On Today’s Show:
The United States is moving towards authoritarianism, but there is still a window of opportunity to reverse course. What could improve the chances of re-balancing power in the nation, and advancing towards that multiracial democracy that many still dream of? The answer is worker organizing, say Alex Han and Tarso Lus Ramos. “When we look at the history of U-turns from democratic backsliding to democratic revival, the success rate is about 50 percent,” says Ramos. “Where there’s active, vibrant union participation, the odds go up to about 80 percent.” So what’s holding Labor back? In early May of 2025, Laura sat down with Ramos and Han at a conference on Labor in the Age of Authoritarian Politics, held at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU) in New York. Ramos is a leading expert on the U.S. Right Wing and former Executive Director of Political Research Associates. He now serves as Senior Advisor to Future Currents, a strategic planning group of social and economic justice leaders. Han has spent most of his adult life in the labor movement, as an organizer and elected president of a large Chicago local. In 2023, he became Executive Director of In These Times, the long-running Chicago-based progressive magazine. In the wake of mass layoffs and the abduction of Kilmar Abrego Garca, a union member wrongly exported to El Salvador and now held in Tennessee, can enough workers and their allies band together to make a difference?
The Laura Flanders Show explores actionable models for creating a better world by reporting on the people and movements driving systemic change. We spotlight the solutions of tomorrow, today. The 28minute radio program (released 5pm Wednesdays) also airs as a TV Show on PBS stations reaching 80% of U.S. households. Laura Flanders is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Media Center. Says Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation, who has known her for 25 years, “Flanders’ fearless and humane journalism never fails to challenge our downsized politics of excluded alternatives. But it does more — Flanders wants her reporting to shift power, seed bold ideas and offer people a way forward that is about transformative not transactional change”.