Hi, I'm Naila Boodoo. Welcome to Axios Recap, where we dive into one big story. Today's Thursday, July 29th.

Bipartisanship is up, Trump Republicans are down, and we're focused on the history of labor unions in the U.S.

With the pandemic, the way we think about work has changed.

There's a newfound power of the employee.

Take Alabama.

Union coal miners there are on their fourth month of a strike.

And earlier this year, Amazon workers failed to unionize in Bessemer.

Unions are becoming an even larger part of the way we think about the dignity of a worker.

And for communities of color, specifically the African-American community, early union organizers

like Philip Randolph paved the way for better labor conditions, starting with his work organizing

the Pullman porters in the early 20th century. In just a moment, author and historian Dr. Abram

X. Kendi joins me to talk about the history of labor organizing in the black community.

We're joined now by Dr. Abram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist and host of the Be Anti-Racist podcast.

Dr. Kendi, how did what happened in Alabama change the conversation in your

mind around unions in America today? It's hard to say definitively, but it seems like

anecdotally that it re-energized the movement to unionize across this country.

And I wonder if the reason for that was because, you know, you had organizers who decided they were going to try to unionize a plant at one of the second largest private employer in the country in Amazon. And this wasn't

anywhere. This was in the deep south. This was in Alabama. This was in Bessema, Alabama. 85% of the

people at the plant were black. Most of them were women. And so I wonder part of it is psychologically, if those

organizers can dare to unionize workers in the union-busting deep south in Alabama against the

sort of Goliath of Amazon with black women workers who have historically not

unfortunately been at the center who I think more and poor people are learning like should be

...