The nine-day strike by International Longshore and Warehouse Union clerks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has tentatively ended with a new contract with the Harbor Employers Association. If approved by the union’s membership, the pact will expire in 2016.
It was tempting to joke that the strike was a case of deja vu all over again – if the stakes weren’t so high for the port clerks’ Local 63. The sticking point was the outsourcing of jobs offsite, an issue that many thought was resolved with the local’s 2007 contract with port employers. Technology has made such job migration possible – and desirable — for shipping companies and terminal operators. Since the ILWU’s historic pivot in 1960 toward accepting labor-saving mechanization in exchange for greater member benefits and job security, the union has shown a consistent ability to accept and adapt to technology – even while that acceptance has reduced its membership.
» Read more about: Longshore Clerks Tentatively Agree to New Contract »
The magic of El Sistema, Venezuela’s program of taking impoverished kids and teaching them classical music, can be summed up in one sentence uttered by its founder, Dr. Jose Abreu: “If you put a musical instrument in the hand of a kid, he or she will not pick up a gun.” It is somewhat of a miracle, although it is an old idea. The creative impulse (which resides in everyone) can act as a curandero, or healer, to re-imagine dead-end paths down which poor children are headed, and find new roads that are limitless. America is slow to realize this. With weak economic times, we always cut funding for the arts, when that is a time to increase fields that foster new imagination, new ways of thinking. Holding on to our narrow vision that South America stole our name, we know something is happening south of the border,
» Read more about: John Densmore on the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra »
Few things have been a bigger buzz kill to the holiday season than the New York Times‘ epic investigative series questioning state and city government subsidies to big business. If you thought super-rich individuals were getting away with not paying their fair share (or any share) of taxes, the Times now lifts the veil from a system of corporate blackmail wherein companies are basically being given the tax dollars we pay to government. In exchange, these companies promise to do – nothing.
In the case of heavy industry, “nothing” means a manufacturing company will tell a locality that it may have to move its decades-old plant to another state or country unless it gets a whole lot of tax breaks, free sewage improvements and road repairs. In the case of Oliver Stone’s movie company and its plans to shoot a New York-specific story,
» Read more about: Business Tax Subsidies: The Grift That Keeps on Giving »
On Robert Reich’s website the economist and U.C. Berkeley public policy prof has eight simple principles for Congressional progressives to follow as they tangle with conservatives over that contentious piece of topography called the Fiscal Cliff:
» Read more about: Robert Reich's Advice to Fiscal Cliff Dwellers »
Bangladesh is half a world away from Bentonville, the Arkansas city where Walmart is headquartered. This week, Walmart surely wishes it were farther away than that.
Over the weekend, a horrific fire swept through a Bangladesh clothing factory, killing more than 100 workers, many of whose bodies were burnt so badly that they could not be identified. In its gruesome particulars — locked doors, no emergency exits, workers leaping to their deaths — the blaze seems a ghastly centennial reenactment of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, when 146 workers similarly jumped to their deaths or were incinerated after they found the exit doors were locked.
The signal difference between the two fires is location. The Triangle building was located directly off New York’s Washington Square. Thousands watched the appalling spectacle of young workers leaping to the sidewalks 10 stories down;
» Read more about: Walmart and Costco: Worlds of Difference »
In the next decade, America will be transformed by a new wave of progressive activism, led primarily by organizers, thinkers, and politicians born after 1960. It is already bubbling below the surface, in workplaces, neighborhoods, churches, college campuses, think tanks, and foundation offices. Many of these young progressives have already waged successful campaigns to win public office, change public policy, and inject new ideas into our political culture.
There is no simple formula for successful social movements, but they all share a few characteristics. First, they embrace an “inside/outside” strategy, mobilizing people to protest, boycott, lobby, and vote, while simultaneously working closely with allies in government. Second, they don’t expect to bring about change overnight. They are long-distance runners, not sprinters. They try to win stepping-stone victories that lay the groundwork for further reforms. Third, while they work on separate issues, they recognize that they are part of a broader movement that requires building coalitions and developing trust.
» Read more about: Young & Restless: 50 Activists Who Are Changing America »
With the rejection of Mitt Romney’s economic vision, wherein the invisible hand of the free market guides us to prosperity (at least those not in the lazy 47 percent), progressives are now on the spot to offer up a compelling alternative.
Using animation and the vocal talents of Ed Asner, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) jumps into the ring with the short video “It’s in Our Hands.” This is no ten-point plan, but instead a conceptual piece whose primary assertion is that we start to take the idea of democracy much more seriously when it comes to the economic order of things.
What if we could shape the U.S. economy to reflect the values and interests of most Americans? LAANE, which has had some success in doing just that, maintains that we can — and must.
» Read more about: Building a New Economy Video With Ed Asner »
While he was alive, the baseball establishment five times rejected Marvin Miller, who freed players from indentured servitude, from its Hall of Fame. The Major League Baseball Players Association, which Miller headed from 1966 to 1983, sat on its hands, failing to raise a stink about this outrageous miscarriage of justice.
Miller, who died on Tuesday at 95, was never bitter about his exclusion from the Cooperstown shrine. As a staunch unionist, he knew which side he was on and understood that the baseball owners and executives who control the Hall of Fame would rig the rules to keep him out. The baseball moguls have always viewed their teams as personal fiefdoms and are among the most ferociously anti-union crowd around.
But what’s appalling is the timidity of the Players Association to mount a campaign on Miller’s behalf. Over the years, many Hall of Fame players—including Tom Seaver,
» Read more about: Marvin Miller: Locked Out of Baseball's Hall of Fame »
The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blogger, Nate Silver, had some choice words about Politico, which had taken pot shots at his election-polling skills during the recently concluded presidential campaign. Politico wasn’t alone: The entire spectrum of right-wing punditry, led by Fox News, attacked Silver for predicting that an Obama victory was at least 80 percent certain. The Electoral College specifics of Silver’s long-prophesied Obama win turned out to be uncannily accurate.
The forum for Silver’s comments was Grantland.com sports blogger Bill Simmons’ “B.S. Report” podcast, during which, as Talking Points Memo reports, Silver noted:
What was remarkable to me is that you had some, like, journalist for, um, Politico, or something … who, like, tweeted … ‘All Nate’s doing is averaging polls and counting electoral votes?’ … ‘That’s the secret sauce?’ It’s like, well, yeah, and the fact that you can’t comprehend that very basic thing … that says more about you than,
» Read more about: Nate Silver to Politico: "You Can't Comprehend!" »
