New Labor Forum Highlights: Jan. 23rd, 2017

The New Labor Forum has launched a bi-weekly newsletter on current topics in labor, curated by the some of the most insightful scholars and activists in the labor world today. Check out some highlights from the latest edition below.

The numbers from the rallies this past weekend are astounding: 600 events in dozens of countries with a global turnout in the millions. What sparked the uprising that surprised us all?.

In addition to widespread antipathy toward the Donald, another driving force is certainly an outrage over the state of our democracy. Trump won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. And in so many other ways — from the erosion of voting rights to the massive increase in political spending by the super rich — we are witnessing the shredding of fundamental democratic principles. This crisis neither began, nor will end with Trump, Rob Goodman warns in an especially useful article in Politico. We include that here as a way to provide some insight into what is happening and how we might respond. Aso included is the video of an illuminating talk at the Murphy Institute by Saqib Bhatti of the ReFund Project, in which he explores shifts in the economy that mirror the shifts in our political culture. And by way of surveying the proliferation of organizational responses to the crises we face, New Labor Forum has compiled a list of many of the new, social media-fueled efforts launched since the election. And among the new-ish organizations formed pe-election is LittleSis, a winking name referencing Big Brother, committed to  uncovering the conflicts of interest to watch for as corporate power continues to exert undue influence.

Table of Contents

  1. What Trump Taught Us About Democracy by Rob Goodman
  2. Debt, Wall Street, and Public Sector Unions, presentation by Saqib Bhatti
  3. The New Wave of Organizing on Social Media
  4. LittleSis – the Database of Hidden Relationships Among the Powerful

Photo by Ted Eytan via flickr (CC-BY-SA)