If we understood the important role that our government played in segregating our nation, we would feel a greater obligation to press our government to integrate it. But if we believe that segregation was an unintended byproduct of private forces, it is too easy to say there is little now that can be done about it.
Although the great red scare of the 1950s almost erased the anti-lynching song Strange Fruit from the public arena, the strange fruit allusion - lynched bodies hanging from trees – was one of genius. It had gotten under our culture’s skin, and as time went on, it seeped out of its pores.
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Announcements - Organizing Walmart & Fast Food Industry - New York - Nov 19; Fighting Back Against Wall St. - NYC - Nov 25; Mark Rogovin To Be Inducted Into the Illinois Labor History Society's Labor Hall of Honor; 'Spies Of Mississippi' preview - NYC - Dec 15; Audio available -The Hidden History of Workplace Resistance: U.S. Autoworkers Speak Out;
This is a movement, not a moment...Moral Mondays have really caught fire. It took several months last spring and early summer for the Moral Monday protests to reach a crescendo. While early statehouse rallies in North Carolina started by attracting about 50 protesters, by July thousands of people from around the state were swarming the state capitol. After three consecutive months of action, there had been around 920 arrests for civil disobedience at the weekly rallies.
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Aasif Mandvi investigates non-racist fallout from the Supreme Court's destruction of the Voting Rights Act.
Texas new voter ID law could prevent women who use maiden names or hyphenated names from voting. Women must present original documents verifying their name change. So far Texas has issued 41 free voter IDs to women who request one - out of 1.4 million Texas voters who lack the required documents.
Play-with-music visits three generations of a family employed as porters and sets the action on June 22, 1937 a time of celebration and great hope for African-Americans. That night, Joe Louis beat James J. Braddock for the World Heavyweight Championship in Chicago. Later that year, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters signed its first collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company, improving work place conditions and increasing wages for the porters.
Women Finally Take the Podium at Washington March; Miley Cyrus Shows Off Her Minstrelsy; The Race Conversation We Are Already Having; Farmers Need to Grow More Cannon Fodder; Uruguayan Workers Make a Bid for a New TV Station
This is a year for commemorations, and it is ironic it is also when the U.S. Supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act, a key component of the movement for human rights. The challenge facing any piece of major legislation goes beyond the movement necessary for passage. There must be recognition of the need for vigilance which requires dedicated education and expectation that guaranteed fairness for all is a human right that must permanently prevail.
The problem over the last thirty or forty years is the declining bargaining power for workers. And the question is, how do we reconstruct bargaining power for workers?" That's what organizers of today's strike are out to do. Workers say they've already achieved some incremental store-specific victories - it's too soon to say if they'll succeed. But they're already drawing near-unparalleled attention from local and national media, and the rest of the labor movement.
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