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Launch of LAWCHA’s Teacher/Public Sector Initiative

By Rosemary Feurer Labor and Working Class History Association
LAWCHA sponsored a Teachers/Public sector history committee that has produced an overview of teacher organizing and a bibliography of resources to understand that effort in historical context. We have provided powerpoints graphs and annotations of material organized by geography and specific unions.

The New Republic’s Ugly Reality

By Robert Parry Consortium News
Mainstream pundits are outraged over a Silicon Valley barbarian riding in and defacing The New Republic, a temple to all that is wonderful about deep-thinking policymaking and long-form journalism. But the truth about the Washington-based magazine is much less honorable, writes Robert Parry.

Congressional Leaders Hammer Out Deal to Allow Pension Plans to Cut Retiree Benefits

By Michael A. Fletcher The Washington Post
The abrupt action has alarmed some pension rights advocates, who are concerned about a decline in retirement security for all Americans. They also worry about a creeping trend toward trimming pensions, citing retirement benefit cuts for government employees in Detroit and elsewhere.

Brute Ideology

Walter Johnson Dissent Magazine
Amidst the end-of-historiography enthusiasm for the “new” history of capitalism, two recent books remind us of the enduring importance of some of the questions posed by the old history of capitalism: questions of determination, ideology, and hegemony, and of collective action, resistance, and (even) revolutionary social change.

The Disruption This Time

L.A. Kauffman The Baffler
What has made these protests stand out is not their size, though some have been quite large. And this is not the first time protesters have used their bodies to block bridges, tunnels, intersections, and roadways around town. But I can’t come up with another time when protesters have engaged in as much spontaneous and simultaneous disruptive action as they have in the two weeks since Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for shooting Michael Brown.

Why the Founding Fathers Thought Banning Torture Foundational to the US Constitution

Juan Cole Informed Comment
We will likely hear these false appeals to an imaginary history a great deal with the release of the Senate report on CIA torture. It seems to me self-evident that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention would have voted to release the report and also would have been completely appalled at its contents.

The Lame-Duck Congress Plots to Undermine Retiree Pensions

Michael Hiltzik, "The Economy Hub" Los Angeles Times
In 2006, Congress passed the "Pension Protection Act", which had a devastating effect on single-employer defined benefit pension plans. Now Congress is looking to do the same to multi-employer pension plans.

Mamdani's "Holistic Challenge": Anti-Zionists Must Persuade Jews They Can Only be Safe by Dismantling the Jewish State

Philip Weiss Mondoweiss
The Zionist message to the Jewish population of Israel is this, Zionism is your only guarantee against another holocaust. The opposite is the case. Jews can have a homeland in the Middle East, but their safety can only be achieved by dismantling the Jewish state, Mamdani said. His speech was a political challenge to Jewish anti-Zionists, now just a splinter, to launch a political struggle inside the Jewish community to liberate it from Zionism.