]
B
Does or does not make?
- [22:24]
C
Yeah, that's a tough topic. You know what I can honestly say, I mean, we are coming into this. The need for WBU predated the Trump administration. There was work to be done before Trump and his administration, and there will be after. Given all the exclusion and the isolation of the punishment system and that said, the material conditions that challenge people in their daily lives, what we need to live in, housing and employment and health care, it's hard enough for most of us to be able to manage. Then when you're speaking about formerly incarcerated people are pretty much coming out of captivity, facing all of the challenges of that experience when the Trump administration policies shred the social safety net or slash support for Medicaid and health care, remove unhoused people from the public square, or criminalize even more people in new ways, it's just making life harder for our community. So going forward, we will work harder to bring in more resources for our community.
- [23:39]
A
All right.
- [23:39]
B
You and I have a history some.
- [23:43]
A
Years ago of trying to develop a program for formerly incarcerated people when they.
- [23:52]
B
Re enter regular society to see whether solidarity economics or worker co ops of one kind or another might make that reentry go better, go easier, be a smoother way to reintegrate people. Have you found or has WBU been able to move in that direction in any way that would be interesting for people to discover? I always thought that it would be an interesting irony if the whole worker co op movement could get a boost from an unexpected constituency, finding it to be the way forward.
- [24:40]
C
Man, that was such a wonderful experience trying to see in prison when people are given so little and have the opportunity to think about ways in which they might want to prepare and have to try to come back into this system. It would have been wonderful to have had training, as we were discussing, on cooperative work in the prison WBU as a movement hub, we are informed by our core communities. What I do find though, and what I think is incredibly important because this community consists of some hyper marginalized people, people who've come from the black liberation experience, people that have come from experiences where they're looking to find ways to connect after the isolation and the exclusions of being incarcerated. Is that solidarity economics? While it's not necessarily front of mind when people learn about it, it's exciting in that it's rooted in values, it's rooted in mutualism, it's rooted in respect. These are things that all people want. And then it gives tools. It actually offers the opportunity to think about how to organize your work, try to do it collectively. You can think about it as owning collective land. It's. There's so many ways from just what you would do to try to get on board and be able to work as a human being. And then think about, well, what does our movement need and what does it mean to connect the resources intentionally to our own community? And so there's just so much possibility. And so that's why I'm really excited to see more of this kind of come out and to be able to share it with our core community, because people have expressed a hunger and we know that the nonprofit institution is. It's like a burning house, you know. And so when you can explore living and working with this kind of human frame and do it, it's extremely appealing.
- [26:51]
B
You know, the idea of community is a very old way in which human beings live and grow and take care of each other.
- [27:01]
A
And I'm not at all surprised to.
- [27:04]
B
Hear what you say about the potential.
- [27:07]
A
Of that working in your environment there too.
- [27:12]
B
Okay, in the few minutes we have left, it's my understanding that Women Building up is hosting an intersectional movement gathering on Saturday, October 11, from 6 to 9pm can you tell us a little bit about it? Who's gathering, what the goal is? And so the people listening who might be in or around the Brooklyn area on October 11th could participate if they wished.
- [27:44]
C
Absolutely. We're really, really excited to be able to co host with a number of wonderful organizations, People's Network of Liberation and Land Scenic, Democracy at Work Community Worker Ownership Project. We have just a wonderful collection of groups that are bringing together national and local solidarity economic organizations, one of which is Cooperation Jackson's Kaliakuno. We have something that I think will be really appealing to women who are coming from the impacted experience shy Fresh Kitchens in Chicago. This is a cooperative that was formed by formerly incarcerated women. There are, you know, local groups. There are many, many, many Brooklyn packers. There's a Maharlika co op. And so the opportunity is to have people become exposed not only to. To a worker co op, but, you know, people active in the solidarity economic movement and to be able to engage and to meet and to talk, you know, and to learn more about it. And so that's going to happen. We're going to have a plenary with people and then we're going to have some breakout groups after. We're going to have food and refreshment. And it's just a wonderful opportunity to meet these extraordinary examples of solidarity economics locally and also as a movement. And so I can tell you a lot more. Shall I do it?
- [29:15]
B
No, that's very good. We run out of time anyway, Kim. But let me reinforce my support for this meeting again. October 11th, 6:00-clock-9:00pm Women building up Brooklyn, New York. It is a time to be part of and to witness the movement that can and will change this country. Thank you all. Thank you, Kim, for being with us.
- [29:45]
C
Thank you.
- [29:45]
B
And as always, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.