Bottom-up democracy through community schools sounds like a great idea, but there are many dangers from these ‘charter schools on steroids.”
Category: Labor
Community Schools Will Help Unions and Education
Community schools are a way to address the challenges faced by low-income school districts; they also provide a unique opportunity to create bottom-up, democratically controlled school governance.
Unions, Democracy, and the Third Camp
Comparing Lessons from New Politics and Herman Benson
An analysis of debates among labor leftists about how a commitment to socialism “from below” should inform union activity.
Defend Iranian Woman Labor Leader Parvin Mohammadi
On December 21, 2020, the Iranian government sentenced Parvin Mohammadi, in absentia, to a year in prison on charges of “sedition.” She has refused to go to prison, continues to challenge the authorities, and has now gone into hiding.
In Defense of Kshama Sawant
The attempt to remove Kshama Sawant from her seat on Seattle’s City Council through a recall petition is a blatant attack on the democratic rights of constituents — and on the emergence of a new socialist left as a current in American politics.
Biden’s pick for Secretary of Education: What to expect from Cardona?
We should let Miguel Cardona know we have his back if he defends what schools, teachers, students really need – while we simultaneously prepare for his not doing so.
Teachers unions and the pandemic: Fighting for life and facing neoliberalism’s new bipartisan push
Biden will endorse the old normal Obama handed to Trump, but he will also push profiteering and control of education through technology, a project supported by both Democrats and the GOP from the start of Trump’s administration.
Workers Will Have to Fight to Make Gains Under Biden Presidency
Historically, workers made gains economically and politically during periods of labor upheaval. When workers used their power to strike, they were able to force employers and governments to make concessions.
Thanksgiving Approaches: Trump, the Virus, the Crisis
With the virus rampant, once again schools and businesses are closing, and more workers being laid off. We now have 20 million jobless, with ten million receiving federal unemployment benefits that will end with the New Year, as will protection for 30 million who face eviction. Not a happy Thanksgiving.
Say #ByeBetsy – and organize now to fight against Biden’s education policies
Biden’s victory now requires confronting his advocacy of disastrous education policies during the Obama administration, enacted under Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
Fighting for teachers unions that speak back to power, defend students and social justice
School reopenings have become a point of political conflict on a national level, as parent, student, and teachers’ rights to have healthy, safe, equitable schools have been subordinated to the bipartisan consensus to put the economy and profit over human need.
Indonesia: Mass Strikes Show Intersection of Class, Gender, and Ecology
Over a million people have taken to the streets in Indonesia to protest a neoliberal law that would roll back labor protections, especially for working women, while also opening the road toward greater environmental destruction.
Capitalism Made Women of Color More Vulnerable to the COVID Recession
From the start of the pandemic, job losses for women have been so much greater than for men that some feminist policy makers have called this a “shecession,” in contrast with 2008. And “she” is most certainly a woman of color.
Joe Allen’s ‘Package King’ Delivers a Modern History of the Essential Worker
Danny Katch reviews Joe Allen’s “The Package King: A Rank-And-File History of UPS,” on the century-long fight of UPS workers to wrest a livable job out of a company that treats them as machinery and to organize within a union that too often has treated them as a dues-paying cash machine.
Herman Benson (1915-2020): No Socialism Without Democracy
Herman Benson, veteran socialist activist and fighter for rank-and-file democracy in the labour movement, died on 2 July, aged 104. Herman was the second-to-last survivor, at least to my knowledge, of the “first generation” of “third camp” socialists.
Surrogacy, Exploitation, and Commodification
An exchange between Sara Lee and Alexandra Holmstrom-Smith
Sara Lee and Alexandra Holmstrom-Smith debate the position that the left should take on surrogacy, arrangements where a woman agrees to bear a child for others.
Punched in the Face: Minneapolis Labor and the Fight for #JusticeforGeorgeFloyd
While much of the labor movement in Minneapolis has embedded itself in the city’s struggle against police brutality, union leadership at the national level has shied away from demands that it clean house.
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