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Brechtomania

Moira Herbst Al Jazeera
Why Marxist playwright Berthold Brecht is theater’s hottest old name

Partial Victory for New Mexico's Chileros

Joseph Sorrentino The Investigative Fund
It has taken almost a year of emails, letters and pressure, but at least some of New Mexico's contratistas (farm labor contractors) are finally paying farmworkers the minimum wage they're entitled to

Happy Labor Day, Mom

William Greider The Nation
Impatient hedge-fund billionaires do not attempt to conceal their contempt for the rest of us. They are used to making money—fast. Witness what they have done to large segments of the overall economy. Education does not thrive in those conditions, because there is no standard of perfection in any schoolhouse that can survive brutal suppression of uniformity imposed by clumsy testing. A successful school not only makes room for dissent. It constantly nourishes it.

Daring For Democracy: How The Suffragists Upstaged Woodrow Wilson In Washington

Kathleen Geier The National Memo
The movement for women’s suffrage had begun in 1848 in Seneca Falls, but the suffrage parade of 1913 was undoubtedly its turning point. Feminists today face many daunting challenges, but it’s inspiring to recognize that at a time when our foremothers confronted even more formidable obstacles, they responded with great courage, ingenuity, and even joy. One hundred years later, their example still burns bright.

Amazon's Labor Relations Under Scrutiny in Germany

JACK EWING The New York Times
The latest skirmish in an escalating battle between ver.di, one of the largest unions in Germany, and Amazon, which employs 8,000 permanent workers at eight distribution centers in the country, one of the online retailer’s largest markets outside the United States. Deservedly or not, Amazon’s labor relations have lately come under intense scrutiny by German media.

Experts Want More Studies of Diet’s Role for the Heart

Gina Kolata The New York Times
A study, published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, is now shaking up the field of cardiovascular medicine , infusing it with optimism This is a watershed moment in the field of nutrition, medical experts say. For the first time, researchers have shown that a diet can have an effect as powerful as drugs in preventing what really matters to patients — heart attacks, and strokes and deaths from cardiovascular disease.