Starbucks’s Latest UnionBusting Tactic: Attack the NLRB

It’s not enough for Starbucks to carry out a scorched-earth campaign to destroy workers’ union organizing campaign. The company is now implementing Trump-like attacks on the legitimacy of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.

Tackling the Housing Crisis With Public Power

Rhode Island is using COVID stimulus money to become a public housing developer — a monumental first step towards building a just housing delivery system.

Biden’s Economic Strangulation of Afghanistan

Stealing its central bank reserves is not going to do anything except starve innocent civilians.

The Truth About Busing Migrants to DC

The narrative cycling around conservative media outlets is that Governors Abbott and Ducey have "stuck it to the Dems" by "bringing the border crisis" to their front doors. In reality, mutual aid and solidarity groups have safely welcomed thousands of asylum seekers with dignity.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars – August 16, 2022

The fascists are moving from covert to overt

“Will We Become Our Enemy?”: Rushdie on Free Speech

"Terrorism does exist, we know that... How we fight it, in my view, is going to be the great civilizational test of our time. Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant, or will we not?”

American History Is Both Good and Bad

Some folks celebrate American exceptionalism and resist dwelling on horrors like slavery or settler colonialism. Others primarily see a centuries-long saga of white supremacism and oppression.

‘Five-Alarm Crisis’: Us Short 300K Teachers, Staff

To stay in their profession, said a union leader, educators need "professional respect" including fair pay and the right "to make teaching and learning decisions for their students."

How Coal Mining Increased East Kentucky’s Flood Risk

Coal mining destroyed Appalachia's mountaintops. Then came the floodwaters.

History Doesn’t Have To Repeat Itself

Hitler was satirised in the clubs of Weimar Berlin. It didn’t stop him. We need to understand what’s happening, to physically confront it, and, through struggle build an alternative politics that can win back vast swathes of working people.
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Popular

115,000 Railroad Workers Are Weighing a National Strike

US labor law is designed to prevent railroad strikes like the kind that shook America in the past. But the constant cuts to staffing levels and erosion of conditions for rail workers could produce a national rail walkoff by September.

Culture

food

What Is Food?

Mark Bittman Bittman Project
Food, like climate, like income, like “the environment” raises all the important issues, and it’s as good a tool for grappling with those issues as anything else. If we can’t sustainably and reliably provide ourselves with good food, we’re looking at a future of increasing illness and planetary degradation.

poetry

Red Summer

Gerry Sloan Arkansas Review
Phillips County, Arkansas, hometown of the most lynching, inspired the poet Gerry Sloan to remember the tragedy at Elaine a century ago.

books

Does Classics Have a Future?

Najee Olya Los Angeles Review of Books
The academic discipline of classics is facing profound challenges from scholars that are looking to renovate its traditional focus on the "whiteness" of its subject. This study is an expression of that challenge.

Labor

labor

Work, Work, Work—So a Few Can Be Rich

MICHAEL D. YATES Counter Punch
Gravity on a wall: Shut Down Capitalism Our labor has become a commodity, something bought and sold in the marketplace, no different in principle than raw materials, equipment, and the buildings that house our workplaces.

labor

Immigrant Detainees Strike Over $1 a Day Pay, Working Conditions

Alejandra Quintero Labor Notes
“They are compelled to do this,” says Alan Benjamin, a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council who heard directly from striking workers. “It's not voluntary; it's compulsory work, without proper sanitation and equipment.”

Friday nite video

video

"Will We Become Our Enemy?": Rare Salman Rushdie Address

Renowned Indian British novelist Salman Rushdie is in critical condition and faces a long road to recovery after he survived an assassination attempt Friday morning. We feature Rushdie in his own words, a 2004 speech on freedom of expression at a  PEN America event. "Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy is repressive? Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant, or will we not?" Transcript.