Skip to main content

Teachers Union Caucuses Gather to Swap Strategies

Gillian Russom and Samantha Winslow Labor Notes
With teachers facing similar attacks in school districts across the country, it makes sense to share strategies for fighting back. That’s the goal of the United Caucuses of Rank-and-File Educators (UCORE), a growing network of locals and caucuses within the teachers unions.

Venezuela: Chavistas Gain Upper Hand, Big Challenges Remain

Steve Ellner and Federico Fuentes Monthly Review
To get a better sense of the situation on the ground in Venezuela, Green Left Weekly’s Federico Fuentes interviewed Steve Ellner, a well-known analyst of Venezuelan and Latin American politics and a retired professor at Venezuela’s Universidad de Oriente.

The Monuments Must Go

Jack Christian and Warren Christian Slate
An open letter from the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson.

DOJ Warrant of Trump Resistance Site Triggers Alarm

Morgan Chalfant The Hill
The case is not the first instance on the government asking tech companies for details on Trump dissidents. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) briefly tried to get Twitter to reveal information to identify an account holder whose messages on the social media platform had been critical of Trump.

A Historian of Forgotten Resistance

Oliver Lee Bateman Pacific Standard Magazine
In the margins of one of the hundreds of dog-eared books he kept in his cave, Lay offered an epitaph that also reads like an exhortation: "Dear souls, be tender-hearted." Rediker, the historian of resistance from below, hopes that he has managed to produce "tender-hearted" treatments of all these resisters, but knows that this work, like Lay's own resistance to slavery, must continue well past him.

Workers May Have Just Killed Missouri’s Right to Work Law

Jeff Schuhrke In These Times
Though the law is set to take effect on August 28, the pro-union We Are Missouri coalition, led by the Missouri AFL-CIO, says it has collected enough signatures from voters to call for a state-wide referendum in November 2018 that could nullify the legislation.

Senate Bill 720: Making It a Crime to Support Palestinian Rights

James J. Zogby Arab American Institute
It is fascinating to watch certain US senators tripping over themselves as they attempt to defend their support for or opposition to the proposed legislation that would make it a crime to support the campaign to Boycott, Divest, or Sanction Israel (BDS) for its continued occupation of Palestinian lands. Their efforts to square the circle of their "love of Israel", opposition to BDS, support for a "two-state solution", and commitment to free speech, has them in knots.

Confront White Supremacy from Charlottesville to the White House

The Movement for Black Lives The Movement for Black Lives
The events in Charlottesville are not anomaly; They are happening all over America. Challenge yourself to use your imagination and consider all the symbols and institutions of white supremacy. PLUS: A call on all Asian Americans to join us in defending our vision of democracy – one where we protect the vulnerable amongst us, resist efforts to erode our hard-won rights and protections, and fight to advance progress for all marginalized communities.

I Went to Counterprotest Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. I Witnessed Carnage

Austin Gonzalez The Washington Post
Make no mistake about it: What we observed was an act of terror. This brutality was designed to intimidate people of color, such as myself, as well as to intimidate the many courageous people who were in Charlottesville opposing white supremacy in full force. The goal was to place a high cost on protesting white supremacy and to frighten people away from standing up for their rights.

Monopoly was Invented to Demonstrate the Evils of Capitalism

Kate Raworth Aeon
The original purpose of Monopoly was for players to experience a ‘practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences’ and hence to understand how different approaches to property ownership can lead to vastly different social outcomes.