Labor Reading Group Selects Kim Kelly’s "Fight Like Hell" for Next Reading

The Maine AFL-CIO Labor Reading Group has selected the book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly as its next reading selection. The group will discuss the Foreword, Prologue and Chapters 1-3 of the book at its next meeting on Thursday, September 19, 5:30-6:30 pm on Zoom.

Below is a description of the book:

Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America’s civil rights movement. These are only some of the heroes who propelled American labor’s relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law.

The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. In this definitive and assiduously researched “thought-provoking must-read” (Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO president), Teen Vogue columnist and independent labor reporter Kim Kelly excavates that untold history and shows how the rights the American worker has today—the forty-hour workweek, workplace-safety standards, restrictions on child labor, protection from harassment and discrimination on the job—were earned with literal blood, sweat, and tears.

Fight Like Hell comes at a time of economic reckoning in America. From Amazon’s warehouses to Starbucks cafes, Appalachian coal mines to the sex workers of Portland’s Stripper Strike, interest in organized labor is at a fever pitch not seen since the early 1960s. Inspirational, intersectional, and full of crucial lessons from the past, Fight Like Hell is “essential reading for anyone who believes that workers should control their fate” (Shane Burley, author of Why We Fight).

Our go-to places for mail orders are union shops Powell's (Portland OR) or GreenlightBooks (Brooklyn NY). (Find out more, including a way to order that supports the Powell's union, on the Reading Group website.) Or try your local independent bookstore. In addition, 17 Maine libraries own this book. (Direct-request interlibrary loans will resume on Sept. 3. The Maine Reciprocal Borrowing Program allows cardholders at many Maine libraries to use that card to check out books directly at other libraries around the state.

The group typically meets on the third Thursday of the month, 5:30-6:30. The regular exception is November-December, when we meet on the first Thursday in December.