Michael Kluckner – illustratör

Told in an engaging graphic novel format, The Bund explains the oppressive origins of Jewish resistance in Ukraine, Poland, and the "Pale of Settlement" in Tsarist Russia. Jewish people adapted to industrialization and organized against exploitation. As they became more divided along the linguistic borders of Yiddish and Hebrew, Jewish people split between those who sought a distant ancestral homeland, others who emigrated and adapted to the "new world," and many more who fought against murderous Soviet and Nazi regimes. Charismatic resistance figures including Pati Kremer and Bernard Goldstein kept secular and progressive ideas alive against impossible odds in this graphic account of a little-known story. The first of its kind, this graphic history of Jewish labour resistance lays bare evidence of a radical past that can have massive implications for leftist Jewish struggles today.

Can reporter William Patterson handle the big, Winnipeg general strike story of 1919? Is it union recognition and demands for fair wages and safe working conditions? Or is it an attempt at revolution, as red-fearing opponents insist? Winnipeg is reeling from the Spanish flu and the aftermath of World War I. Now with the fear of communism and the deepening divide between race and class, the city is a ticking time bomb. As the strike reaches its violent climax, truths on both sides are slowly revealed.