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50 Years On, Steinbeck’s Classic Still Packs a Punch

Barry Healy Green Left Weekly
This year marks the 50th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s great mythic novel of alienation under US capitalism, Of Mice and Men. The story is of lonesome labourers, reeling from the Great Depression, wandering from farm to farm seeking respite from their endless oppression.

Iowa Workers Defy Attempt to Weaken Their Unions

Bill Knight Pekin Daily Times
Under a new anti-union law, public-sector unions must re-certify each time they’re scheduled to bargain new contracts, every two or three years. Right-wing backers of the law hoped it would weaken unions by forcing them to devote time and resources to the recertification process and lead workers to drop their membership. But the members of the state's 468 union locals voted overwhelmingly to stick with their union.

Louis C.K. Is Done

Matt Zoller Seitz New York Magazine
A New York Times investigation published today put names and specifics to unsourced stories that had been circulating for years, alleging that the filmmaker-performer pressured five female colleagues to watch or listen to him masturbate.

When Unions Lead Education Reform

Rachel M. Cohen In These Times
Like Bargaining for the Common Good, TURN members also believe teachers need to approach bargaining more creatively and boldly. Specifically, TURN wants to see unions negotiate over policies that “advance student learning,” such as reducing the number of standardized tests students must take while also pushing for new kinds of assessments that measure skills like creativity.

Veterans and the Minimum Wage

Elena Holodny Business Insider
Approximately 1.8 million veterans in payroll jobs across the US would get a raise if Congress raised the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024. Nearly two-thirds of the veterans who would get the raise are age 40 or older, over 60% have some college experience, and nearly 70% work full time. The real federal minimum wage peaked back in 1968.

Vigilance

Jane Philips Meneghini Portside
New Hampshire poet Jane Philips Meneghini writes eloquently of a war veteran's return “with pain and secrets.” Its title derives partly from a billboard seen outside Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., that boasted “Global Vigilance, Reach and Power for America.”

Identities and Solidarity: The Struggle for Justice in the Holy Land

David Finkel Against the Current
A collection of essays curated by the progressive group Jewish Voice for Peace, the book under review provides a diversity of perspectives and standpoints exploring critical questions concerning uses and abuses of antisemitism in the twenty-first-century, focusing on the intersection between antisemitism, accusations of antisemitism, and Palestinian human rights activism.