Against the Grain

Collective Action in the Great Depression

What lessons can we learn from the ways working class people in the U.S., many of them women and people of color, took collective action during the depression of the 1930s? Historian Dana Frank discusses experiments in mutual aid and cooperatives, battles over the expulsion of Mexican and Mexican American workers, small-scale sit down strikes, including by African American wet nurses, as well as working class support for the fascist right.

Resources:

Dana Frank, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times Beacon Press, 2024