Skip to main content

Unions Flex Political Muscle at the Democratic National Convention -- But Uber and Airbnb Lurk

Justin Miller The American Prospect
The labor movement's agenda was on full display at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Union delegates numbered roughly one-quarter of the convention’s 4,000-plus delegates. Still, there were stark reminders that labor has struggled to keep at bay the party’s coziness with corporations, especially those of the Silicon Valley disruption variety. Ride-hailing giant Uber—not unionized taxi cabs—served as the DNC’s exclusive shuttle service.

Drinking for Breakfast

Editors Prepared Foods
New research reveals that 39% of consumers use nutritional and performance drinks as a replacement for breakfast. What’s more, three in five (58%) consumers currently use nutritional and performance drinks as a meal replacement and 48% consume them as part of a meal, up from just 20% who used nutritional drinks as a meal supplement in 2012.

A Power Broker Who Wants Labor at the Table, Not on the Menu

Noam Scheiber The New York Times
lee Saunders, President of the 1.6 million American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers is not only a major leader in the AFL-CIO, but one of the prime supporters of Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Nostalgia TV

Meghan Lewit Los Angeles Review of Books
From Halt and Catch Fire to The Americans, some of "the best television of the moment is mining the fairly recent past in a meaningful way." Critic Meghan Lewit on what nostalgia for the 1980s and '90s might tell us about who we are now.

Disrupting Uber

Vic Vaiana Jacobin
Driver-owned apps could end Uber’s exploitative reign over the ride-share market.

Poem on the Murders

Anita Barrows Tikkun
After the murders, poet Anita Barrows addresses this elegy to a survivor, Diamond Lavish Reynolds, asking "how can we make your tears not/another deleted narrative?"

This Is What Progressives—Especially Labor—Can Learn From Bernie Sanders’ Campaign

David Moberg In These Times
If unions find better strategic partners outside the labor movement on a particular issue, they should proceed on the basis of their analysis of what is needed, not hold back and wait for labor unity. Too often a particular union’s political stance may reflect a private employer’s growth plans, not the general good for working people.

Wall Street's Foreign Policy Wizards

Dominic Alexander Counterfire
The Council on Foreign Relations is a supercharged, highly connected establishment think tank. While producing reports and staffing varied policy working-groups, its recommendations are invariably market-based. CFR leaders and members pass through the revolving door of the federal government to high positions of authority, no matter which party holds power. The book under review, Wall Street's Think Tank, charts the council's key links to US imperial policy.

Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914-1945

Alan Wald Solidarity
This new book by Enzo Traverso is "a master class in historical analysis," writes reviewer Alan Wald. This "full-on riveting reconceptualization of 1914-1945 as a 'European Civil War,"' he adds, "is a benchmark achievement in the flowering of socialist scholarship by the generation identifying with May 1968."