Tidbits - Aug. 27, 2020 - Reader Comments: Jacob Blake's sister speaks out; Federal Judge -end law shielding police immunity; School Reopening; Trump's Tax Returns - no immunity; Athletes protesting; Kamala Harris; cartoons, poems, resources, announcement
Justice for Jacob -- Letetra Wideman, Jacob Blake's sister
Re: Federal Judge Sets Out to Bring Down Law Shielding Police From Legal Liability (Robert Rogoski; Raymond Dotson; Siuko Garcia; Francesca Harloise Bolognini)
Re: The 'Great' Reopening: Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail (Alba Grace Pereira Medina; Ruth Franceschi; Mylda Feliciano; Xiomara Lopez)
Re: Trump 2020: “Get Your Guns, The Blacks Are Coming” (Gordon Gland)
Re: Tapping the Enormous Electoral Potential of Low Income Voters (Daniel Millstone; Claire O'Connor)
Re: Corporate Dems Want You To Shut Up While They Get Loud (Joe Maizlish)
Re: Donald Trump’s Fight to Hide His Tax Returns Has Failed - Supreme Court Set the Course - Trump Has No Immunity (Rafael Rodriguez; Greg Sowulewski; JD Scot; Steven Trigonoplos; Chris Killion; Jim Crawford)
Renamed -- cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Re: How Athletes Protesting the National Anthem Has Evolved Over 17 Years (Eleanor Roosevelt; Eric Poole; Carmen Costas; Cyndi Kuczynski; William Bell)
Re: AOC Is Right: Get Military Recruiters Off Twitch and Out of Schools (Stephen Thewlis; Joshua Moon)
March for the Dead
Re: Dispatches From the Culture Wars - QAnon, the Party of Paranoia (Peter Strals; Ivan Laracuente)
I Belong with My Family -- poster - Soni López-Chávez
Re: Martinez-Cuevas: Reckoning with Labor Law’s Racist Roots (Philip Specht)
Grace -- a poem by Stewart Acuff
Each Couch by the Street -- song by David Rovics
The Harris Nomination (Robert Supansic)
The Bernie Sign Goes Down Today (Paul Buhle)
Resources:
Remembering the Chicano Moratorium - August 29, 1970 (Lalo Alcaraz)
To Protect and Serve the Rich — Poster of the Week (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
Announcements:
PANDEMIC & BEYOND: Workers Organizing for a Public Future - Global Trade Union Assembly - August 25 - September 10 (The International Program for Labor, Climate & the Environment (IPLCE))
Defending the Vote from Trumpism - September 9 (Left Inside/Outside Project and Organizing Upgrade)
"Labor Power in a Time of Crisis" - In These Times 44th Annual Online Celebration & Raffle - September 12
Justice for Jacob -- Letetra Wideman, Jacob Blake's sister
Re: Federal Judge Sets Out to Bring Down Law Shielding Police From Legal Liability
This opening line in this article refers to 'black lives' but, if you take the time to read it (by a Federal Judge) then you will see....understand.... that the article is about EVERY American's life where police have nearly COMPLETE IMMUNITY in his/her actions, conduct and, job in general against prosecution FOR their actions, conduct while DOING their "job."
The police are FREE to do whatever they do....and get away with it. YOUR race DOESN'T matter....police, LITERALLY get away Scott free.
Robert Rogoski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Past time. Just because they have a badge shouldn't grant them immunity from their crimes.
Raymond Dotson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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As the Massachusetts legislature debates whether to water down its qualified immunity defense, a federal judge in Mississippi filed a stunning 72-page opinion blasting the doctrine. Qualified immunity has entered the national discourse with the massive uprisings in the wake of the public lynching of George Floyd. It allows police and other government officials to escape liability for their law breaking.
Siuko Garcia
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Lethal force without accountability is very attractive to a type of person who belongs behind bars themselves
Francesca Harloise Bolognini
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The 'Great' Reopening: Setting America’s Schools Up to Fail
Each person and each parent must look out for their well being and the well being of their children. They are the ones who will shed the tears if something happens to them.
Alba Grace Pereira Medina
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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It is absurd!!!! We will soon see the results.
Ruth Franceschi
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Modern day genocide
Mylda Feliciano
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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This is bad, this is ugly, this is sad. The American people are better then this and deserve better then this President and Secretary of Education. Vote these corrupts out in November!!!
Xiomara Lopez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Trump 2020: “Get Your Guns, The Blacks Are Coming”
Future death camp guards...
Gordon Gland
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Tapping the Enormous Electoral Potential of Low Income Voters
“Black and White unite and fight” has been at the heart of the political struggles and strategies many of us have been in these last sixty years and more. Here, via Portside, Frances Madeson reports that a current focus of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is to increase voter participation of lower income people. Me? I’d love to know more about how Rev. Barber plans to make this work.
Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Thanks to Moral Majority for helping to uncover the truth. However, it is not so much that poor people don't vote. The real issue is that there is nothing and no one for them to vote for. Example. Again and again, the Dems promise to be the party of the people. And again and again, they promise watered down solutions and deliver nothing. So some poor people don't vote. And some vote in opposition as an expression of their hopelessness. The dems gave us washed up neoliberalism of Clinton, the suggestion of undelivered promises of Obama and on and on through history. We often forget - Democrats didn't used to be so masked. They were called Dixiecrats. The left "woke" of us, once again, promise we will get together and make things different as soon as the "right" man is in the White House. . And then we plunge ahead to endorse the latest masked Dixiecrats.
Claire O'Connor
Re: Corporate Dems Want You To Shut Up While They Get Loud
The article repeatedly mentions "Democratic voters" as the ones who must be motivated to vote.
I don't think that's as much of a concern as Sirota seems to assume, if I read correctly. Most who call themselves "Democratic voters" will vote.
It's the large number of people who don't class themselves with any party who are unlikely to be roused by the aroma of same old same old, regardless of the perfume.
The political actors mentioned in the article think that "progressives" will be stuck and vote for Biden even if only because they/we he will do less damage to the common good than the other guy. I think they're correct in believing that about virtually all already politically-involved people. That's the class they know, the class they belong to, the class they are practiced in talking to. So they try to reach and rouse Dems. and even some Republicans.
But to score with some of the big prize -- the unaffiliated and on-and-off voters -- and get them to vote despite intimidation and voter challenges, inconvenience, list-purging, mail attacking, virus fears, they'll need to think outside the box -- that is, to think about those who usually are outside the ballot box. That's not something the corporatists can do; it's something they are opposing, as Sirota demonstrates well.
Don't shut up, activists and any who believe in basic equality! Not before and not after the election (whatever the outcome). Tell the truth, about your/our vision and about the path to its enactment. Don't shade the truth, and don't spend much of the little available bandwidth you can grab with the unaffiliated by attacking the shiny object who has captured the news cycle for years. You/we "own" the common good argument -- how well and loudly will we present it?
Joe Maizlish,
Los Angeles
justice at last
Rafael Rodriguez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Yes,, hopefully justice will be served ,, along with some prison time !!
Greg Sowulewski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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The chronic BS lines didn't work on Roberts!
JD Scot
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Four things will happen here:
A : Trump signs a presidential decree declaring presidents can hide their tax returns from the American people for national security reasons.
B: Trump signs presidential decree declaring New York is not a real state so they don't have the authority to see anyone's tax returns .
C: Signs presidential decree declaring the court order is a Democratic hoax so he doesn't have to listen to it .
D: Sign a presidential decree that states " I'm rubber and your glue do all your subpoenas bounce off me and stick to you !"
Steven Trigonoplos
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Let’s just be clear ANYONE doing anything illegal especially in office should be prosecuted and Jail I don’t care if they are Republican or Democrat this country is being robbed and we are electing the guy that’s stealing our wallet! Biden won’t have anyone in his circle convicted Trump has 8 going on 9 END THIS NIGHTMARE! Vote no excuses vote early check your vote has been received or go to the poll but be ready for what ever crap Trump can do to stop you. Wear comfy shoes and pack dinner but Vote!
Chris Killion
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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If sexual abuse, disrespect for women, calling white supremacists "good people", and demonstrating on a daily basis that he is unfit for his job are not deal breakers to his base, I doubt proving he cheated on his taxes would even make them blink. It will be just like the Flynn investigation, he and his base will scream, "How dare you investigate our crimes". Sad but true.
Jim Crawford
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Renamed -- cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Mike Luckovich
August 27, 2020
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Re: How Athletes Protesting the National Anthem Has Evolved Over 17 Years
" I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world."
-- Jackie Robinson, 1972
Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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A lot of people are protesting during the anthem during sporting events. But she did it — if not first, then ahead of the curve. She did it alone. That took courage.
Eric Poole
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Bravo for her and for all those who protest racism's injustices.
Carmen Costas
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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With all that Trump has pulled, he sullied the American Flag.
Cyndi Kuczynski
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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It's Amazing how people will have such disgust for Americans, who exercise their Constitutional Rights! But they don't have that same Disgust for Racial Inequality ...
William Bell
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: AOC Is Right: Get Military Recruiters Off Twitch and Out of Schools
My repiglickin friends will be astounded, but for so many low income people military service is a place to learn "marketable skills" for upward advancement. It is the way many new Americans show their sincerity and appreciation. If we could just turn the massive technological juggernaut to peaceful purposes.
Stephen Thewlis
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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One point...we shouldn’t have a class of citizen whose only option is the military.
Joshua Moon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
10k dead.Trump played golf
20k dead.Trump played golf
30k dead. Trump played golf
40k dead. Trump played golf
50k dead. Trump played golf
60k dead. Trump played golf
70k dead. Trump played golf
80k dead. Trump played golf
90k dead. Trump played golf
100k dead... #MarchForTheDead
Re: Dispatches From the Culture Wars - QAnon, the Party of Paranoia
The VP claimed this morning that he didn’t know about QAnon? The FBI is concerned, but the VP does not know about them. Know nothing seems to be his response what ever group he does not want to anger. Especially if the President has said they are “good Americans.”
Peter Strals
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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Newt Gingrich, Koch Brothers, Fox News, NRA, McConnell, Tea Party, Trump, full Republican party and QANON. We are seeing live and in slow motion the decline of a nation.
Ivan Laracuente
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
I Belong with My Family -- Soni López-Chávez
Soni López-Chávez
July 28, 2020
Re: Martinez-Cuevas: Reckoning with Labor Law’s Racist Roots
(posting on Portside Labor)
"The maintenance of the racist Southern plantation system was the driving force behind the “compromise” struck by President Roosevelt and the Southern Democrats to exclude agricultural laborers from labor protections. In congressional debates this was clearly articulated. Representative Wilcox of Florida extolled, “You cannot put the Negro and the white man on the same basis and get away with it…” and Representative Cox of Georgia agreed, saying that it would be “dangerous beyond conception” to eliminate racial and social distinctions."
Philip Specht
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Grace -- a poem by Stewart Acuff
Like the brown shirts in Hitler's Germany
And the black shirts in Mussolini's Italy
American politics now victim to acts of tyranny
The racist and clearly fascist right practicing political violence
Make no mistake from this day ahead the gop abetted by violent stench
What does it mean to be led by one who enjoys cruelty
Who are those following so blithely
Were you proud of your fellows carrying trump flags flying with guns
At a peaceful gathering for love and compassion
Proud of those with assault rifles and street sweeper shotguns
Would you shut us up with fear and terror
We will never stop no matter how much horror
You bring up from hell to deliver
We know you intend to intimidate
Coming directly from the politics of hate
You carry the banner of slavery
Proud of your Confederate heritage and tradition of tyranny
But this is America where we've always had to fight
Those weak bullies who fear freedom
And holy light.
Stewart Acuff
August 23, 2020
post on Facebook
[Thanks to the author for sharing with Portide.]
Each Couch by the Street -- song by David Rovics
"When they come to evict our neighbors, what will you do?"
"If you walk around on the empty streets of Portland, in every neighborhood you will find discarded couches littering the sidewalks. Where did they all come from? Largely from people who are moving out of their homes because they can't pay the rent ..."
Each Couch by the Street by David Rovics
Each couch by the street has a story
Some were brand new just last year
It looks like days ago, someone had a door key
And it was in a living room - not here
Getting covered in leaves falling down
Getting soaked each time it rains
Did someone split quickly, head out of town
Perhaps whoever left these coffee stains
Each couch by the street has a story
I wonder what this one may be
Another one too dry to have been out for long
It once was someone's property
Did they leave their home and move into a car
Or find a sofa to sleep on at a friend's place
Did they stay near, or go away far
Disappear with hardly a trace
Each couch by the street has a story
One that ended without a yard sale
No one's buying much in the pandemic
Most any such plans are derailed
Along with the crashing economy
All the people who just got the sack
Could just be a time for society
To have one another's back
Each couch by the street has a story
And those stories will soon multiply
Once the ban on evictions is lifted
Once thousands more people have died
While we're here in a country that's failed
When the moratorium is through
When they come to evict your neighbors
What will you do?
Listen here
We elected an African-American President twice.A woman defeated a male candidate for President by 3 million votes in 2016.In 1952, Charlotta Bass, an African American woman, was nominated for Vice President by the Progressive Party.The selection of Senator Harris as Biden’s candidate for Vice-President is ground that the country has already covered.It is the classic Liberal Two-Step.First, take a step back onto safe political ground, then proclaim it as a historic and unprecedented step forward.Usually this is done with the compliance of a corporate media ever ready to mount still another political stampede.The most recent classic case is Obamacare.
Senator Harris is a beautiful woman with a wonderfully infectious laugh. She is also a pit bull who on occasion can wield a stiletto. That gift is one a Biden Administration could have put to far better use.
The central issue facing a Biden Administration – even before any of the multiple crises facing the country – is cleaning up the mess Trump has created with his little army of barbarians. On that score, Biden made two errors with the Harris nomination.The first was in not choosing Senator Warren for the Vice-Presidency.(Full disclosure: I still have a Warren bumper sticker on my car.) Of all the candidates in both parties, Warren was the one best prepared to be the next President. She did something no other candidate has done since (I believe) Franklin Roosevelt; she assembled a brain trust that developed a remarkably wide range of proposed solutions to the country’s many crises. She is the policy wonk that Biden is not and has a good sense of where all of the Trump bodies are buried. She would have been the best Vice President available and an excellent adviser to a President whose instincts all lie at the political center, which today has moved farther right than anyone could have imagined.
Biden’s second mistake was in not making Senator Harris Attorney General. It would have been a joy to watch her clean out the so-called “Department of Justice” of the Trump/Barr incompetents, hangers-on, and wannabe fascists. Some attribute the success of Trump’s frontal assault on the U.S. Constitution to his political acumen. He is in fact a political bungler of remarkable dimension.(On one hand, he invigorates white supremacy while on the other claiming no President had done as much for the black community as he. One cannot imagine Hitler doing something that stupid. Or Goebbels claiming that the Führer was only “joking.”)Trump’s real success has been due to an unholy alliance between Barr’s Justice Department and McConnell’s Republican Senate.Voters, I am sure, will fix the Senate in November.Fixing the Justice Department will be harder and I could think of no one better to do that than Harris.
I am old fashioned enough to believe that effective government requires putting the right people in the right jobs. Of course, there are policy issues behind Biden’s choice.Warren is “too far left,” an example of the laughable state of today’s political thought. And some may rightly question Harris’ credentials as a progressive. But a semi-conservative at the Justice Department may not be a bad thing when a restoration and strengthening of the old rules is very much in order.
This choice is not a disaster, but neither does it bode well for a Biden Presidency. My fear is that we will be treated to a steady diet of the Liberal Two-Step by an administration that finds unexpected merit is some of Trump’s “innovations.” Liberals have a history of seriously misjudging the mood of the country, 2016 being a classic case. The country will not stand for it and the next time around, they may not choose a clown.
Robert Supansic
The Bernie Sign Goes Down Today
Leaving it in the front yard would be a distraction.
But where does it go now?
Up in the attic, across from the MLK and Eugene Debs portraits? Next to the box of unsold comics, Johnny Appleseed and People’s History of American Empire?
Or out in the back yard. planted across from the little statue of St. Francis?
Visionaries who saw another world, a very different world. The weight of the powerful overwhelmed them.
But we push on.
Paul Buhle
August 21, 2020
[Paul Buhle’s latest is the Paul Robeson comic, drawn by Sharon Rudahl.]
Remembering the Chicano Moratorium - August 29, 1970 (Lalo Alcaraz)
The Chicano Moratorium: A protest that ended in violence and sparked a creative revolution
Lalo Alcaraz
tweet
August 26, 2020
To Protect and Serve the Rich — Poster of the Week (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
Mark Vallen
Silkscreen, 1987
Los Angeles, CA.
3330
40 million people in America face eviction in the upcoming months. As eviction moratoriums across the U.S. end, people are not only at risk for homelessness but also criminalization. In Los Angeles specifically, it is legal to cite and arrest people for sleeping, camping, or lodging in their vehicles; for panhandling; or for any behavior that can be considered to “disturb the public peace or decorum, scandalize the community, or shock the public sense of morality.” Efforts to “clean up the city” (as part of the ongoing process of gentrification in Los Angeles, and more recently, in preparation for the 2028 Olympics), have resulted in the further dispossession of the few belongings unhoused people hold.
Despite California Governor Gavin Newsom’s issuance of an eviction moratorium, more than 400 evictions have taken place since March 13th. In Los Angeles alone, evictions have already resumed, even while Los Angeles County voted to extend the eviction moratorium until September 30th. In effect, this eviction moratorium offers little protection to tenants, as many tenants never make it to court and are not provided with legal counseling to win cases against their landlords (who are almost always represented by legal counsel). Even during a heatwave that has set historic highs in certain parts of the country, Los Angeles has continued to evict people from their homes and enforce Special Enforcement and Cleanup Zone (SECZ) sweeps. Black people, disabled people, mothers and children are often left with little to nothing after police officers come with no warning to sweep away homeless encampments.
The pandemic has not only exacerbated the housing crisis in Los Angeles and other cities across the country, but laid bare the deep socio-economic inequities that undergird our everyday lives. Moreover, the fact that voting for the presidential elections this year is contingent upon the ability to send a mail-in ballot, which requires a permanent address, is just another tactic in the decades-long war on poverty and homelessness. Unemployment, medical care, housing—these are all issues that have been aggravated by COVID-19, not caused by it. As such, we cannot simply tell others to get to the voting booths to solve these problems. These problems are interwoven into the very social fabric of this country, a country built by stolen lives, labor, and resources. In the face of a government that works to disenfranchise marginalized people, especially Black people, through racist and classist tactics, it is clear that the government does not take care of us. We take care of us.
This week's newsletter was written by Getty Marrow and Undergraduate Intern Rebecca Liu. They graduated from Pitzer College with a B.A. in Media Studies & Asian American Studies.
Sources:
- California’s New Vagrancy Laws: The Growing Enactment and Enforcement of Anti-Homeless Laws in the Golden State
- Eviction ‘moratoriums’ can only go so far for renters amid pandemic
- Services Not Sweeps
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 103
Culver City, CA 90230
We are unions from both North and South who believe workers' organizations and their allies need to come together in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to discuss the implications of the current crisis and find fresh ways to strengthen global worker solidarity.
Please join us for a series of 2-hour virtual meetings during July, August and September 2020:
- Pandemic and Beyond: Workers Organizing for a Public Future
A 2020 Global Trade Union Assembly
Click here to see the full Assembly Program.
Click here to see the latest list of convening unions.
Thursday, August 27, 2020, 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Beyond Insecurity: A New Approach to Work, Wages and Wealth Distribution
The lock down has left hundreds of millions of precarious and informal workers on the brink of becoming destitute. In richer countries, some workers have received temporary income support, but many are now under pressure to return to work without adequate protection. With a deep recession or depression looming what can unions do to help bring about a major shift in social and economic priorities?
(times listed in EDT, check local times)
Tuesday, September 1, 2020, 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Extending Public Ownership and Democratic Control of Energy to Address the Climate Crisis and Create Socially Necessary Jobs
The global collapse of energy demand is already having a massive impact on workers in oil, gas and the power utilities, as well as transport systems. The current situation has led to calls for governments to buy out—rather than bail out—energy companies. How can unions stop the return to “business as usual” at our expense? Is now the time for unions to rally behind efforts to advance a “public goods” approach to the transition to a low-carbon future?
(times listed in EDT, check local times)
Thursday, September 3, 2020, 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Making Austerity History: Reclaiming Finance to Pay for the Future We Want
In response to the economic consequences of social lockdowns, governments have offered various combinations of bailouts for big business and income support for small businesses and households. What lessons can the global labor movement draw from these interventions? How should trade unions and their allies orient themselves to calls for debt cancellation for countries of the South? What role is there for the international financial institutions and development banks in financing more and better public services and greater public ownership and democratic control over key sectors?
(times listed in EDT, check local times)
Thursday, September 10, 2020, 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM
Beyond the Pandemic: Trade Union Internationalism and Movement Building
This closing session will pull together a range of insights and report on the discussions of the Assembly. What should be our next steps?
(times listed in EDT, check local times)
For more information, please email: gtua2020@gmail.com
Defending the Vote from Trumpism - September 9 (Left Inside/Outside Project and Organizing Upgrade)
It's clearer every day: the right's electoral strategy this year will be to use the crises of the pandemic and massive upsurge in the Black Freedom movement as excuses to stop communities of color and the working class from voting.
Join OrganizingUpgrade and our friends at the Left Inside/Outside Project September 9 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET for PeopleTakePower2, a crucial discussion of the on-the-ground struggle to defend democracy, featuring Kaji Reyes-Gertes (Durham For All), Rukia Lumumba (Movement For Black Lives) and Marcy Rein (writer and editor).
Join us for a special online event: “Labor Power in a Time of Crisis” with Sara Nelson
Help us fight for workers’ rights at a time when economic justice is needed most.
Featuring:
Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO
In Conversation With:
Bill Fletcher, Jr., Executive Editor of GlobalAfricanWorker.com
With Remarks By:
Hamilton Nolan, In These Times Labor Reporter
Spread the word