A New Teacher Union Movement is Rising

Bob Peterson Common Dreams
Teacher unions must unite with parents, students and the community to improve our schools—to demand social justice and democracy so that we have strong public schools, healthy communities, and a vibrant democracy.

The Tabloid Shaming of Chirlane McCray Ignores the Realities of Motherhood

Lizzy Ratner The Nation
The big bad thing she confessed to was… ambivalence. Ambivalence about the early days of motherhood. Sideswiped by the consuming reality of parenting, she admitted that she often wanted to escape; she didn’t want to spend every round-the-clock moment with her new child; she wanted to work!

A New Front in the CEO Pay Wars

Sam Pizzigati OtherWords.org
Two new imaginative state proposals are now seeking to leverage the power of the public purse against executive excess. In California, lawmakers are zeroing in on how government taxes. New legislation pending in Rhode Island targets how government spends.

Seven Key Takeaways From Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Tax Plan for Growth and Equality

Bill Moyers billmoyers.com
According to a new white paper by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, our labyrinthine tax system is encouraging corporations to invest in creating jobs overseas, when unemployment remains doggedly high here at home, while giving US-based multinationals good reason to deprive our treasury of revenues when we should be investing in infrastructure and the American people.

Friday Nite Videos -- May 30, 2014

Portside
On a cool note, Miles Davis gets a NYC street. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Weather vs Climate Change. What's So Scary About Smart Girls? Maya Angelou - I Am Human. Documentary: 'Daddy I Do'.

Miles Davis Way

On May 24, a crowd of hundreds gathered to mark the renaming of a stretch of West 77th Street in New York City as Miles Davis Way. The remarkable jazz musician Davis, who would have been 88 this week, was a long-time resident of the block now being renamed in his honor. Here is a video of Davis performing So What? 

Weather Versus Climate Change

Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the differences between weather and climate change. Next on the National Geographic series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (airs Mondays at 9PM).
 

What's So Scary About Smart Girls?

A video produced by the Half the Sky Movement. As Nicholas Kristof notes, "Ultimately, the greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books." Read his full article on smart girls here.

Maya Angelou - I Am Human

An interview in memory of Maya Angelou (April 24, 1928 - May 28, 2014). 'If a human being dreams a great dream ... if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born, it means so can you.'