City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York

City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York

City of Workers, City of Struggle explained New York’s long role as organized labor’s “capital city” by showcasing materials ranging from 19th-century tools used to build the Brooklyn Bridge to modern video footage of Amazon worker-activists on Staten Island. As curator, I sought to underscore how New York’s history of struggles over workers’ rights, power, and wellbeing has never been a story of a single “labor movement,” but rather a saga of multiple labor movements striving, fighting, and cooperating over diverse ethnic, gender, racial, and political agendas.

Shout-outs to Rebecca Hayes Jacobs and Nate Lavey for their brilliant interviewing and audio-video work, to Sarah M. Henry for interactives concept and development, and to Pentagram for design. I was proud to work with Susan Gail Johnson in helping to edit and provide images for the accompanying book.