By: Andy Piascik Suddenly Staughton Lynd is all the rage...Again.In the last 18 months, Lynd has published two new books, a third that’s a reprint of an earlier work, plus a memoir co-authored with his wife Alice. In addition, a portrait of his life as an activist through 1970 by Carl Mirra of Adelphi University has been published, with another book about his work after 1970 by Mark Weber of Kent State University due soon.
Soldier, coal miner, Sixties veteran, recent graduate – there’s much to be gained by one and all from a study of Lynd’s life and work. In so doing, it’s remarkable to discover how frequently he was in the right place at the right time and, more importantly, on the right side.
Forty-six years ago, during the tumultuous summer of 1964, Lynd was invited to coordinate the Freedom Schools established in Mississippi by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The schools were an integral part of the Herculean effort to end apartheid in the United States and became models for alternative schools everywhere.
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By: Peter Shapiro
Analysis of health care reform
Now that the dust has settled, however, a hard look at the legislation that prompted all the fuss suggests that, far from ‘fixing our broken health care system,’ it merely reproduces some of its worst features.
The bill does nothing to lessen the grip of the private insurance industry on our health care system. It won’t bring exploding health care costs under control. It does little to change the shameful disparities in access to treatment in a society that treats medical care as a commodity to be bought and sold, rather than as something all of us need and deserve.
What it will do is require everybody to buy health insurance, with federal subsidies for those who can’t afford the premiums on their own. The price tag of these subsidies is $447 billion over the next ten years. That’s money that could have gone to pay directly for medical treatment but which will, instead, wind up in the pockets of the insurance industry - one more corporate bailout at taxpayers’ expense.
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By: Judy Ancel
Knowing the real story about immigration can help protect you during this election year. As usual, there’s no shortage of demagogues who scapegoat immigrants and attempt to divide us with Arizona-type laws. We should ask them for real and practical solutions to our economic problems. Blaming workers for a system in which elites on both sides of the border are getting rich, only cuts off our noses to spite our face. When it comes down to it, working people, no matter where they come from all want the same things: a living wage, safe working conditions and basic security. It’s a losing strategy to be fighting one another. |
By: Jeff Crosby - reprint from AFL-CIO NOW Blog
Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!”
For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our health care benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund health care expansion by a benefits tax.
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By: Jerry Tucker - reprinted from MRZINE
The new Trumka Team has, as promised, hit the road to pitch their program. That sounds like a good thing, maybe even unusual, since earlier predecessors George Meany and Lane Kirkland would have both been on vacation following similar Conventions in their day. A new team should take it to the people. And the people should not hesitate to take their concerns and ideas to them. There was continued emphasis during the campaign that union members and citizens in general had to push the new Obama Administration and Congress—that the power for ‘change-you-can-believe-in’ had to come from the grassroots. The same goes here. |
By: Bill Fletcher
Two days after the November 2008 elections, Democrats and their allies are still celebrating the decisive defeat of Republican John McCain. With his defeat comes the chance to render unto history the remnants of the Bush/Cheney regime that so ruined the lives of the bottom 80 percent of the U.S. population, and turned most of the world against the U.S. Eight years of Bush/Cheney have brought incompetence, jingoism, and neoliberalism...Let’s imagine that, after several months of drafting, the final touches are being placed on what has come to be known as The First 100 Days: A Working People’s Agenda for the First 100 Days of the Incoming Democratic Administration... |
By: Jerry Tucker
The nation’s healthcare crisis is ruining the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans...Union contracts no longer adequately stand between union members and the crisis. Shifting the cost of healthcare to workers under the current profit-driven system is a painful feature of virtually every set of contract negotiations these days. For non-union workers, a voiceless majority of all workers, increasing the burden of costs is a slam-dunk for employers. A publicly supported national healthcare system like those in virtually all other industrialized countries is the only rational answer. On this issue labor needs to speak with one voice. |
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The Center for Labor Renewal is an ever expanding circle of activists and ideas dedicated to combining different threads of working class organizing and activism for the transformation and renewal of labor as a progressive social movement in this country and internationally.
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Books
Solidarity Divided - Bill Fletcher Jr. & Fernando Gapasin - University of California Press
Staley 'The fight for a new labor movement' - Steven K. Ashby & C. J. Hawking - University of Illinois Press
Radical Unionism In the Midwest, 1900 - 1950 - Rosemary Feurer - University of Illinois Press
US Labor In Trouble and Transition - Kim Moody - Verso Books |
