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Weekly Toll: The Last Shift

Jordan Barab Confined Space
Fire engine on the street at night.
On average, almost 100 workers are killed every day in the United States due to traumatic injuries suffered at work.   Ten times as many die from occupational diseases. The accounts below give you a taste of the PREVENTABLE carnage.

How Pandemic Inequality Has Killed 21,000 a Day

John Queally Common Dreams
A new report explains how inequality contributed to the death of 21,000 people each day of the pandemic while the wealthiest collectively got $1.2 billion richer every 24 hours.

Small Kindnesses

Danusha Laméris Healing the Divide
As plague years continue, California poet Danusha Laméris writes of “brief moments of exchange” that sustain hope and belief in what is holy.

Protesting Racism And Hate With Political Art

Steven Brower Print
Following the horrific events precipitated by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members on Saturday in Charlottesville, VA, where 32-year-old Heather Heyer was murdered, President Trump shockingly came out in favor of the alt-right. The response by our community was swift. Some illustrators and designers created work anew, others re-purposed existing political art, illustrations and posters, and these began appearing in online publications and social media.

Heather Heyer's Cousin: Racism Will Get Worse Unless We Stop It Now

Diana Ratcliff CNN
This last week has been surreal for my family. We lost one of our own in one of the most public ways possible. A man in a car ran down my cousin, Heather Heyer, because she decided to join her fellow Charlottesville residents against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists on their streets.

DSA Members Comment on Their 2017 Convention

Portside
Portside anticipated that the DSA convention would be a watershed event for the left. Just before it was called to order, membership surpassed 25,000. The group was making a leap from minor to major, and we welcomed that. We contacted some DSAers we know who were present, to bring you their views on what the meeting meant for DSA and the left.

Tidbits - August 24, 2017 - Reader Comments: White Supremacy in the Age of Trump; Removing Confederate Monuments; Free Speech Hypocrisy; Monopoly (the game); Right to Work laws; Radicals in Our History; Boycott the NFL; Jews Against Hate; and more....

Portside
Reader Comments: White Supremacy in the Age of Trump; Removing Confederate Monuments - They Lost - Get Over It; Free Speech Hypocrisy; Monopoly (the game) was Invented to Demonstrate the Evils of Capitalism; Right to Work - Racist Origins, Victory in Missouri; Radicals in Our History; Korea; Venezuela; Boycott the NFL; Jews Against Hate; and more....

The Trump Administration's Most Prominent Jews Disgrace Themselves

Dana Milbank The Washington Post
What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did - or, rather, what they didn't do - is a shanda. They'll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said after the white terrorist demonstration and attack in Charlottesville. But not in public.

The Inter-American Development Bank’s ‘Investment Shock’ Will Not Benefit Central American Workers

Leo Baunach Equal Times
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the US Chamber of Commerce that are at the centre of plans for an “investment shock” to create jobs for would-be Central American migrants. In a region beset by violence against workers and a legacy of economic exploitation without development, concern is growing that the Bank is inadequately prepared to ensure inclusive economic growth and basic rights

Beyond `No' and the Limits of `Yes': A Review of Naomi Klein's 'No Is Not Enough'

Robert Jensen teleSUR
Building on her past work analyzing capitalism, Naomi Klein, in the book under review, does not stop with an analysis of the crises. She not only argues how to defeat the new shock politics of Trump (explicit in the subtitle), but outlines a resistance politics that not only rejects what she terms a domination/subordination dynamic but proceeds from saying "no" to the existing order to a "yes" to other values. Favoring the book, the reviewer wishes she had dug deeper.