During the time of the mine wars, you had mine guards. Well, now, you have mind guards, They don’t have to use strong-armed tactics anymore. They control the radio. They control the news. They control the schools. When a region or a country doesn’t know its own history, it’s like a person with Alzheimer’s.
The book under review examines the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts by workers to resist and the housebreaking of a long-running anti-capitalist ethos from imaginative, frenzied opposition to diffuse, angry, but ultimate accommodation. While a residual 19th century fight-back culture built the CIO and defended the New Deal into the 1960s, it lacked the same emancipatory charge it had earlier, and unions shifted to cautious monitors of the working class
As public worker union growth ran into the realities of an increasingly conservative national climate, effective advocates for labor, like Victor Gotbaum -- who passed away on April 5 --like many of his peers, proved unable to find a way to keep renewing union power.
Reader Comments- Jobs and Higher Wages; Boehner, Netanyahu, Israel, Iran; Martin Luter King - radical anti-capitalist; Charlie Hebdo - racism, nationalism, free speech; Broken Criminal Justice system; Social Security, Disability; Erosion of Collective Bargaining = Income Inequality; Podemos; Solidarity Forever; Selma; Guantanamo protest; Roe v. Wade Anniversary;
Announcements- Forums- Ending the Embargo of Cuba; After The Greek Elections; March Delegation to Venezuela
“Solidarity Forever” echoes symbolically this Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. Dr. King’s last sermon was delivered in Memphis during the sanitation workers strike, a strike in which he acted not just as a civil rights leader but also a union leader. He even called for a general strike of black workers and students in Memphis.
Reader Comments: Congress Plots to Undermine Retiree Pensions; Is It Bad Enough Yet?; Angela Davis: the unbroken line of police violence; James Baldwin on Racism; LAWCHA's Teacher/Public Sector Initiative; #BlackLivesMatter Takes the Field; They Fear and The Kill; Thousands March to Protest Police Brutality; Torture - Senate Report, Lessons from Latin America; Trade; Chanukah 2014;
CELEBRATING CHARLIE HADEN memorial and celebration of his life - New York - Jan. 13
LAWCHA sponsored a Teachers/Public sector history committee that has produced an overview of teacher organizing and a bibliography of resources to understand that effort in historical context. We have provided powerpoints graphs and annotations of material organized by geography and specific unions.
At its peak in August 1917 the IWW had a membership of more than 150,000. Nine months later, the union was in total disarray. This sad state of affairs was, of course, partly the result of a calculated decision by the federal government to destroy the IWW. But only partly. Eric Chester's book looks at some the inner-conflicts within the organization that contributed to its demise.
Reader Comments - Remembering September 11 and The Other 9/11; Fast Food Strikes; Retail Workers Find Better Deals With Unions; Justice Dept. to Probe Ferguson Police; Working Families Party; Death Row; Israel Confiscates More Palestinian Land; One-Third of Israelis Consider Emigrating; Wal-Mart-ization of Education; Wages for Housework; Gluten-free; Eugene Debs and Debs Museum; Charlie Haden;
New resource - International Human Rights Law: Violations by Israel; more..
Though the bitterness against Kazan has lingered lo these many years, we in working-class studies should reclaim On the Waterfront as one of the important texts for understanding what happened to American labor in the postwar period. We do so not to redeem Kazan, but to honor the workers that he and Schulberg were trying to represent.
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