Introduction

This issue examines occupational injuries and “amnesiac landscapes,” municipal socialism in the 1940s, and the role of retraining programs in helping workers accept the hardships of deindustrialization. Articles on each of these themes reveal new and sometimes surprising insights into critical periods of twentieth-century US labor and working-class history.But first, linger a moment on the eloquence of Fred Shaw’s poem “Penny Bombing,” in which he follows the trail of pennies flung by his youthful self and his friends. The poem gives rise to an unexpected image of aging mill workers with creaky knees.Nate Holdren begins our article section with a provocative think piece on the role of industrial physicians in normalizing and ultimately erasing the pain and suffering caused by occupational injuries and illness. Using the concept of “amnesic landscape” proposed in a recent article by historian Lori Flores, Holdren notes the pervasiveness of industrial injuries but focuses attention on physicians’ actions. Taking their orders from corporate managers, physicians standardized and bureaucratized the reporting on injuries in a way that helped create a landscape of forgetting. He also relies on his personal experience with occupational injuries to reflect on how historians could advance our knowledge by focusing more closely on such erasures of memory.As I write, we are in the early days of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s term as Mayor of New York City after his smashing victory last November. His campaign has renewed interest in the history of municipal socialism, and in our second article Kimberly Phillips-Fein takes us to another remarkable moment in New York City politics. In the 1940s, Communist Party (CPUSA) member Peter V. Cacchione emerged as a very popular politician and repeatedly won election to the city council. Representing Brooklyn, Cacchione served on the city council from 1941 to 1947. In 1943 he was joined by another Communist Party member, Benjamin Davis, who was only the second African American to serve in that position. Their victories, Phillips-Fein shows, came out of a CPUSA strategy to temper its radical vision during the 1940s in order to bring about real, concrete improvement in New Yorkers’ lives. With strong support from the powerful NYC labor unions, Cacchione developed a program that echoes Mamdani’s today. While some might claim, based on such parallels, that Mamdani is a communist, it is more appropriate to say that the communist Cacchione sounded a lot like a New Dealer. He stressed providing decent public services, including mass transit, childcare, and libraries; making rent and utilities more affordable; and fighting racism and antisemitism in neighborhoods and in the police. Phillips-Fein analyzes how this happened and suggests what it can teach us about the dynamics of liberalism and radicalism in 1940s New York City.In our final article, Neil Johnson-Rodgers examines the economic crisis and deindustrialization of 1979 to 1984, which resulted in 11.5 million layoffs across the United States, with an eye on retraining programs. In the auto industry, where Ford alone laid off half its workforce, retraining programs that promised to prepare auto workers for a better, brighter future played a surprisingly important role. Historians have long debated the key dynamics of these years, examining the impact of the failed PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) strike, for example, as well as the spread of antiunion law firms and consultants, and a National Labor Relations Board that grew more conservative. Retraining programs have been neglected by historians, yet Johnson-Rogers demonstrates that they deserve careful examination. Looking not only at whether they actually retrained many workers but also, more expansively, at their broader cultural and ideological impact, Johnson-Rogers brings fresh insights to our understanding of a critical historical moment.In Arts and Media, Associate Editor Kathleen Newman has recruited another insightful essayist. This time cultural historian Lauren Sklaroff analyzes the satirical television show The White Lotus with her eye on its relevance for working-class historians. Labor readers interested in how popular culture mirrors and critiques the role of transnational capitalism, the tourist industry, labor exploitation, globalization, colonialism, and cultural commodification will see The White Lotus differently after encountering Sklaroff’s interpretation.Reviews Editor Vanessa May provides us with a sterling set of book reviews that traverse the globe. From Chinese workers building the Indonesian railroad, to European and Argentinian anarchists engaging with eugenics, and onward to Chilean domestic workers’ struggles, we see a world of workers in action. Don’t miss Jill Jensen reviewing Dorothy Sue Cobble’s new book on global feminists’ struggle for democratic equality, and Matthew Casey reviewing Julie Greene’s book on Caribbean workers and the Panama Canal. For domestic US labor and working-class history, the reviews cover such themes as Black and Indigenous performers during the Circus Age, enslaved people’s work to purchase their own freedom, and rank-and-file rebels in New York City labor unions. Circling back around, that latter review pairs nicely with the articles by Phillips-Fein and Johnson-Rogers in this issue. ▪