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.
Reader Comments: Truckers Strike Against "Owner-Operator" Debt and Poverty; Trumpcare Down, But Not Out; Working Class Whites Organize Against Racism; Slavery; Workers and Unions; Roseanne Barr; Handmaid's Tale and Race; Herb March - Untold Working Class and Communist History; Julian Assange; More on the United and Popular Front - Reality, Theory and Relevance for Today; Honduras; CIA Torture; AlterNet is Hiring; and more....
Media coverage of the 2016 election often emphasized Donald Trump’s appeal to the working class. There’s just one problem: this account is wrong. Trump voters were not mostly working-class people.
Reader Comments: Trump Failure Answer is Single Payer; Gorsuch-"Originalist" Disaster; Israel Segregationist and Apartheid; Left Growth Today - Religious Left, Socialists, Feminists; Censorship and Art - Emmett Till painting; PBS; Maine Fishermen; Job Growth and Worker Injury;
Resources: Teachers’ Union Guide for Immigrant and Refugee Children; Announcements: Black Women in the Media; Chicago-April 4; 81st Annual Celebration of the Lincoln Brigade; and more...
Donald Trump's draconian immigration enforcement efforts face a basic challenge: the United States operates within an economic system that profits off immigrant labor. Immigrant labor is more vital to many industries than it's ever been before. Today, about 57% of the country's entire agricultural workforce is undocumented. But the list of other industries dependent on immigrant labor is long.
Reader Comments: Resisting a Dictator; Moringa; Free Speech, Hate, Anarchism and Mass Movements; Building Trades and Labor; Working Women; Labor and Climate Convergence; Announcements; and more...
For a generation after World War II, America was far more equal than we are today. Can we ever get that back? Of course we can—the obstacles are political, not economic.
Reader Comments: Labor Movement, Unions and Trump; Coal Miner's Heritage; North Carolina; More on the Rockettes; Protests and Social Security; Progressives, Neoliberalism and the Broadest Fight Against Trump-readers exchange; Vietnam War;
Frank Rosen, longtime labor leader and political activist, died Nov. 28 in Chicago. Rosen took part in many of the seminal moments in Chicago history, from studying nuclear physics under Enrico Fermi, to fighting to defend civil liberties in the McCarthy era, to the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, to electing Harold Washington as mayor, all while helping thousands of members of his union struggle for decent wages, benefits and dignity on the job.
With the election of Donald Trump, labor faces a unique opportunity. It will face hostility in all branches of the federal government, and will have to maintain a multi-pronged fight. Yes, union density numbers are at historically low levels, and the bulwark of public-sector unionism may suffer a major blow at the Supreme Court through a case challenging the constitutionality of fair-share fees in the public sector...It has the existential imperative to reform itself.
Spread the word