The midterms delivered a stunning rebuke of Trump and the MAGA movement, but what will it take to turn electoral victories into lasting change? In this episode of “Movement Memos,” host Kelly Hayes talks with anti-authoritarian strategist Scot Nakagawa about the opportunities and dangers of this political moment, the enduring power of tech oligarchs, and how movements can build the solidarity and…
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On Sunday, October 25, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro by a margin of three and a half points, and almost 4.5 million votes. It was roughly twice the margin of the 2022 election, when Lula defeated Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro.
It was the first time in Brazilian history that a candidate lost the first round of voting and won the second. And it was also one of the first defeats of a far-right Trump ally in several years.
As we’ve examined throughout this season of the podcast, Trump’s Donroe Doctrine has overshadowed the region since he came back into power early last year. He’s invaded Venezuela, tightened the screws on Cuba, and twisted arms to get his friends elected in countries up and down the Americas. But in Brazil, he couldn’t. And it’s not because Trump and his Silicon Valley buddies didn’t try.
It’s because Lula supporters organized en masse. Students, workers, teachers, retirees, and everyone in between. And they hit the streets to flip the vote, despite the odds.
They rallied with weeks of around-the-clock campaigning, marches, and protests. They pamphleted and fliered. They talked to their neighbors and their relatives. Online, Lula supporters responded with creative campaigns to confuse the algorithms that aggressively pushed content promoting Bolsonaro.
As many in the crowds told me again and again in recent weeks, this election was a decision that would define the fate of Brazil’s democracy. This wasn’t a vote between two candidates in a democratic system, where one wins and the other accepts their loss. It was a decision between democracy and dictatorship. Or democracy and something else.
And democracy won.
We began this
Big Tech is selling us a future in which workers are increasingly disposable, human expertise is devalued, and corporate power is more concentrated than ever. But is that future inevitable? In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Alex Hanna, co-author of The AI Con, about AI as a tool of class warfare, the hype that obscures its real-world harms, and how workers are…
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Far from all the political bluster about police being “defunded,” six years after the earth-shaking George Floyd protests swept the US and public approval for law enforcement plummeted, police have never been more politically and monetarily supported than they are now. But when veteran labor reporters and union activists Hamilton Nolan and Jacob Morrison attended the 23rd Quadrennial Convention of the International Union of Police Associations in Las Vegas, Nevada, they found a different kind of union, and a different kind of convention, than they were expecting…
In this special episode of Working People, we speak with Nolan and Morrison about their August reporting trip to the IUPA Convention in Las Vegas.
Additional links/info:
Hamilton Nolan Substack (How Things Work) and Bluesky page
Jacob Morrison’s Twitter/X page
The Valley Labor Report website, YouTube channel, Facebook page, Bluesky page, and Twitter/X page
Hamilton Nolan & Jacob Morrison, The Real News Network, “Beards and loathing: A cop union convention comes to Las Vegas”
Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work, “We infiltrated a police union convention in Las Vegas”
Featured Music:
Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song
Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Jacob Morrison:
All right. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. My name is not Maximillian Alvarez. It is Jacob Morrison, host of the Valley Labor Report, the largest union talk radio program in the South.
Hamilton Nolan:
And I’m Hamilton Nolan, a labor journalist based in New York City.
Jacob Morrison:
Hamilton and I marched on the boss and took Max’s microphone so we could introduce the special episode about the recent reporting
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For the past month—led by students and joined by parents, teachers, labor unions, and more—France has been gripped by one of the largest protest waves in modern history. Protestors have faced violent police repression, a recalcitrant government, and rampant misinformation or skewed coverage from rightwing and corporate media. In this special international edition of Working People, we speak directly with a broad range of students and union members across France who are on the front lines of the current protest movement, and we put them in conversation with union workers and leaders in the US.
Editor’s Note: This episode contains an edited-down version of a Zoom webinar panel discussion recorded on Sunday, October 25, organized in partnership with The Real News Network, the Chicago Teachers Union, Haymarket Books, and the French labor union Force Ouvrière. Unless expressed by elected organization leaders, all views shared in this conversation and on the original webinar are those of the speakers alone.
Additional links/info:
Chicago Teachers Union website, Facebook page, Bluesky page, and Instagram
Force Ouvrière website, Facebook page, and Instagram
Haymarket Books website, YouTube channel, Bluesky page, and Instagram
Angelique Chrisafis, The Guardian, “Hundreds of thousands march across France in protests over schools and policing”
Featured Music:
Jules Taylor, Working People Theme Song
Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright. Welcome, everyone, to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and today we are taking you to the streets of France, where mass, student-led protests have swept the country for the past month. We’ve gotten so many