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A Dream of Quitting Time

David Salner Beloit Poetry Journal
For the Labor Day holiday, David Salner offers a poet’s glimpse of what it feels like not to be working while working a long shift at night.

Concession Fatigue in Connecticut

John O’Connor and Louise Williams Labor Notes
How did Connecticut, one of the wealthiest states in the country, get into a budget mess so bad that state workers were forced to solve it? The answer is that Connecticut is one of the most unequal states in the nation.

With Kafka, The Ending is at the Beginning

John Banville The New York Review of Books
Kafka's life was itself Kafkaesque, and if you want to know its span and its ending better- the book's author contends and the reviewer agrees - readers need to start at the beginning. The book under review is the third of a three-volume biography that critics widely call definitive.

Indonesia: Global tTade Unions and NGOs back PepsiCo-linked Palm Oil Workers

Nithin Coca Equal Times
The Indonesian union OPPUK (Organisasi Penguatan dan Pengembangan Usaha-Usaha Kerakyatan) representing palm oil workers indirectly employed by PepsiCo and the Teamsters in the United States representing about 200,000 PepsiCo workers in North America reaffirmed their solidarity in a shared fight for global labor and human rights.

From the Supreme Court to a Constitutional Convention, Labor is on the Defensive

BY BOB HENNELLY City & State
“Millennials view unions favorably and are worried about their economic security and are appalled by the monstrous economic inequality that threatens to reduce the future of the American dream to rubble." said Henry Garrido, executive director of District Council 37, which represents roughly a third of New York City’s municipal workforce If we don’t focus on engaging the next generation of American workers, then ours may be the last generation of unionized workers.”

Klan 2.0

Scott McLemee Inside Higher Ed
This new book reminds us of the scope and power of the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan, beginning a century ago. As reviewer Scott McLemee points out, however, to only point out the Klan's racist heritage can be deceptively simplistic. McLemee reminds us that what made the Klan a mass force in the 1920s was that the movement's reactionary politics and racist passions "were widespread enough to count as mainstream.'

Going Hyperlocal, Filmmakers Explore the Pain of Racism

Cara Buckley The New York Times
A year after racial discontent neared levels not seen since the Rodney King beating case, the country finds itself convulsed by controversies over neo-Nazis emboldened by Donald Trump’s rise to power. Now, a burst of new films, many of them documentaries, are taking a deep look beyond the headlines at the lasting impact that racial schisms and racism have on Americans’ everyday lives.