The Supreme Court Has Crossed the Rubicon

Linda Greenhouse The New York Times
You know the Rubicon has been crossed when the Supreme Court issues a conservative voting rights order so at odds with settled precedent and without any sense of the moment that Chief Justice John Roberts feels constrained to dissent.

A Transformative Green New Deal Requires Inclusive Manufacturing

Carl Davidson, Bill Fletcher Jr. and Nina Gregg The Nation
Without a new approach to manufacturing, we may protect the environment better but continue to reinforce racial and economic inequality. Manufacturing is the only economic sector that can generate new wealth for communities currently shut out

We Are Long Overdue for a Paul Robeson Revival

Peter Dreier Los Angeles Review of Books
In the 1970s, Robeson’s admirers — boosted by the upsurge of black studies and black cultural projects, the waning of the Cold War — began to rehabilitate his reputation with various tributes, documentary films, books, concerts, exhibits, and a play

Memoirs of a Union Buster: Why Labor Law Reform is Necessary

Judy Atkins Portside
The dirty tricks that bosses play on workers will continue until there is a fundamental change in US Labor Law. Most fundamental would be the repeal of Taft - Hartley and corporate “personhood.” The law favors the powerful. 

Standing Up: Tales of Struggle - Art Imitates Life

Jane LaTour New York Labor History Association
The stories in Standing Up are linked thematically and appear in chronological order, beginning with 1970. For those of us who have similarly spent time as organizers, the book feels like an anthropological field trip into the past.

Friday Nite Videos -- August 22, 2014

Portside
How Economic Inequality Harms Societies. Peter Case -- House Rent Party. The Racial Wealth Gap in America. Guantanamera Around the World. The Racism of the US Criminal Justice System in 10 Charts.

How Economic Inequality Harms Societies

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart.

Peter Case -- House Rent Party

Peter Case tells the tale of a modern day house rent party. Filmed during the Music Fog sessions at the 2010 Americana Music Festival in Nashville, TN.