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#CharlestonSyllabus Brings Context to Tragedy

How can institutions of higher education spread critical understanding of and context for significant current events? How can we use social media to become more conscious about race, about our history, and about how to be better activists, allies and participants in the civic sphere?

#CharlestonSyllabus is the Twitter hashtag started by Chad Williams, Associate Professor of African and African-American studies at Brandeis University, in the wake of the recent tragedy in Charleston, SC. Prof. Williams sought to use the hashtag to aggregate “historical knowledge that frames contemporary racial violence and its deep roots,” inspired by the #FergusonSyllabus hashtag from last summer. From an interview with Prof. Williams by Stacey Patton at the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

Q. Where is the #CharlestonSyllabus hosted, and what kind of measurable response have you seen so far?

A. It’s on the African American Intellectual History Society’s website. Since Saturday, when it went up, it’s had over 55,000 views, averaging 900 an hour. It’s gotten almost 20,000 likes on Facebook, 13,000 mentions and 28,000 engagements on Twitter. We’ve had a few trolls who’ve tried to hijack the thread with rants about how the Confederate flag is not a racist symbol but a source of Southern heritage and pride. But over all, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. By Sunday we had about 10,000 suggestions of books, articles, and other documents.

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Home, Labor Studies, Urban Studies

White Allies, Challenging Racism

By Rebecca Lurie

Sarah Jaffe’s “Challenging Racism at Work” brought to mind for me all the ways white people can take the challenge. This short news item shares what happened when a white cop decided to stand up and #EndWhiteSilence. I applaud the stance and recognize that we all can do this every day. Standing up against racism is not only for those in the most charged environments of “law enforcement.” Certainly, as the Chief of Police in Pittsburgh — and with social media behind him — Cameron McLay had a big role to share with the world. But to widen the lens: when the Murphy Institute, along with CUNY and local unions, decided to develop and design the Scholarship for Diversity in Labor, this too expanded the space in which we begin to challenge racism at work.

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Home, Labor Studies, New Labor Forum, Urban Studies, Workforce

Challenging Racism at Work

This post was originally published in the Spring 2015 issue of New Labor Forum. 

By Sarah Jaffe

Cameron McLay became chief of police in Pittsburgh in September 2014, tasked by new mayor Bill Peduto with cleaning up the department, after its former chief wound up in federal prison for corruption. This put him in charge at a time when the Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the country, calling for an end to police brutality, racial profiling, and the deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of police officers. When the chief met some of those activists, with the group What’s Up?! Pittsburgh, at community festivities, he posed, in uniform, for an Instagram photo with one of their signs. It read: “I resolve to challenge racism @ work. #EndWhiteSilence.” The photo looked to many like a rare example of a police officer supporting the message of the protesters — the mayor told reporters that he immediately reposted the picture to his own Facebook page.

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Home, Labor Studies

25 Years Later: Lessons from the Organizers of Justice for Janitors

This article originally was originally published on TalkPoverty.

By Jono Shaffer & Stephen Lerner

On June 15, 1990, the Los Angeles Police Department viciously attacked immigrant janitors who were striking for the right to organize in Century City, Los Angeles. In a story that is now all too familiar, the police claimed they were defending themselves. Only later, when TV news footage exposed the police clubbing non-violent strikers, was the self-defense claim discredited. Two women miscarried, dozens were hospitalized, and 60 strikers and supporters were jailed.

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Home, International Program for Labor, Climate and Environment, Labor Studies, New Labor Forum

Green Capitalism Won’t Work

This article was originally published in the Spring 2015 issue of New Labor Forum. 

By Sean Sweeney

For the last twenty years, unions in the United States and internationally have generally accepted the dominant discourse on climate policy, one that is grounded in assumptions that private markets will lead the “green transition,” reduce emissions, and stabilize the climate over the longer term. Indeed, unions began attending the climate negotiations convened by the United Nations in the early 1990s, a time when the “triumph of the market” went unchallenged and the climate debate was awash with neoliberal ideas. Unions, therefore, focused on articulating the need for “Just Transition” policies to deal with the negative impacts on employment brought about by climate policies and to highlight the need for income protection, re-employment opportunities, education and re-training, and job creation.1 Continue reading Green Capitalism Won’t Work →

Home, Urban Studies

Still No Deal on NYC Rent Regulations

NYC’s rent stabilization regulations are set to expire today. These regulations affect over two million New Yorkers, regulating over one million apartments. The hold up? Why Albany, of course.

Although NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has warned landlords not to take advantage of the confusion arising from the expiration of these laws by attempting to illegally raise rents or harass tenants, Albany’s failure to come to a decision around such a fundamental aspect of the lives of so many New Yorkers is cause for concern.

Jeff Mays at DNAInfo provides a three step plan for New Yorkers if the laws do, in fact, expire: sit tight, call 311 if you’re being harassed, and, finally, “don’t bank on the rent laws changing that much.”

Photo by Ianqui Doodlie via flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND).