Songwriters in a Fiat factory. Miners in the local music studio. Workers on the radio and musicians on the picket line. Music can carry a strike from one factory to the next or bring it into living rooms across the globe. Strike While the Needle is Hot: A Discography of Worker’s Revolt documents the creative use of recorded audio—from historical labor songs to picket line field recordings, to new songs with lyrics explaining strike tactics. Join the authors along with labor journalists and educators for a special celebration of the books release for organizers as they explore how some of the biggest swings musicians, workers, and supporters have co-created a popular culture of resistance.

In this celebration participants will hear samples from these strike records, learn about record collecting for labor and working-class education, gain insight into the production and circulation of these records by unions and workers’ organizations, and discuss ways to incorporate labor-art, music, and ephemera in labor organizing and education as to inspire and engage the next generation, and all generations, of labor leaders and workers as we build a new international labor movement. This event draws on the presenters’ decades of experiences as working artists and archivists, labor educators and researchers, and working-class organizers.

Featuring Kennedy Block, Alexandra “Al” Bradbury, Josh MacPhee, Robert Ovetz, and Kevin Van Meter