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Fight for $15 Organizers Tell SEIU: We Need $15 and a Union

David Moberg In These Times
Fight for $15 organizers have a long list of grievances against SEIU. They say they themselves do not get $15/hour. They are worried about the instability of their jobs and a tendency of the union to ramp up staff for one campaign, then shift only some of the staff to the next project. Ultimately, some workers say, SEIU's position may undermine public support and open up lines for employer attacks. See SEIU's response below.

A World at War

Bill McKibben The New Republic
We're under attack from climate change-and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII. It's not that global warming is like a world war. It is a world war. And we are losing. Defeating the Nazis required more than brave soldiers. It required a wholesale industrial retooling. In this war we're in-the war that physics is fighting hard, and that we aren't-winning slowly is the same as losing.

Homage to E.P. Thompson

Joseph White New Politics
Labor historian E.P. Thompson is perhaps best known for his monumental and path-breaking work, The Making of the English Working Class. The collected essays reviewed here, many either out-of-print or difficult to obtain, were written between 1955 and 1963. They show Thompson as also a dedicated educator of workers, a sharp polemicist, a skilled political theorist and a tireless agitator for peace, against nuclear weapons and for a rebirth of the socialist project.

Tidbits - August 18, 2016 - Reader Comments: #M4BL; Black Lives Matter; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Readers debate Portside post on Syria; Fidel Castro at 90; NYC Aug 31 events

Portside
Reader Comments: #BLM taking the baton from SNCC; More on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - The world did not need this horrendous 'experiment'; Sanders, Clinton, Trump, Stein; Saluting Labor Notes; Growing Racial Wealth Gap - how to unite the multi-racial working class; Readers debate Portside post on Syria; Saluting Fidel Castro at 90; Announcements: New York events - August 31

For Unions, Sometimes a Lockout Is Better Than a Strike

Peter Olney Labor Notes
Whether you’re expecting a strike or lockout, the steps are similar—and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Union-busting law firms pass around the same employer playbook. Our side has rich experience in preparation. Ask for advice and help from combatants who’ve been through a strike or a lockout and emerged victorious.

Memorial in Alabama Will Honor Victims of Lynching

Campbell Robertson The New York Times
The Equal Justice Initiative, a legal rights organization in Montgomery, is to formally announce the plans on Tuesday. The Equal Justice Initiative will unveil plans for a museum to open in April, in its roughly 11,000-square-foot headquarters, that will trace the country’s racial history from slavery to the era of mass incarceration.

‘White Trash’ — The Original Underclass

Alec MacGillis ProPublica
Much of the political debate this election season concerns who will win the support of working class white voters. At the same time, as Alec MacGillis notes in this review of two new books on the history and present conditions of this sector of the population, much of this discourse strains under the influence of condescension, sentimentalism, and a host of explicitly or implicitly stated biases.

Latino Votes Count or ‘Why Would They Be Trying to Suppress Them?’: Dolores Huerta on What’s at Stake in 2016

Ally Boguhn Rewire
Huerta encouraged people to consider both what is at stake and why their voting rights might be targeted in the first place. “What we have to think about is, if they’re doing so much to suppress the vote of the Latino and the African-American community, that means that that vote really counts. It really matters or else why would they be trying to suppress them?”