Book Club
Book Club
For the first iteration of this book club, we will be reading some key texts within the labor, liberation, and resistance movements as well as community organizing.
The Labor Reading Group has been developed by members of the NCSU Graduate Workers Organizing Committee as an independent initiative to build an online Labor Library and bring like-minded people together to converse and learn. It is open to any community members and we are hoping it will bring people together from across the Triangle and from all walks of life. Each meeting’s conversation will be facilitated by a reading group member. We encourage attendees to come as they are - meaning come having read, having not read, with experience, without experience!
We will be meeting the last Tuesday of every month at the National Humanities Center!
Reading List
Summer 2026
May 26th, 2026 -The Angry Education Workers’ “Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement” (2025) - meeting at Natural Science Bar (no Zoom option)
June 30th, 2026 - Angela Davis’Freedom is a Constant Struggle (2016)
Optional Youtube video of Davis discussing concepts from the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPasIZ-TAZc
July 28th, 2026 -Cedric J. Robinson’s “Racial Capitalism: The Nonobjective Character of Capitalist Development” (chapter) from Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (2000)
Fall 2026
August 25th, 2026- The Future of Labor: How AI, Technological Disruption, and Practice will Change the Way We WorkEdited by Anthony Larsson and Andreas Hatzigeorgiou
September 29th, 2026 - Devin Price’s Laziness Does Not Exist
*Available through NCSU and other libraries, audiobook available on Spotify and Libby
October 27th, 2026 - Peter Cole’s ‘Scrap Iron Becomes Bullets’: When Dockers Fought Fascism with Direct Action.” (2025)
November 24th, 2026- Selections from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States
Past Meetings:
Spring 2026
January 27th, 2026 - Gunther Peck’s “Reinventing Free Labor: Immigrant Padrones and Contract laborers in North America, 1885-1925” (1996)
February 24, 2026 - Annelise Orleck’s Storming Caesars Palace(2006)
March 31, 2026 - Daniel Spade’s “Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival” (2020)
April 28, 2026 - Collaboration with NCSU SJP - Mohammed El-Kurd’s Perfect Victims: The Politics of Appeal (2025)
The labor library
COMING SOON!
Keep an eye on this space for access to our Labor Library and additional recourses gathered in conjunction with the Labor Reading Group.
The national humanities center
Address: 7 T.W. Alexander Drive, Durham, North Carolina 27713 USA
Public Transportation: The 100 bus departs across from Hill Library and goes directly to the National Humanities Center.
Directions from Raleigh, NC: Take Wade Avenue to I-40 West. Proceed on I-40 West and merge onto I-885. Stay on I-885 until exit 7 for Alexander Drive. Turn left onto Alexander Drive. At the second stoplight turn left into the driveway shared by the National Humanities Center and the N.C. Biotechnology Center. (The entrance to the Alexandria Center will be directly to your right, on the north side of Alexander Drive.) Proceed up the driveway, bearing left. The Center is located at the end of the drive.
Detailed directions can be found on the National Humanities Center Website
We will also be having an online option to attend the discussion. Please sign up to receive the zoom link.
Critical thought, conversing with peers and colleagues, building community, sharing ideas… are just some of the amazing things humans are capable and that allow us to cultivate culture together. For this book club, we’ll be tackling some challenging texts, but we will be doing it TOGETHER!
“Let us read and let us dance; these two AMUSEMENTS will never do any harm in the world.”
– Voltaire
