If workers vote to join a union at Volkswagen's Tennessee plant this week, they'll be changing America's labor relations for the better - Harold Meyerson. (Voting started yesterday, Feb. 12, and continues through tomorrow, Feb. 15) Lane Windham looks at past labor and UAW organizing efforts in the south.
Reader Comments - Cecily McMillan Update - Occupy Activist Faces Seven Years in Jail - Trial Postponed to March 3rd; Africa; Latin America; Learning from History; Slavery; UAW Campaign at Volkswagen; Amiri Baraka; Pete Seeger memories;
Announcements - CISPES Delegation to El Salvador; Workers Get a Cut on Powell Books purchases; New Video - The USA's new underclass; Labor Notes conference - April 4 - 6 - Early bird discount
1. Our decision makers have no respect for the lessons of history. They think the lessons don’t apply to them. They think they can make history freely: that history is like a blank canvas for their creative (and destructive) impulses. They figure they are in complete control. Hubris, in other words. 2. Opposing War - Lessons of WWI.
An interview with Eric Foner, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.
It was Abraham Lincoln who used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians eating happily together. He was trying to calm things down during the Civil War when people were divided. It was like a nice unity story. So what really happened? We made a treaty. They couldn't make a treaty for a boatload of people so they made a treaty between two nations - England and the Wampanoag Nation.
The story of the universe in two minutes, with some notable omissions.
Reader Comments - Songs of Immigration; Fruitvale Station; Blow the Whistle, Face Life in Jail; Bradley Manning; On Vultures and Red Wings: Billionaire Gets New Sports Arena in Bankrupt Detroit; U.S. Prison Population; North Carolina Worst Voter Suppression Law;
Shorts - You Helped Cut the Pentagon Budget; Justice Department's Bold Voting Rights Move;
Conference - The Global E. P. Thompson: Reflections on Making of the English Working Class after Fifty Years Oct. 3-5
The New York Times reports on the growing trend of workers getting paid via fee-laden debit cards. In a letter to Portside, historian Stephen Brier notes the "eerie parallels" to the 1800s.
The New York Times reports on the growing trend of workers getting paid via fee-laden debit cards. In a letter to Portside, historian Stephen Brier notes the "eerie parallels" to the 1800s.
Can photographers be participants in the social events they document? Eighty years ago the question would have seemed irrelevant in the political upsurges of the 1930s, in both Mexico and the United States. Many photographers were political activists, and saw their work intimately connected to workers strikes, political revolution or the movements for indigenous rights. Now a book and a recent exhibition should reopen this debate.
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