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Tidbits - March 24, 2016 - Reader Comments: Brussels Attacks; Zika Virus; Bayard Rustin; Trump's Ideology and Working-Class Appeal; Labor Notes Conference; Abraham Lincoln Brigade; and more

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Reader Comments: Zika Virus-Puerto Rico; Brussels Attacks; Elizabeth Warren; Bayard Rustin - from those who knew him; Letters from Langston; Dr. Quentin Young; Trump's Ideology of Violence and Working-Class Appeal; How Black Youth Helped Unseat Anita Alvarez; Demonstrating Against Trump; Future of Education-Colleges as Investments; Community Colleges; Announcements: Labor Notes Conference; Webinar: TPP is a feminist issue; 80th Annual Celebration Abraham Lincoln Brigade

The Front National and French Workers

Sebastian Chwala spectrezine
A blanket assertion that the French working-class has shifted to the right is misleading. Rather there has been a “demobilization” of leftwing voters due to the deep crisis of the old industrial structures which has put labor and the left on the defensive. Old Communist strongholds have seen rising voter abstention. Workers vote for the FN in large numbers in regions where leftwing consciousness and organization had been weak.

The Front National and French Workers

Sebastian Chwala spectrezine
A blanket assertion that the French working-class has shifted to the right is misleading. Rather there has been a “demobilization” of leftwing voters due to the deep crisis of the old industrial structures which has put labor and the left on the defensive. Old Communist strongholds have seen rising voter abstention. Workers vote for the FN in large numbers in regions where leftwing consciousness and organization had been weak.

The Passion of the Bureaucrats

Tim Parks London Review of Books
It is striking how many Catholic organisations seem to do a whole range of lucrative things they were never set up to do, while still enjoying tax exemption as religious institutions. On closing these books many readers will feel that the only way out of the Vatican impasse would be to wind up the territory's anomalous statehood, hand it over to the Italian government and free the Church and above all Pope Francis to get on with their Christian mission. Right...

What If Bernie Gave His Speech at AIPAC?

Katie Miranda Mondoweiss
Unlike the other four presidential candidates, Democrat Bernie Sanders declined the invitation to speak at the AIPAC conference in Washington on Monday, and instead delivered a foreign policy address in Utah. The speech has gotten wide circulation because of its affirmations of Palestinian human rights. Katie Miranda imagines what would have happened If Bernie Sanders had delivered his Israel speech at AIPAC instead.

The Truth About Abolition

Adam Rothman The Atlantic
A new book about the abolitionist movement puts African Americans in the center of the history of our country's movement to end slavery.

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016

Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy Prison Policy Initiative
This new report by the Prison Policy Initiative offers some much needed clarity by piecing together this country’s disparate systems of confinement.