The Heartland Labor Forum is Kansas City’s only program about the workplace. It’s radio that talks back to the boss! Whether you’re a union member or your workplace isn’t organized, Heartland Labor Forum (HLF) has stories for you, guaranteed to inspire, educate, or enrage you. HLF is produced by a diverse group of working people. We have been agitating for the rights of working people on the KKFI airwaves since 1989.
Find out about labor struggles and strikes, organizing in Kansas City, global sweatshops, and how the economy is working from the point of view of working people. Listen to our monthly features: Know Your Rights, Safety First, Remember Our Struggle, and Washington Window on Workers. Heartland Labor Forum has won the International Labor Communications Association first prize for radio several times. We are members of the Labor Radio Podcast Network #laborradiopod. Other media have plenty of business news of, by, and for the 1%; HLF is for the rest of us.
Find our schedule of upcoming shows and our archive at www.heartlandlaborforum.org.
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Judy Ancel – Heartland Labor Forum founder, labor educator, globa
l solidarity activist and daily dog walker. She coordinates the show.
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Shawn Saving – Scientist, musician, labor activist.
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Ariana Eakle – IBEW Local 124 journeyperson electrician, singer and Wobbly. Also does the monthly feature Remember Our Struggle
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Tom Gebken – Vice President of CWA Local 6360, Labor activist, Community advocate and all around good guy!
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Christina Hendricks – Young inner-city social studies teacher and union activist.
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Cris Mann – Retired special ed teacher, member AFT Local 691. She dreams of the day when the Pentagon budget will be redirected to our schools and teachers.
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Michael Savwoir – Photographer, active TDUer, social and civil rights activist, retirement income security advocate, senior citizen!
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Tino Scalici – Award-Winning Labor Journalist, Egomaniac, Assembly Line Worker.
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Jen Zaman Dream of an engineer.
DJ/presenter, music/art lover, proud wife and fur-mom, and aunt to a French teen.
Feature Editors
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Mary Erio hosts the monthly Safety First feature. W
orkplace safety advocate, engineer and butterfly garden enthusiast
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Angie Williams Angie Williams does our “Know Your Rights” segment. She is an attorney in Kansas City focusing on complex family immigration and removal defense and criminal defense. She is an activist for immigrant rights and immigration reform. Angie has written extensively on the subject as well as testified against unconstitutional state based immigration laws in both the Kansas and Missouri Legislature.
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Mark Gruenberg is on once a month with Washington Window on Workers. He is a full-time labor journalist with PAI-Press Associates Inc. which provides news to unions and labor publications.
Recent Episodes
January 14, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Working Class History Podcast & Milan, MO’s Rural Workers Community Alliance
This week, we’ll hear untold stories of working class people who changed history. Then, we’ll find out who is making history in Milan, Missouri, where the Rural Community Workers Alliance is organizing and defending the immigrant workers who process pork for Smithfield.
ListenJanuary 7, 2021 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Nurses & Techs Still Fighting COVID
Exhausted hospital and healthcare workers continue to be in the front lines fighting COVID-19. This week, join healthcare workers and Tim Sheard, a nurse turned mystery novelist, as they attempt to find out what solidarity has to do with defeating COVID.
ListenDecember 31, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
New Year’s Eve: Looking Back/Looking Forward
Our volunteer producers are picking short clips of our favorite interviews to air as we bid good riddance to the hardest year for working people since 1933. Workers contended with eternal shifts in hospitals and nursing homes, pervasive fear of Covid, mass unemployment, eviction. Yet many made lemonade by organizing, writing postcards to voters, phone banking and demonstrating against killer police. Tune in Thursday for a review of 2020 at work and a look at what’s to come.
ListenDecember 24, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
The Truth About Santa’s Workshop
It’s almost Christmas Eve, and Santa is loading the sled with toys. But, hark! The elves are on strike and will tell all on the Heartland Labor Forum about what really goes on in Santa’s workshop. Tune in to find out the naughty and nice about toy makers. And that’s not all: we’ll celebrate labor with some great holiday song parodies.
ListenDecember 17, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
How Did the PO Do in the Election & COVID Slams Youth & Women Workers
After all the alarm about votes lost in the mail, we’ll ask Andy Tuttle, Kansas State President of the union of Letter Carriers, if all the votes got delivered and what’s the next crisis for the US Postal Service. Then - it’s been widely reported that women workers are big losers in the COVID catastrophe. We’ll find out how bad it is, and how hard it will be to recapture lost jobs and careers from Nicole Bateman of the Brookings Institution.
ListenDecember 10, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Jake Hummel & The PRO Act
First, he was an electrician. Next, he served in the Missouri House and Senate. Now Jake Hummel is President of the Missouri AFL-CIO. This week, we’ll find out what’s in store for Missouri’s working people in 2021. Then - the Protecting the Right to Organize or PRO Act promises to reform labor law, but does it stand a chance in the new Congress? We'll talk to Margaret Poydock from the Economic Policy Institute about what the law could do for workers and the labor movement overall.
ListenDecember 3, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
“Blood Runs Coal” & COVID + Healthcare Workers
The brutal murder in 1968 of Jock Yablonski and his family by United Mineworker president Tony Boyle sent shockwaves through the labor movement. Its impact inspired a surge in union democracy across labor’s ranks. This week, we’ll talk about it to Mark Bradley, author of Blood Runs Coal. Then, we’ll hear from respiratory therapists who have travelled to places where the pandemic is strongest to care for its victims. Their stories are riveting.
ListenNovember 26, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Two Lies & A Truth About Thanksgiving
Who were the Europeans at the first Thanksgiving? Were they Pilgrims or colonizers? Were they religious Freedom Riders or Religious Tyrants? And what about the myth of the welcoming soon-to-be dead Indians? Tune in to the Heartland Labor Forum after your Thanksgiving Feast to play Two Truths and a Lie about this holiday.
ListenNovember 19, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Election Results & How Did the Working Class Vote?
While labor is celebrating Joe Biden’s win, the election results in Kansas and Missouri are a disaster for the working class. This week, we’ll do some analysis of the results in our two states and then ask what role unions played in the national vote and how some unions boosted voter turnout. We’ll talk to reporters from Labor Notes about it.
ListenNovember 12, 2020 Local, News & Public Affairs, Podcast
Revisiting Harvest of Empire & The Hard Road of Hope
Almost a decade ago, Democracy Now!’s Juan Gonzalez published his path breaking book, Harvest of Empire. This week, we’ll update it on how US imperialism continues to uproot people, forcing migration and how that has impacted the Latino vote. Then, we’ll talk with activist, poet, model and musician, Eleanor Goldfield, about her award-winning new documentary film, The Hard Road of Hope about West Virginia miners and their ongoing struggle with greedy bosses.
Listen