American Worker is a project to document the history of workers' inquiry and first-person narratives written by workers about their working lives in the United States between the publication of The American Worker pamphlet in 1947 and the present.
Season 1: Search for The American Worker: will be a search for the identity of one of its authors; while exploring politics of authorship and voice, complexity of identity and power, neighboring pamphlets (on youth, housework, and black liberation), and the movements and organizations that it touched and influenced.
Season 2: Reading Struggles: will extend Season 1 to document how these militants read working-class struggles "from Detroit to Turin and Back Again.”
What is The American Worker? A pamphlet originally published in 1947 about “the life of the working class in the process of production. Its purpose is to understand what the workers are thinking and doing while actually at work on the bench or on the line.” Read the full pamphlet here.
