DigBoston commits to expanding coverage of workers and unions
Thousands of laundry workers—largely African-American or immigrant women—labor in hot, crowded, and often dangerous or toxic conditions to clean the linens used by millions. And it is these workers who endure the consequences of an industry plagued by poor working conditions, exploitation, and abuse.
To portray Ronald Reagan as a friend of the working class is not only fallacious—it is dangerous.
Giving workers the power to improve their jobs and unrig the economy
To advance anti-racism on the macro scale, we need to collectively engage in popular struggle, rooted in a left platform that is relevant and intuitive for poor and working people. There should be an immediate creation of a hopeful, broad-based mission that is winnable, which will serve to expand the resistance movement and create an organized majority to kill pernicious nationalism, masquerading as populism.
An investment group led by former Chicago alderman and businessman Edwin Eisendrath and the Chicago Federation of Labor recently pulled off an unusual feat when it acquired the Chicago Sun-Times. The purchase is a return to labor’s long tradition in fostering a broader public sphere.
A Wisconsin union ironworker’s plan to oust the House speaker: “I don’t need a law degree. I don’t need a doctorate. I have ears to listen.”
The word “companion” doesn’t sound oppressive at all: It appears quite the opposite. A companion is supportive, nurturing, loyal. But that word was used for decades to deny basic labor protections to workers who provide in-home assistance to people with disabilities.
It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch? Today global capitalism is in a period of long-term stagnation following the global financial crisis. The newer protests represent a far broader disenchantment with capitalism than the protests of the 2000s. The building blocks of an alternative economic model are there - sustainable development, de-growth, and de-globalization.
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