The Palestinian general strike of May 18 fits into a much longer history of mobilization by Palestinian workers. From the British colonial years to the present, those struggles have faced harsh repression, but kept a spirit of resistance alive.
The Disney cartoonists and animators’ strike that began at a California studio on May 29, 1941, forever changed the labor standards of an industry — and inspired cultural workers to take greater ownership over their labor.
The slow, decades-long destruction of the US unemployment insurance system has resulted in more than just personal hardship for millions of workers — it has further weakened the fighting strength of the whole working class.
The labor movement will not survive at all, let alone build power, without a serious racial analysis and making racial justice key to their core mission.
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The Amazon organizing drive has drawn attention to just how much the deck is stacked against workers and unions. The Pro Act would provide a much-needed update to labor law after decades of rising inequality and an erosion of collective bargaining.
In the 1920s and ’30s, a summer school for industrial working women built an economics curriculum around the perspective of labor rather than capital. It offers a visionary example of worker ed that emphasizes class struggle and worker empowerment.
Generations of steel and chemical manufacturing in the region have contaminated vacant industrial land that has sat dormant since the businesses shuttered. Residents are tired of being the city’s dumping ground, so they are fighting back.
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