Tag Archives: covid

Faculty Writing, Home

Social Security for All

By Deepak Bhargava and Mimi Abramovitz

The economic crisis that accompanied the COVID pandemic pushed the safety net into the spotlight—and millions of Americans have found it threadbare. People seeking help for the first time are learning what poor and working-class people—mostly women and people of color—have long known: that in times of crisis, the net doesn’t catch you when you fall.

In this their latest piece for the American Prospect, CUNY SLU Professors Bhargava and Abramovitz retort that now is the time for a revolution in American social policy.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

 

 

Photo credit: JANDOS ROTHSTEIN

Home, Murphy News

Update on Fall 2020 Semester

SLU will begin the Fall 2020 semester in distance learning and remote work modality. The University will continue to employ distance learning for most classes throughout the semester, until it’s safe for students and staff to return to the physical campuses.
In preparation for distance learning this fall, SLU’s faculty are currently engaged in intensive remote education professional development. A student survey has gone out to identify their needs, and a new student portal is being created to ensure that new and continuing students have the training, resources, and academic support that they need.
With regard to reopening CUNY’s campuses, the Board of Trustees has given the colleges flexibility to make plans to suit their specific needs, subject to approval by the Central administration.
Read the most recent messages from the Chancellor and the Dean.
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Event: Black Workers and the Triple Pandemic (6/24)

Confronting COVID, Economic Freefall, and Structural Racism

RSVP HERE

WED. JUNE 24, 2020 * 12pm – 2 pm * Virtual Forum

Please note: ZOOM link will be shared with all participants on the day before and day-of the event.

Black workers are facing a crisis on multiple fronts. They are more likely to be frontline workers and more likely to die from COVID-19. Unemployment rates for Black workers continue to rise even as rates for white workers fall. And they are on the front lines in the system of structural racism that leads to police brutality, poverty, and worse health care outcomes.

At the same time, the Movement for Black Lives has created the foundation of a resistance, and an opening to imagine real change.

How can we build a broad movement of unions, worker centers, community organizations and social justice activists to dismantle white supremacy? Considering the legacy of structural racism and police brutality, as well as the virus and economic crisis, our speakers will discuss ideas on how to build working class power for a better world.

Speakers include:

Michelle Crentsil

Political Director, New York State Nurses Association

Courtney Sebring

Creative Communications Director, BYP 100

April Sims

Secretary-Treasurer, Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Clarence Taylor

Professor Emeritus, Modern African American, Religion, Civil Rights, Baruch College

Maurice BP-Weeks

Co-Executive Director, Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)

Moderated by:

Diana Robinson

Union Semester Coordinator, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

Photo by Karen Eliot via flickr (cc-by-nc-sa)

Events, Home

Online Event: Fighting COVID / Building Power: Workers & Unions on the Frontlines (5/19)

Tue. May 19 * 9:00am-10:15am
Online Forum via ZOOM

RSVP HERE

Speakers include:

Angeles Solis * Make the Road New York
Director of Worker Organizing
@AngeMariaSolis @maketheroadny

Eric Loegel * TWU Local 100
Vice President, Rapid Transit Operations (RTO)
@EricEddy100 @TWULocall100

Mark Henry * ATU Local 1056
President / Business Agent
#ATULocal1056 #1u

Nikki Kateman * Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW
Political & Communications Director
@nmkateman @Local338

Joshua Freeman * School of Labor & Urban Studies
Distinguished Professor of History @cunyslu #CUNYSLU

Diana Robinson * School of Labor & Urban Studies
Union Semester Coordinator @Ddee1985 @cunyslu

RSVP & JOIN US ONLINE

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New Labor Forum Highlights for May 2020

As the impact of the coronavirus continues to sweep across the country, the long-term failures of capitalism are in stark view. Yet socialism—as both a critique of capitalism and an alternative political and economic system—has until recently remained outside the narrow limits of U.S. electoral politics. Well before the anti-communist fervor of the Cold War, socialist Eugene Victor Debs ran five times for president of the United States, never receiving more than six percent of the vote. Still, this constituted an all-time high for a socialist party candidate. For a hundred years afterward, socialism remained virtually dormant in American politics.

Then the tide began to turn in September 2011. In the wake of the global financial meltdown, Occupy Wall Street protesters massed in Zuccotti Park, and subsequently in other public spaces around the nation and the world, raising a banner for the 99 percent. And then the 2016 Sanders campaign, spurred by the broadening base of anti-corporate sentiment, especially among the young, brought this critique into the realm of American electoral politics. In comparison to the outcome of the Debs candidacy in 1912, the tens of millions who voted for Bernie in the current round of Democratic primaries, show that socialism, or Democratic Socialism, has achieved a measure of influence and reached a number of adherents previously unthinkable. According to a recent Gallup poll, 43 percent of Americans now view “socialism as a good thing for the country”; and fully 61 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 hold a positive view of socialism, with capitalism trailing at 58 percent.

Continue reading New Labor Forum Highlights for May 2020 →