Ending Roe is just the beginning.
There’s plenty of ground to cover in Episode 72 of Krystal Kyle & Friends. While the union drive at LDJ5, an Amazon sorting center in New York, was unsuccessful, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) pushes forward, undaunted. Meanwhile, Amazon refuses to come to the bargaining table for the union’s contract; it’s frantically moving in the opposite direction, firing senior managers at JFK8, the recently unionized warehouse in Staten Island.
Discussion and predictions of the future continue to roll in from every corner following what seems like the end of Roe v. Wade. In an interview with the Washington Post, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy indicated that an end to Roe will open the doorway to a federal abortion ban — and that the Republican Party is fully prepared to usher that future in. This will require holding Congress and the White House, meaning that if Democrats are at all serious about protecting reproductive rights in this country, they need to provide voters with any basic reason to believe that they’ll fight for reproductive rights materially. (Not just performatively or as a matter of fundraising, as they have in recent memory.)
They seem far from it. A recent Jacobin piece by Liza Featherstone covers Nancy Pelosi’s enduring support for conservative, anti-choice Democrat Henry Cuellar — not only does he oppose abortion rights, but he raised a sexist smear campaign against his young progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros, too. Cuellar is benefiting from the full array of weapons in the party’s anti-progressive arsenal: three consulting firms allied with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have come to his aid in strategizing to beat Cisneros.
It’s hard to imagine how a party working this hard to entrench anti-abortion politics in our government will pivot to prevent a federal abortion ban. And it’s difficult to envision an outcome where the Democrats take accountability for electoral or legislative losses, rather than passing blame onto voters. With this week’s guests historian, author, and sociologist Harvey Kaye, and Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America Alan Minksy, we take stock of where the two parties are bound to go from here — and what action is possible for the working class. We’ll also talk about Harvey and Alan’s wide-ranging scholarship on the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and how the lessons of the New Deal can guide us today.
Paying subscribers can access video of our conversation when it’s released Friday evening. The podcast will be available to everyone on Saturday evening through Substack, Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.
Are they planning on posting the episode at all tonight?
Yoo where is the new episode??