As colleagues at the nation’s largest public-university system – the 23-campus California State University (CSU) – prepare to go on strike Monday, one reached out to ask if we had a Good Playlist devoted to labor politics. We didn’t, so I walked down the hall to ask my colleague, Marissa Brookes.
Brookes is the author of The New Politics of Transnational Labor and co-directs UC Riverside’s Inland Empire Labor and Community Center. She shared with me a playlist that her student Ally Diaz created, inspired by a labor politics course Brookes taught in Spring 2022.
Brookes also used my query as an opportunity to create her own labor playlist. The subtitle of her playlist reads, “a work-in-progress as you work for progress.”
I’ll leave you with one song that didn’t make either playlist but that folks who have walked the picket line have likely heard.