Tidbits - April 2, 2015 - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Death Penalty; Water Privatization; Elizabeth Warren; Cesar Chavez; and more

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Reader Comments - Mexican Farmworkers Strike; Innocent Man on Death Row - Prosecutor Apologizes; Stealing Africa's Seeds; Fighting Water Privatization - Ireland and Mexico; Run Elizabeth, Run; Jews Who Speak Out Against Israeli Policies; Cesar Chavez, the UFW - Lessons for Today; Feminist Heroes for Children; Cuba Eradicates Syphilis; Billie Holiday and Ethel Rosenberg; Resources for Passover; To Better Understand Greece and Syriza; Announcements

Why Mexico’s Farmworkers Who Harvest Our Food Are on Strike

Sonali Kolhatkar Truthdig
As many as 50,000 mostly indigenous workers have stopped harvesting produce for more than a week in protest of labor law violations. What they want is for their basic needs to be met, such as obtaining health care, getting overtime pay and vacation days, and being paid wages higher than the dismal $8 a day that most of them earn.

Tidbits - March 26, 2015 - Student Protests; Vietnam War; Slavery, American Capitalism; Israel; Socialists and Socialism; more...

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Reader Comments - Today's Student Protests; Vietnam War History, My Lai; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Israel - Right Wing Nation with Nukes; Unions Key to Fighting Inequality; Women Fighters; Venezuela Sanctions; Socialists, Socialist Movement and Socialism; Human Genome Tinkering; Hey, World! Let's create a nuclear-free future -- April 24-26, New York City Remembering Jean Hardisty, Geraldine Blankinship and Grace Paley

Locavore Movement Overlooks Farmworkers

Karl Grossman https://atlantic2.sierraclub.org/content/enviro-close-winter-2015
Food movement advocates and consumers, driven to forge alternatives to industrial agribusiness, have neglected the labor economy that underpins ‘local’ food production,

Limits of the Locavore

By L.V. Anderson Dissent
Our society’s tendency to idealize local food allows small farmers to pay workers substandard wages, house them in shoddy labor camps, and quash their ability to unionize to demand better working conditions.

Tidbits - May 15, 2014

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Reader Comments-Fast-food strikes; Cecily McMillan; Campus Unions; Vietnam War; Farley Mowat; Ukraine; Power of Imagination; Filipino Americans and Farm Labor Movement; BDS; Food; William Worthy - R.I.P Announcements - Strike! & New Forms of Worker Struggle -May 28; Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor? -June 4; Organizing 2.0 Conference -June 6-7; The Origins of Inequality: Grassroots Economics Training for Understanding & Power -June 14 (all New York)

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With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

Jesse McKinley NY Times
Robotic milkers not only do the milking - like the machines that have been around for decades - but they do away with the need for farmers to connect and disconnect the machines to and from their cows' utters. These machines permit the cows to decide when they want to be milked - the "milkbot" does the rest.

labor

With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time

Jesse McKinley NY Times
Robotic milkers not only do the milking - like the machines that have been around for decades - but they do away with the need for farmers to connect and disconnect the machines to and from their cows' utters. These machines permit the cows to decide when they want to be milked - the "milkbot" does the rest.

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"Cesar Chavez" the Film Premiers in New York City

Melissa Castellanos Latin Post
The new film, which won the Audience Award at SXSW last week, tells the story of the iconic labor leader's fight to unionize farm workers, the inception of the United Farm Workers of America, and highlights the fight for better pay and conditions for farm laborers in the fields of California. "Cesar Chavez," which was screened at the White House on Wednesday, hits theaters March 28th.
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