In the 1990s, hundreds of U.S. labor activists came together to form the Labor Party. The initiative was the brainchild of Tony Mazzocchi, the passionate leader of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (which, after two mergers, is today part of the United Steelworkers). Mazzocchi held true to the dream of an independent political party rooted in the labor movement over which working people would have ownership. He was fond of pointing out: “The bosses have two parties. We need one of our own.”
Place: North America
RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY: PETER H. CLARK, AMERICA'S FIRST BLACK SOCIALIST
Nikki M. Taylor. America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013. 308 pages. Photos. Hardback $40.00. Also available as an e-book.
Social movement teacher unionism in the NEA? In the South? As sure as there is BBQ
We’re seeing social movement teacher unionism arise in the South, in NEA, in Organize2020, a hardy band of activists who intend to transform their NEA state affiliate, North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE). I was invited to speak at their first state-wide conference but when we were iced
In the United States Social Struggle Declines, Plateaus: The Most Important Social Conflicts of 2013
While there was social struggle and conflict over a variety of issues in the United States in 2013, including an ascending movement in one region, the overall picture was one of diverse and diffuse social movements that had plateaued at a low level. The exceptions were the growing Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, which gained in numbers of participants throughout the year, and the movements of fast food and Walmart workers.
A Response to Robin Hahnel's Open Letter to the Movement
The question of what demands ecosocialists should put forward in response to the climate crisis is a pressing one. Robin Hahnel, in “An Open Letter to the Climate Justice Movement”, argues that the climate justice movement should demand a cap-and-trade policy, abandoning its traditional stance against carbon trading. To Hahnel, carbon trading is the most realistic way for society to make carbon emissions cuts in the necessary time frame, and, contrary to the arguments of activists, it ca
Sanitation Workers: You Gotta Love Them
Review of Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City By Robin Nagle (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013).
Rationally, we know garbage isn’t picked up by the faeries, but to much of the public, it might as well be. We “take out” the garbage, but who removes it?
Steve Kindred: Irrepressible American Radical, 1944-2013
Steve Kindred, an irrepressible American radical— student and antiwar activist, socialist, and labor organizer—died of cancer on December 9, 2013 in New York City at the age of 69.
Learn–like Seeger Did—to Sing Another Tune
Bhaskar Sunkara, editor and publisher of Jacobin, has written an article for Al Jazeera America that, while ostensibly a defense of the great American songwriter and folk singer Pete Seeger, is actually an apologia for the American Communist Party.
review
Double Secret Privatization
I remember as a freshman in college making a boneheaded move. I didn’t feel like I had enough stuff. I was broke, and I had enough stuff to keep me alive and entertained, but I could never say no to acquiring more of it. I was fortunate enough that one day while exiting my dorm’s food court, some guy I never met—who looked like he was in his late 20s—offered me stuff and this of course piqued my interest.
This tale is not salacious. The “stuff” was not anything illegal or even unethical.
In the Shadow of the Manhattan Project
Each August 6 in Hiroshima, speakers reiterate familiar statistics, such as how the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombs tragically slaughtered 140,000 people. Many evoke J.
The Myths of “Green Capitalism”
Today environmental politics in the U.S. appears hopelessly polarized. Liberals and progressives try to sustain and occasionally strengthen environmental legislation, while those on the right are inalterably opposed, even seeking to defund core institutions such as the EPA. This extreme polarization, where anti-environmentalism has become part of the cultural as well as the political apparatus of the right, is a recent, and hopefully short-lived, phenomenon.1
Economic & Ecologic Transformation—There Is No Alternative
And we have the power to make it happen
It’s very humbling to be in this room, not to mention on this stage, with all the vision and dedication that’s packed within these four walls. Thanks to the board and Seth Adler, the volunteers, and all of you here tonight for making this conference happen.
Defending teachers, protecting US kids: What's needed
It’s hard to overstate how frightened US teachers are in many schools and districts. We know from research that many teachers in schools now chose this career because they love kids and/or their subject matter. Some of activists in social justice causes but many have never taken an interest in what they’ve viewed as “politics,” remote from their work. These teachers aren’t prepared for the ferocity of the attack they’ve experienced, and teachers unions have been so weakened, legally and politically, that teachers
How A Famous 90-Year-Old Doctor Survived Hospitalization, But You Probably Won’t
Enclosed in and insulated by their own structures of thought, many doctors are quite blind to the role of privilege, including their own, in getting or not getting medical care and in determining the quality of that care. If they acknowledge some flaw (or even ignorance or barbarity) in individual health care, they see it as non-systemic, simply a matter of a bad apple in an otherwise benign barrel. They may maintain this obtuseness even when they themselves become patients.
review
Canadian Labor Politics
A Personal View
I emigrated from the United States to Canada in 1974, in the aftermath of the period covered by Benjamin Isitt’s Militant Minority, becoming actively involved in British Columbia’s (BC) social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) as well as its labor movement. Isitt’s work deepened my understanding of both.
Carmen Fariña and New York City's schools: What to expect?
Does appointment of Carmen Fariña signal a dramatic shift in policy for New York City public schools? Writing in the Indypendent, NYC teacher and union activist Brian Jones suggests, correctly I think, the situation is more complicated than supporters of Bill de Blasio want to believe.* On the one hand, Fariña is indeed different from her predecessors in the past decade.
Closing Bridges While Building Bipartisan Bridges for Corporate-Backed 'Reform'
It remains to be seen whether NJ Governor Chris Christie will be able to avoid having his political career crash and burn.
HOW I LEARNED ABOUT NAFTA – A PERSONAL ESSAY
During the early 1990s I became involved in the national debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) then in the final stages of negotiation between Canada, Mexico and the United States. Twenty years later, it’s clear that NAFTA, the creation of a North American common market of sorts, was a watershed event, but I have to admit I had not really been paying much attention to it until I got a phone call in November 1990.
Book Review
Chicago's Boss against the 99%
Kari Lyderson, Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago’s 99%, Haymarket Books, 2013
New Yorkers rejoicing in Michael Bloomberg’s departure from office can be grateful for another small favor: they don’t live in Chicago, where residents are stuck for at least two more years with an austerity-mad, street-brawling mayor who wields near absolute power over a City Council far more supine than the one we have here.
Maybe We All Need Something More Than a Wife
During the early days of second-wave feminism, I remember reading Judy Brady’s essay “I Want a Wife” about how everyone needed “a wife,” that is someone to take care of the tasks of everyday life, as women were raised to do.
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