Radio Broadcast: ''The Road to Recovery' (1938)' by Laurie Robins

The artwork comprises a new recording of William F. Dunne’s radio broadcast ‘The Road to Recovery, Security, Democracy and Peace’ (1938), read by Julie Crowley and recorded in the Carpenters Union Hall, Butte, Montana in June 2020.

The recording was broadcast at 1pm Mountain Standard Time/8pm Irish Standard Time on KBMF 102.5FM, Butte, Montana, 16 July 2020. Listeners outside of Butte can stream the recording on www.butteamericaradio.org at the button below, 'The Road to Recovery' begins at 1hr.

Laurie Robins has produced an edition of 50 double-sided risograph posters to mark this event, providing a history and contextual information about the conflict between socialism and monopoly capital in Butte over the past 100 years. Posters are available from TBG+S for €10 - please see below.

Agitation Co-op, a group exhibition featuring artists Michele Horrigan, Catriona Leahy, Laurie Robins, Libita Sibungu, was scheduled to open at TBG+S on July 16, and will now open in December this year.

‘The Road to Recovery’, a speech written by William F. Dunne, was aired in 1938 on KGIR Butte; a radio station started one year before the Great Depression. The broadcast explains the Communist Party of America’s support of new deal work programs as a neccessary response to the fascist nature of monopoly capital and its barely veiled plan to reshape the depression era US in its own interests.

Julie Crowley reads Dunne’s text in the former ballroom of the Carpenters Union, the state’s oldest active labour temple and home of KBMF community radio; a low-power station licensed by Butte America Foundation, an organisation established to educate the public by providing information and tools to uphold the tenets of social justice.

Crowley was born on the Anaconda Road, a neighbourhood purchased and destroyed by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) in 1973 to expand its open pit mine. She has campaigned for justice for Thomas Manning – a miner shot by gunmen of the ACM in 1920 during a strike called by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). To mark the 100th anniversary of his death Crowley has organised the production of a tombstone for Manning’s unmarked grave. Funded by local unions, the inscription on the memorial reads “KILLED BY THE COPPER TRUST, THOMAS MANNING, 1895 – 1920”.