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A Winning Strategy for the Left

Michael Schwartz and Kevin Young Jacobin
Activists’ decision to target corporations reflects a growing conviction that the government is unresponsive to popular demands because it is unwilling or unable to stop the abuses of the corporate world.

Mexican Farmworkers Reach Agreement After 2-Month Strike

Ashoka Jegroo Waging Nonviolence
Among the demands being met by the government are requirements that companies get certification ensuring that they’re not using child labor, social security benefits for retired farmworkers, equal rights and pay for women, housing built for laborers, recognition of the farmworkers’ union, and healthcare for workers.

‘Forbidden Films’ Exhumes Nazi Poison From the Movie Vaults

J. Hoberman The New York Times
The Third Reich produced 1,200 films, 300 of which were banned after WWII as dangerous propaganda. Forbidden Films examines the 40 that remain effectively banned to this day, locked inside a German federal film archive and only made availavle to researchers. Are they historical evidence, incitements to murder, fascist pornography, evergreen entertainments, toxic waste or passé kitsch? Are these films better shown and discussed rather than repressed and forgotten?

Justice for Janitors: A Misunderstood Success

Peter Olney and Rand Wilson The Stansbury Forum
Part two of a series looking back on the 20th anniversary the AFL-CIO’s New Voice movement. Most successful organizing is not done in a vacuum, existing members have to be front line apostles

The Nakba: The Intentional, Deliberate and Systematic Dispossession of the Palestinians

Dr. Hatem Bazian American Muslims for Palestine
Palestine’s modern colonization begins with British troops landing on Mediterranean shores and moving northward from Egypt conquering the remaining parts of Ottoman territories. “Great” Britain’s planning, machinations and intrigues started earlier but the end of WWI, November 29th, 1917 is the accurate date for the loss of Palestine. From this date, Palestine and the Palestinians were set for dispossession and major powers manipulation to bring about a Jewish state.

Towards An Abolitionist Feminism

Zillah Eisenstein The Feminist Wire
As an anti-racist white feminist, I wonder if it is enough to be an “ally” in this present and “newest” moment of racist/militarist/carceral violence. Or, is there something more to do? I am thinking hard about this “newness,” which is also very old. White anti-racist feminists can take the lead from our Black and Brown sisters and embrace an abolitionist stance towards chattel slavery and its racist and misogynist remains.

Justice for Janitors: A Misunderstood Success

Peter Olney and Rand Wilson The Stansbury Forum
John Sweeney, former AFL-IO President his officers, and their staff came into office with high expectations and great optimism. A good part of their inspiration was drawn from SEIU’s Justice for Janitors campaign that many had directly participated in or saw as a model of success. After all, Justice for Janitors had succeeded in mobilizing members, winning better contracts and organizing thousands of new, mostly Latino members while garnering broad public support.(1)

Momentum Builds to Fix California's Prop. 13

Bobbi Murray Capital and Main
California is earthquake country but one seismic shift rumbling through the state won’t require bottled water and a three-day food supply. That would be the political and demographic groundswell toward challenging elements of Proposition 13, the property tax measure passed by California voters in 1978 by a landslide and which has been considered untouchable ever since.