Radicals in City Hall: An American Tradition

Peter Dreier Dissent
The time appears to be ripe for a new wave of urban reform. Both socialists like Seattle’s Sawant and progressives like New York’s de Blasio have a chance to popularize “left wing of the possible” ideas that seem bold but not preposterous. But as their socialist and progressive counterparts over the past century recognized, good ideas don’t become policy without social movements behind them.

Coal Train

South African jazz musician Hugh Masakela tells the story of the life and labor of the immigrant coal and gold miners of South Africa, so hard that they curse the coal trains that brought them.

Tidbits - October 17, 2013

Portside
Reader Comments- Mexico teachers; Social Security; Israel; Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap; McDonald's; Grad Student unions; Jobs; Unemployment; Announcements- NYC - Full Employment and the Right to a Job: (Oct 18); Film showing - Anne Braden-Southern Patriot(Oct 24); D.C - Government Surveillance in Communities of Color; So.Calif - Government Spying, Immigrant Detention Policies(Nov 12); Louis E. Burnham Award Welcomes Applicants Today in History-Salt of the Earth

Yesterday's Internment Camp - Today's Labor Camp

David Bacon Truthout
In the picking of the strawberry crops - many workers are needed and in the name of immigration reform the growers are seeing their dream - a huge cheap source of labor. Congress is debating bills that would expand the number of recruited workers many times over, possibly even reaching the 500,000 worker peak of the bracero program in the mid-1950s.

Friday Nite Videos -- August 23, 2013

Portside
A New Generation of Civil Rights Fighters. The Story of Gershwin, Harlem and the Blues. Deport the Statue of Liberty. Cracking the Codes: A Trip to the Grocery Store. When Comedy Went to School. Richie Havens at Woodstock (in memoriam).

The Workers Defense Project, a Union in Spirit

Steven Greenhouse New York Times
The Workers Defense Project, founded in 2002, has emerged as one of the nation's most creative organizations for immigrant workers. Its focus is the Texas construction industry, which employs more than 600,000 workers. It is one of 225 worker centers nationwide, aiding immigrant workers. Workers Centers show what is possible, and may help infuse new life into the labor movement.

Paul Robeson -- Ballad for Americans

Written by John La Touche, with music by Earl Robinson, as part of a WPA theatre project in 1939, Ballad for Americans was first performed by Paul Robeson. The song emphatically asserts the democratic character of Amerian nationality from class, ethnic and racial, and religious angles, declaring that to be American is to be "Irish, Negro, Jewish, Italian, French and English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Polish, Scotch, Hungarian, Litwak, Swedish, Finnish, Canadian, Greek and Turk and Czech ... and lots more." For more Songs of Immigration, Deportation and Identity, go here.
 

West Side Story -- America

The musical West Side Story is a Romeo and Juliet crossing rival Italian and Puerto Rican gangs in New York City. In the song America, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno debate whether life is better in the adopted country or the native land. The music is by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. For more Songs of Immigration, Deportation and Identity, go here.
 

Getting Past the Icon -- Should Photographers Depict Reality, or Try to Change It?

David Bacon afterimage, the journal of media arts and cultural criticism, vol. 40, no. 6
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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