Organizing, Militant Unionism, & the Class War: The Fighting (Life &) Times of Jon Melrod

Guerrilla History

Henry

History, Education

4.8 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2023

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this outstanding episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Jon Melrod to discuss his new book Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War (use code FIGHTING to get 40% off)! In this episode, we discuss the life and times of Jon, who in many ways is a real working class hero. We talk about his early embrace of radical political ideology, his radical campus organizing, his 13 years fighting in and organizing within industrial factories in Wisconsin, his rise within the UAW, and his post-factory work as a lawyer representing political refugees and victims of police violence. This conversation is really inspiring, and we cannot recommend enough that you pick up the book, read it with fellow workers, and share this episode with those you think would benefit!

Jon Melrod is a journalist, activist, and lawyer that left the campus for the factory in 1973. For thirteen years, he immersed himself in the day-to-day struggles of Milwaukee’s working class, both on the factory floor and in the political arena. Despite FBI surveillance and interference, Jon organized a militant rank-and-file caucus and rose through union ranks to a top leadership position in UAW Local 72. After this part of his career, he opened a law firm in San Francisco, successfully representing hundreds of political refugees. You can follow Jon on twitter @JonathanMelrod, and keep up with his latest work and read more about his story on his website jonathanmelrod.com.

Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

Transcript

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0:00.0	You remember Den Ben Boo?
0:09.0	No!
0:10.0	The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa.
0:15.0	They didn't have anything but a rank.
0:17.0	The prince had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on.
0:27.1	Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.
1:12.3	I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki. Unfortunately, only joined by one of my usual co-host. Today we have Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast with us. Hello, Brett. How are you doing today? I'm doing very well. Very excited for this conversation. As am I, and it's a timely conversation as well, which we might hit on a little bit towards the end of it. Unfortunately, listeners were not joined by Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is a historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, as he had something come up rather last minute and had to drop out of this conversation earlier today.
1:14.7	So it's unfortunate for us.
1:19.9	It's unfortunate for you, but we are looking forward to having Adnan back for our next conversation very soon.
1:23.7	Now, before I introduce our guests in the book that we'll be talking about today, I just want to remind you listeners that you can help support the show and keep us up and running by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history. On there,
1:35.3	you get bonus content, including an ongoing miniseries that Adnan and I are putting together on the
1:39.7	religious cultures of the medieval Mediterranean. I think we've just put out episode five of that.
1:44.2	We've got a couple more scheduled to go up soon.
1:47.3	So if you go on there to help support the show, you get bonus stuff like that as well.
1:52.8	You can also keep up with all of the things that Brett Adnan and I are putting out individually,
1:57.6	as well as the show collectively by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A-U-Skore Pod.
2:06.5	Now, as I mentioned, we have an excellent guest and a really great book to talk about today,
2:10.9	and one that actually will be rather timely given recent events in the United States,
2:20.9	which is the UAW Strike, which we'll talk about a little bit later. But today we're going to be talking with Jonathan Melrod, who is the author of the
2:25.3	relatively new book, Fighting Times, organizing on the front lines of the class war out from
2:31.1	PM Press. And we wanted to let everybody know that PM Press is currently running a 40% off special
2:36.7	on this book specifically.
	...

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