Now here’s an interesting calendar of events.June 27-29: The Negotiating Committee for CUPE Local 1989, Mississauga Library Workers Union, returns to the bargaining table for three days.June 30: The Negotiating Committee presents membership with a sett… . . . → Read More: wmtc: it’s crunch time at the bargaining table
On the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, these Revolutionary Thoughts of the Day are brought to you by the great Irish socialist, James Connolly.The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. (1910)This speech, from 1897, i… . . . → Read More: wmtc: rtod: we only want the earth  Comments are closed   Feminism, history, labour., poverty and class, revolutionary thought of the day, Socialism Last week I attended the CUPE Ontario Library Workers Conference, my second year, and my first since being elected to the organizing committee. This year’s theme was precarious work, and nothing could be more relevant to library work today.All three ke… . . . → Read More: wmtc: precariously yours: notes from the 2016 cupe ontario library workers conference I’ve had a longstanding interest in prison libraries, and was happy to meet another librarian-friend who shares this. But I was very pleasantly surprised at the large turnout for the talk Prisons and Libraries: A Relationship Worth Incubating at t… . . . → Read More: wmtc: dispatches from ola 2016, part 2: libraries and prisons In library school we talked a lot about the digital divide, the ever-increasing gap between those who have access to information and communication technology, and those who do not. Public libraries are one of the very few institutions that exist to bri… . . . → Read More: wmtc: things i heard at the library: digital divide edition (#20) I see a lot of excitement online, in places like Common Dreams and The Nation, and in my Facebook feed, about Bernie Sanders, supposedly remaking US politics, and Pope Francis, supposedly remaking the Roman Catholic Church. About Sanders, I shake my head and wonder why long-time Democrat voters do not see him and his candidacy . . . → Read More: wmtc: bernie sanders, the pope, and the politics of amnesia Comments are closed indigenous peoples, lgbt stuff, poverty and class, reproductive rights, sexual assault, US politics I stumbled on this letter to the New York Times Book Review from a few weeks ago. It’s in response to a review of two books about precarious work – one about technology threatening jobs of even the most educated people, and another about the rise of unpaid labour. Barbara Ehrenreich’s chilling review of Martin . . . → Read More: wmtc: wmtc 2015-06-21 17:00:00 Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss is an excellent addition to a bookshelf that includes works by Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Marian Nestle and others who write about the health of our food and the un-health of the industrial food system. Moss lifts the curtain on the giant . . . → Read More: wmtc: what i’m reading: salt sugar fat by michael moss The resurgent workers’ movement scored a huge victory earlier this year, when Walmart announced it was raising wages – a step on the road to a true living wage and the right to unionize without fear of harassment. Other big corporations, such as Target, TJ Maxx, and Marshalls, followed with similar wage-hike announcements. Naturally, it . . . → Read More: wmtc: mcdonald’s announces phony wage increase: workers rising on april 15 Workers in the US have won a significant victory in their struggle for dignity and a living wage. This week Walmart announced that within one year, all current Walmart employees will be paid at least $10/hour, and that newly-hired workers will start at $9.00/hour, with a real opportunity to earn $10/hour with six months. While . . . → Read More: wmtc: walmart increases wages: workers united are winning, and the struggle must continue Katha Pollitt’s new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, is a powerful gust of fresh, clean air that blows away the toxic stench of the current discourse about abortion. Pro is a thorough, no-holds-barred takedown of the hypocrisy of anti-abortion-rights movement – not only in the most obvious sense that people who claim to . . . → Read More: wmtc: what i’m reading: pro: reclaiming abortion rights by katha pollitt Revolutionary thought of the day: Hunger isn’t about the amount of food around. It’s about being able to afford and control that food. After all, the U.S. has more food than it knows what to do with, and still 50 million people are food insecure. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value . . . → Read More: wmtc: rtod Comments are closed environment, food issues, poverty and class, revolutionary thought of the day, what i'm reading Revolutionary thought of the day: …if there is a reason for social movements to exist, it is not to accept dominant values as fixed and unchangeable but to offer other ways to live – to wage, and win, a battle of cultural worldviews. That means laying out a vision of the world that competes directly . . . → Read More: wmtc: rotd: this changes everything Comments are closed environment, poverty and class, privatization doesn't work, revolutionary thought of the day, what i'm reading Last Thursday, fast-food workers in more than 150 US cities went on strike. Some 500 workers were arrested for civil disobedience, including this man, José Carillo, an 81-year-old McDonald’s worker. In Detroit, there were so many arrests that the police gave up: they ran out of handcuffs. There’s a very short video compilation . . . → Read More: wmtc: 150 cities + 500 arrests = whatever it takes for $15 Fast-food workers all over the US are on strike today, demanding a living wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. Did you know that the majority of fast-food workers are adults trying to support families on those crap wages? Their pay is so low, they qualify for food stamps! So taxpayers . . . → Read More: wmtc: fast-food workers are on strike today. you can support their cause. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has an excellent essay in Time, something only a big-name writer can get away with in the mainstream media. Abdul-Jabbar names the stark truths behind the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri. And the mere fact that this appears on Time.com is reason for hope. This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the . . . → Read More: wmtc: revolutionary thoughts of the day: kareem abdul-jabbar, the new yorker, howard zinn Comments are closed Activism, bigotry, democracy movements, history, poverty and class, revolutionary thought of the day I’m quite sure that Canadians who read this blog already know about this, and for others, it’s not relevant. But I want to add my small voice to the chorus of progressive Canadians who are angry, hurt, and disgusted at the Ontario New Democratic Party. Thousands of Ontarians who would normally vote NDP are either . . . → Read More: wmtc: dark times in canada, part 3: adding my voice to oppose andrea horwath’s rightward shift Where oh where has the NDP gone? One of the most wonderful things about Canada, for me, has always been the presence of a viable third party on the left. When we first moved here, it was so amazing to hear Jack Layton, Libby Davies, Peggy Nash, Paul Dewar, Olivia Chow, Linda Duncan, and many . . . → Read More: wmtc: the ndp: so sad, so frustrating, so maddeningly predictable To the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Industry: In answer to your recent question, yes, it is your job to feed your neighbour’s child. And it’s my job, and it’s my neighbours’ jobs, too. It is all of our jobs to feed every hungry child, because we live in a society, and that’s what society . . . → Read More: wmtc: open letter to james moore 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 . . . → Read More: wmtc: former walmart executive leads covert smear campaign against activist workers: watch their hilariously awful video 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 . . . → Read More: wmtc: what i’m reading: nw by zadie smith 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 . . . → Read More: wmtc: more moyers: democracy and plutocracy don’t mix 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 . . . → Read More: wmtc: rtod 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 . . . → Read More: wmtc: faludi: corporatist pseudo-feminism vs radical change for women and all working people | ||
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