Kerrissey, Jasmine, Eve Weinbaum, Clare Hammonds, Tom Juravich, and Dan Clawson, eds. (2020). Labor in the Time of Trump

Abstract

While the election of Donald Trump in 2016 felt to many like an emergency, it was the culmination of deeply-rooted trends and power dynamics embedded in the economy, society, and the political system. The authors and editors of Labor in the Age of Trump clearly demonstrate that the Trump election was a manifestation of a chronic condition, not an acute crisis. The authors do, however, clearly define Trump’s election and ensuing policies as a crisis, creating a series of choices for the labor movement, the outcome of which might be existential. Scholars at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Labor Center organized a conference in 2017 as a response to the questions, practical and academic, raised by Trump’s election victory. This edited volume includes contributions by conference participants. It represents an attempt to understand the longer trajectory that led to the Trump election and to suggest fruitful responses to this moment that might be both possible and necessary for organized labor. Editors Jasmine Kerrissey, Eve Weinbaum, Clare Hammonds, Tom Juravich, and the late Dan Clawson have provided a response to a particular moment that functions as an analysis of a much longer (and still unfolding) project. The book offers four sections. The first lays out competing explanations for the causes of Trump’s ascendancy. The second explains the mechanics of the Trump agenda, demonstrating the deep roots of attacks on public Book Reviews