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By laura k, on December 1, 2013, at 10:00 am From The Nation: Last night, Worker Center Watch – a new website dedicated to attacking labor-affiliated activist groups like OUR Walmart, Restaurant Opportunities Center, and Fast Food Forward - began sponsoring advertisements on Twitter to promote smears against the protests planned for Black Friday. In one video sponsored by the group, activists demanding a living wage and better working conditions for workers are portrayed as lazy “professional protesters” who “haven’t bothered to get jobs themselves.”
“This Black Friday, just buy your gifts, not their lies,” instructs the Worker Center Watch narrator. . . .
Worker Center Watch has no information its website (Read more…)
By laura k, on November 16, 2013, at 1:30 pm If you haven’t read anything by Zadie Smith, I highly recommend finding White Teeth, her debut novel, and diving in. Smith wrote White Teeth while still attending university, and it was published to great acclaim when she was only 25 years old. It’s a wonderfully sprawling novel, by turns wry, satirical, and poignant, crammed full of vibrant characters, multiple themes and threads, and brilliant, surprising language. It deals with the cultural clashes and changes of immigration, generations, and class differences.
If you read White Teeth and didn’t like it, stop right there; you’re not going to like anything else (Read more…)
By laura k, on November 7, 2013, at 7:30 am I found the preceding rtod post buried in Blogger drafts, something Allan saved there years ago. I never got around to posting it, but I never had the heart to delete it, either.
If you’re not familiar with Bill Moyers, he is an American independent journalist, producer, and public intellectual. Earlier in his career, Moyers served as White House Press Secretary under the Johnson administration, but he’s better known for the many shows he has produced and hosted on PBS.
Moyers has always been liberal, but over the past decade, he has become increasingly radicalized as he reacts to (Read more…)
By laura k, on November 7, 2013, at 6:30 am Revolutionary thought of the day: The Gilded Age returned with a vengeance in our time. It slipped in quietly at first, back in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began a “massive decades-long transfer of national wealth to the rich.” As Roger Hodge makes clear, under Bill Clinton the transfer was even more dramatic, as the top 10 percent captured an ever-growing share of national income. The trend continued under George W. Bush – those huge tax cuts for the rich, remember, which are now about to be extended because both parties have been bought off by the wealthy (Read more…)
By laura k, on October 24, 2013, at 11:00 am I would like to draw your attention to an excellent article by Susan Faludi in The Baffler: Facebook Feminism: Like It or Not.
Faludi contrasts the corporatist, individualistic, me-first, privileged, self-centered, pseudo-feminism of “Lean In” with the collective, cross-class activism of some of the original feminists: the “Mill Girls” of Lowell, Massachusetts, who fought for human rights and labour rights for all women. Describing the links between feminism, class struggle, the labour movement, and even the abolitionist movement, Faludi demonstrates how all oppression is interconnected, and how only collective solutions can affect change. She shows how an effective women’s (Read more…)
By laura k, on September 21, 2013, at 6:00 pm Last night, I heard author, journalist, and activist Chris Hedges speak at the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto, sponsored by the excellent Canadian Dimension.
Hedges is a radical intellectual, in the Chomsky vein, also compassionate and fearless, in the mode of Howard Zinn. He touched on many subjects – and credited the work and thoughts of many others. I can only hope to impart a few snippets of the many threads Hedges wove.
“A seismic moment”
Hedges called the recent US debate on Syria a “seismic moment”. The Obama administration pulled out all the familiar mechanisms used to sell (Read more…)
By laura k, on August 2, 2013, at 8:30 pm This Revolutionary Thought of the Day brought to you by my abiding hero, Clarence Darrow. Darrow dismissed many of the remedial bandages that he and the labor movement had battled for: eight-hour-day laws, women’s suffrage, child labor legislation. “We are busy patching and tinkering, and doing a poor job patching and tinkering at that.”
The working class must seize the earth’s natural resources and the means of production, he said. “There can never be any proper distribution of wealth in the world while a few own the earth – a few men own the mines, the railroads, the forests, (Read more…)
By laura k, on July 24, 2013, at 8:00 pm Part 1: McDonald’s version of company scrip (Part 2 below)
Any minute now we’ll see the return of company scrip.
In the bad old days before labour unions forced reforms, companies – especially in industries where workers were isolated, like mines, lumber, and farming – would pay their workers in scrip. Scrip was a credit that was only accepted at the company’s store – a store that charged wildly inflated prices. What a great deal for the owners, eh? They paid meagre wages, then recovered every penny, while ensuring they retained a steady supply of labourers who were (literally) hungry (Read more…)
By laura k, on June 9, 2013, at 4:00 pm The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling’s first non- Harry Potter book, received almost universally poor reviews, ranging from tepid to savage. Reviewers found the book too long for the subject matter, too slow, poorly paced. They thought the plot was a soap opera. They found the writing cliched, studied, heavy-handed. In a book full of characters, they found few noteworthy. As one reviewer put it: “Unfortunately, the real-life world she has limned in these pages is so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd that “The Casual Vacancy” is not only disappointing — it’s dull.”
I disagree.
Backlash? Impossibly (Read more…)
By laura k, on April 26, 2013, at 5:00 pm This is the first in a series of reviews of youth (formerly called YA, or young-adult) novels, which I will be reading in no particular order and with no particular method. I love youth literature, and it’s simply a pleasure to read what I want once again, with no schoolwork hanging over my head. As with all my “what i’m reading” posts, if it seems that I like everything I read, it’s because I only write about books I enjoyed.
I finally read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I’ve been intensely curious about this book since it was released (Read more…)
By laura k, on April 5, 2013, at 12:00 pm My friend Impudent Strumpet writes a series of posts that dispute the oft-repeated notion “money can’t buy happiness”. (Here’s an example.) I find this idea very thought-provoking. I’ve definitely subscribed to the idea that money doesn’t equal happiness – that making the acquisition of riches a primary life goal does not lead to a happy life. Imp Strump’s posts led me to think more clearly about this axiom and see what kinds of truths it might or might not hold.
If money doesn’t buy happiness, try living without any
For people who live in poverty, money undoubtedly could
. . . → Read More: wmtc: can money buy happiness? yes. no. sometimes. maybe.
By laura k, on April 1, 2013, at 7:00 am It’s Opening Day!
It’s always a long, cold winter for a baseball-only fan, but winters for Red Sox fans have been especially long and cold lately. When was the last time we saw a meaningful game? (Don’t answer that.) I lost interest ’round about July last season, unusual for me, but there’s something about losing every night that doesn’t inspire me to plan my life around the team’s schedule.
But that’s all behind us now. Spring is here, and with it, a fresh start, new hope, and who knows, maybe a half-decent, rebuilding kind of season for the Sox.
. . . → Read More: wmtc: what could baseball, sexual abuse, and pitbulls possibly have in common?
By laura k, on March 5, 2013, at 11:00 pm Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, July 28, 1954 – March 5, 2013.From Derrick O’Keefe at Rabble: Hugo Chavez has died — undefeated.
Yes, undefeated. Chavez, no matter how many times the corporate media and the cheerleaders of the status quo call him a dictator, was elected repeatedly with overwhelming majorities.
No matter how many times this slur is moronically or mendaciously repeated, people know the truth. No less than Jimmy Carter certified Venezuela’s elections as amongst the most fair and transparent his organization has ever observed. And the voter turnouts that elected Chavez were usually far, far higher than those
. . . → Read More: wmtc: hugo chavez 1954-2013
By laura k, on January 30, 2013, at 11:00 am An enormous number of library-related stories cross my path, either through school or this blog. A few have stayed on my mind and seem worth fleshing out.
A San Antonio, Texas public library will become the first in the US (and possibly in the world) to go completely bookless – that is, its collection will have no paper books, only digital books.
Much has been written about the pros and cons of digital books, and without recapping all that here, I think it’s important to realize that there are both positives and negatives. The digital book, like all technology, is
. . . → Read More: wmtc: three library issues, part 1: the all-digital library
By laura k, on January 21, 2013, at 9:00 am Right now there are no American women who were of reproductive age prior to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Yet reproductive rights in the US have never been more threatened. 2011 marked the passage of the most state-level restrictive abortion laws ever. 2012 saw the second-highest.
More than half of all US women of reproductive age (15–44) now live in a state that is hostile to abortion rights. Ten years ago, it was fewer than one-third.
The Guttmacher Institute has produced a series of infographics to illustrate the state of reproductive rights in the
. . . → Read More: wmtc: 40 years old and already irrelevant: happy birthday roe v wade
By laura k, on January 17, 2013, at 8:00 am “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…”
This week, I attended a talk put on by the International Socialists, featuring an organizer with OUR Walmart, by Skype from Texas, and a Toronto-based union activist. Both speakers were terrific and so inspiring, but although I took copious notes, I’m not posting a summary of the talk.
It was similar to the talk I blogged about here - from greece to chicago to toronto, workers fighting back against austerity - and an extension to an article I wrote recently: workers doing it for themselves: fighting
. . . → Read More: wmtc: are we seeing the beginning of global people’s revolution?
By laura k, on January 14, 2013, at 8:40 am I’m re-running this, which I wrote for Socialist Worker Canada (now at a temporary site while a new website is being completed). If you are part of this struggle – or if you want to be part of it – and live in the GTA, please join us tomorrow night for Fighting Austerity in North America: Walmart Workers to Bill 115. Details below.
* * * *
Workers Doing It For Themselves: Food service workers in New York and Chicago unite to improve working conditions
One of the most exciting developments currently unfolding among the working class in North America
. . . → Read More: wmtc: workers doing it for themselves: fighting the austerity agenda in north america
By laura k, on January 14, 2013, at 8:30 am I was very pleased to see this run in the New York Times. I guess it was safe because the writer didn’t actually use the word socialism. But this Op-Ed is all about the dead-end of capitalism, choking the life out of the working person, and more recently, the middle class. …we struggle with our personal finances not because we spend too much money on small luxuries but because salaries have stagnated at the same time as the costs of nonluxuries have gone up.
Even as the average household net worth plunged by almost 40 percent between 2007 and 2010,
. . . → Read More: wmtc: why you cannot save your way to a comfortable retirement
By laura k, on December 30, 2012, at 8:00 am At last, this is the fourth post of the talks I attended in November and December. Allan and I organized this in Mississauga, through the Mississauga “twig” of the IS. The talk was given by our friend and comrade John Bell.
The other recent talks: noah richler, u.s. war resisters, and the militarization of canadian culture, from greece to chicago to toronto, workers fighting back against austerity, and talking radical: a history of canada through the eyes of activists.
Allan is guest-posting this one.
* * * *
This past year, Conservative MP Paul Calandra hosted a
. . . → Read More: wmtc: a people’s history of the war of 1812
By laura k, on December 14, 2012, at 2:00 pm A friend sent me a link to this blog, written by a man from the UK, a Socialist Workers Party activist, now retired and living on the Greek island of Samos. It’s a picture from of life under extreme austerity – how people are suffering, but also how they are coming together.
It’s very scary. People are living under the harshest of conditions. Too often, the response is scapegoating and violence. Attacks on undocumented immigrants, Roma, and others read like European history repeating itself in the worst possible ways.
Yet this blog also highlights the seeds of hope. Grassroots initiatives
. . . → Read More: wmtc: unrelenting austerity and the promise of self-reliance: a blog from greece
By laura k, on December 11, 2012, at 11:30 am Of all the reasons for hope that we’ve seen in recent times – Wisconsin, the Occupy Movement, the Quebec students’ actions, the Chicago teachers’ strike – this trend gives me the most joy and the most hope. Here are three stories of non-unionized workers organizing themselves to change conditions in their own workplaces.
In September, New York City restaurant workers walked off the job and won a historic victory against their oppressive and vindictive employer. The restaurant workers who were fired and locked out of their store for organizing a union have won after a week of escalating protests outside
. . . → Read More: wmtc: more signs of life in the labour movement: non-union workers rising
By laura k, on December 11, 2012, at 10:30 am Working my way backwards, this the second of four talks I attended that I’ll be reporting on.
* * * *
In November, I heard Nikos Loudos of the Socialist Workers Party in Greece (by Skype) and Canadian activist and organizer Carolyn Egan speak about the recent general strike in Europe, and the fight against austerity at home and abroad.
It was after 1:00 a.m. in Greece, but Nikos was full of energy. He reminded us, “I cannot complain, there are people who have bigger problems”. In Brussels, the Eurogroup was staying up all night discussing “the Greek
. . . → Read More: wmtc: from greece to chicago to toronto, workers fighting back against austerity
By laura k, on December 3, 2012, at 9:00 am There are always at least two sides to every story. Long ago, in the American West, some pioneers and cowboys were killed by “Indians”. More recently, Iraqi “insurgents” have killed US soldiers. When I was growing up, Vietnamese “guerillas” – I believe… . . . → Read More: wmtc: greenwald on "both sides are wrong", hedges on the world as gaza
By laura k, on August 18, 2012, at 8:00 am When did “entitled” become a dirty word? Why do we hear “entitled” being used as catch-all slur, a derogatory description to be thrown at progressive people working for change? And why should we permit this word to retain such a heavily negative connotation?
Here are some people I have seen called entitled in this negative sense by bloggers and commenters. Brigette DePape. Occupy protesters. Refugee claimants. Quebec student protesters. People opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. Voters who believe they were defrauded by the Conservative Party of Canada.
Here is a synonym for entitled: deserve.
Here is another synonym
. . . → Read More: wmtc: why is "entitled" a dirty word? some thoughts on what we are all entitled to.
By laura k, on July 21, 2012, at 8:00 am Revolutionary thought of the day: Initially, the Mincome program was conceived as a labour market experiment. The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether people would still work.
It turns out they did.
Only two segments of Dauphin’s labour force worked less as a result of Mincome – new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families.
The end
. . . → Read More: wmtc: rtod: a town without poverty. it happened in canada.
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