The legendary thinker and radical historian Robin DG Kelley joins us to discuss the importance of the radical imagination and the history of workers' writing. Kelley is author of many books on the history of labour and anti-racist struggles, and about luminary proletarian creative figures. These include: Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. In this conversation, Kelley explains how, in the face of corporate and capitalist power, which has never failed to mobilize racism, working people have consistently turned to the written word as a tool of solidarity and a means to demand a different future. In an age of digital capitalism where corporations like Amazon dominate the market for books, films and other "content," reclaiming the power to create and share works of the imagination are more important than ever. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Kelley * http://www.beacon.org/Freedom-Dreams-P1855.aspx The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. * https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative * http://workersspeculativesociety.org * http://reimaginingvalue.ca