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How the Ruling Class Remade New Orleans

Thomas Jessen Adams Jacobin
The language of social justice has been used to sell intensified neoliberalism in post-Katrina New Orleans. On the tenth anniversary of the failure of the federally maintained levees, the keynote speaker at the annual Rising Tide Conference on the Future of New Orleans was DeRay Mckesson, a standard-bearer for Teach For America and the New Teacher Project — education “reform” organizations that played a crucial role in the destruction of the black middle class.

UE Becomes First National U.S. Union to Endorse BDS

Alan Hart, Managing Editor, UE News Published by Portside
The resolution also endorses the worldwide BDS movement – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions – to pressure Israel to end its apartheid over the Palestinians just as similar tactics helped to end South African apartheid in the 1980s. UE is now the first U.S. national union to endorse BDS.

UE Convention, Monday Afternoon: All About Organizing

UE UE News
"Our survival is our success.” Retiring UE Director Organization Bob Kingsley told Convention delegates. He credited UE’s survival to its “four pillars: aggressive struggle against the boss, a never-ending effort to organize the unorganzied, independent political action and international labor solidarity.

Nurses' Union Election Shows Faster NLRB Pace

Jane M. Von Bergen, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer Philly.com
New NLRB rules quicken the union election process between petitioning the NLRB for an election and the election itself - leaving less time, the unions say, for union-busting intimidation.

How “Brother” Bernie Is Making Labor’s Day

Steve Early Portside
Whether he wins or loses, Sanders is already helpfully tapping into rank-and-file discontent about who gets to decide what in our unions. While other big union endorsements of Clinton may soon be announced, the Labor Day buzz—at the grassroots, in early primary states—is largely about Bernie.

A Win for Pittsburgh Public Transit

Paul Le Blanc and Jonah McAllister-Erickson The Bullet
PPT's assertion that "public mass transit is part of the infrastructure of any healthy and metropolitan area" made sense not only to the labour movement, but also to significant elements in the business community, gaining support from Democrats, Republicans, independents and Greens, as well as socialists. A wedge was driven into the Republican administration itself, between the secretary of transportation and the extreme right-wing elements.

How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Keeps Working People Poor and Destroys the Environment

Simon Swartzman Working In These Times
The Chamber of Commerce is basically a lobbyist for hire that reaches into other arenas of power to set the policy agenda for the nation in areas of central concern for its members. Major businesses hire the Chamber to carry out very particular legislative or other projects to change policies in ways that have big consequences for American consumers, American workers, international workers, the environment, and consumer regulations.

Black Trade Union Leaders Speak Out on The Future of the Labor Movement in New Report

Black Labor Collaborative CBTU International
The Black Labor Collaborative argues that to confront our foes "in the political Right and global capitalism, demands a transformed and energized labor movement that can fight back with more than slogans of solidarity. No tinkering around the edges! A transformed movement must be authentically inclusive because diversity carries the strongest seeds of change, of untapped creativity.”