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New Labor Forum Highlights: June 26th, 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.

As summer heats up, even those of us in the northern hemisphere can’t help but ponder the perils of climate change. This crisis should be a top issue for the U.S. labor movement. Yet unified action by organized labor to protect our planet remains constrained by narrow notions of worker self-interest and of solidarity, as well as by public policy that disregards the need for a “just transition” to sustainable energy. Today’s Highlights includes New Labor Forum columnist Sean Sweeney speaking at this year’s People’s Summit in Chicago, arguing for an independent worker’s voice on climate.

We’re also proud to call attention to Climate Solidarity: Workers vs. Warming, a brand new e-book by New Labor Forum Contributing Editor Jeremy Brecher. We have posted a chapter of the book to our website, and the entire book is available for free download. It’s full of insight regarding the practical and ideological obstacles to concerted work within unions to combat climate change, as well as strategic thinking on energizing labor’s climate protection work.

Committed climate activist Naomi Klein’s new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, notable in part for coming out so quickly after the elections, is reviewed by Hari Kunzru (The Guardian), and we include that here. The book is a clarion call for a politics that accentuates what movements are working towards, rather than what they merely oppose.

Lastly, we’re sharing an article from Wired by Nick Stockton about dogged legal efforts to delay and obstruct the Trump Administration’s environmental efforts.

Table of Contents

  1. Winning Clean Energy & Climate Justice for All / Sean Sweeney, New Labor Forum
  2. Climate Solidarity: Workers vs. Warming / Jeremy Brecher
  3. No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein (Book Review) / Hari Kunzru, The Guardian  
  4. The Grizzled, Stubborn Lawyers Protecting the Environment From Trump / Nick Stockton, Wired Magazine 

Photo by Jonathan Potts via flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: May 1st, 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.

New Labor Forum is proud to announce the release of our May 2017 issue – just in time for May Day! We offer a collection of exceptionally strong articles, notably a debate regarding the broadly predicted emergence of a non-white voting majority in the U.S. Cristina Mora & Michael Rodriguez-Muniz respond to an intriguing article by Richard Alba, entitled “The Likely Persistence of a White Majority” that appeared in The American Prospect. In that article, Alba warned against the presumption of a “majority-minority” voting block. In their response for New Labor Forum, Cristina Mora & Michael Rodriguez-Muniz take issue with Alba’s conclusions, particularly concerning the racial identities of Latinos and growing numbers of mixed race offspring. And Alba responds, asserting the significance of these segments of the population in which he discerns a politically consequential blurring of ethno-racial boundaries. In the wake of Trump’s election after years of assertions about the ‘New American Majority’ this conversation holds special urgency. Also from the May issue, we highlight a review by Lily Geismer, who examines two books and their discussion of post-industrial life in the  rustbelt, important to understanding a vital aspect of Trump’s electoral support.

And in honor of May Day, we’re pleased to showcase Sarah Aziza’s article from Waging Nonviolence about the organizers of the ‘Day without an Immigrant’ happening today in conjunction with International Workers Day. The last decade has seen a revival of May Day as something that combines a resurgent immigrant workers’ movement, a more public and militant wing of the left, and a shifting labor movement – all at the same time. We will continue to examine these burgeoning forms of the Resistance as they test their strength.

Table of Contents

  1. The Likely Persistence of a White Majority / Richard Alba, The American Prospect
  2. A Response to Richard Alba’s“The Likely Persistence of a White Majority” / G. Cristina Mora and Michael Rodriguez-Muniz, New Labor Forum
  3. How Census Data Mislead Us about Ethno-Racial Change in the United States: A Response to Mora and Rodriguez-Muniz / Richard Alba, New Labor Forum
  4. Books and the Arts: Life After the Great Industrial Extinction / Lily Geismer, New Labor Forum
  5. Meet the Organizers behind the next “Day without an Immigrant” Strike / Sarah Aziza, Waging Non-Violence

Photo by Lorie Shaull via flickr (CC-BY-SA)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: April 17th, 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.

With the escalation of US involvement in the Syrian battlefield AND the introduction of our biggest bomb ever to the caves of Afghanistan, it’s urgent that we ask what happened to the anti-war movement. Lyle Jeremy Rubin, an Afghanistan War Vet, has written an appeal for New Labor Forum, calling for a reinvigorated veterans peace movement. While there has always been veteran organizing, under a Trump presidency, this constituency holds particular meaning. Veterans are an incredibly diverse constituency, but one that is rooted in the working class, and distant from the ‘coastal elites’ that the right wing finds so easy to demonize.

We look at the veterans who joined the Women’s March in Washington for personal insights, and at a book review of Tom Hayden’s last and posthumous book, about the Vietnam anti-war movement. Finally, to close our vet-specific content, we offer a link to the Veterans Organizing Institute, a little known training program in organizing for veterans.

The broader peace movement gets an in-depth look from Daniel May at The Nation. This article sums up ‘where we are’ just before the recent escalation. And Thomas Gallagher, in another NLF original, makes it clear precisely how Bernie Sanders plays a distinctive role  in US politics when it comes to war and peace.

Table of Contents

  1. Appeal for a Reinvigorated Veterans Movement by Lyle Jeremy Rubin
  2. Veterans Talk About Why They Joined The Women’s March In DC by Adam Linehan / Task and Purpose
  3. The significance of Bernie Sanders’s opposition to Donald Trump’s Syria bombing by Thomas Gallagher
  4. How to Revive the Peace Movement in the Trump Era by Daniel May / The Nation
  5. The Veterans Organizing Institute

Photo by Shawn Musgrave via flickr (CC)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: Mar. 20th, 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.

In this issue, we’re looking at the explosion of what is being called ‘the resistance.’ The vast proliferation of organizing in the face of President Trump raises important questions Should partisans inside the Democratic Party wage a fight between its left and it’s center, or combine forces? Does the proliferation of new efforts represent genuinely innovative projects, or does it mask a great deal of overlap and wheel reinvention? Should the main target of organizing be Trump and the Republicans, or broader, systemic obstacles that include casino capitalism? Finally, what does it mean that the largest, most powerful progressive institutions  – such as organized labor – don’t seem to be at the forefront of this resistance?

Today’s issue includes a piece written for the newsletter by Tom Gallagher on the strategic options confronting the left within the Democratic Party; an article by Micah Uetricht  soon to appear in the May issue of New Labor Forum assessing the Sander’s inspired Our Revolution as well as various snapshots of what this resistance is looking like in the current moment, including the breaking news that a major local of the Service Employees International Union as well as a multitude of workers centers plan to participate in a May Day strike.

Table of Contents

  1. The Democratic Party Left After the Ellison DNC Campaign: Unite or Fight? By Thomas Gallagher
  2. The World Turned Upside Down: ‘Our Revolution,’ Trump Triumphant, and the Remaking of the Democratic Party by Micah Uetricht
  3. List of New Resistance Initiatives in 2017
  4. GroundGame listing of protests
  5. SEIU Local Joins May 1 General Strike by (BuzzFeed) Cora Lewis
  6. Indivisible Eldorado Hills Townhall meeting

Photo by Ted Eytan via flickr (CC-SA)

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New Labor Forum Highlights: Mar. 6th, 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.

This year, International Women’s Day (March 8) is being celebrated in the U.S. at a higher pitch than usual. The election of Donald Trump has led to an upsurge in organizing and activism. In the last few months, we’ve witnessed  the massive Women’s Marches in cities all over the country and, indeed, the world; a February 16th Day Without Immigrants and a less successful call for another general strike on February 17th; and the current call for a global women’s strike on International Women’s Day.

This newsletter opens with an informative and lucid overview by Diane Elson of  the current global state of gender inequality, as well as  policy recommendations to remedy the crisis.  Elison’s article is provided here as a coming attraction to the May 2017 issue of New Labor Forum. The issues she raises form part of the animating spirit of the call for a  Women’s Strike on March 8., organized  by a coalition of  women working closely with the venerable Global Women’s Strike, an international organization that has existed since 1972. Here we also offer the link to the  promotional video for the strike.

General strikes, or days of action that are meant to resemble a strike, are gaining in currency. An example of recent experimentation with a general strike was the February 16th ‘Day Without Immigrants’, described here by Dan DiMaggio and Sonia Singh in Labor Notes.  NLF editorial board member Nelson Lichtenstein addresses the meaningful difference between ‘weekend protest’ vs. ‘weekday strike action’ and why it matters, in No More Saturday Marches, published this week in Jacobin. We also include Francine Prose’s essay in The Guardian, offering a full-throated argument for  the general strike as a tactic. And we close with Alexandria Neason’s meditation in the Village Voice – Is America Ready for a General Strike?

Table of Contents

  1. Recognize, Reduce, Redistribute Unpaid Care Work: How to Close the Gender Gap by Diane Elson
  2. Women of America: we’re going on strike.
  3. Video: International Women’s Strike US – Promotional Video
  4. Tens of Thousands Strike on Day without Immigrants by Dan DiMaggio, Sonia Singh
  5. No More Saturday Marches by NLF editorial board member Nelson Lichtenstein
  6. Forget protest. Trump’s actions warrant a general national strike by Francine Prose
  7. Is America Ready for a General Strike? by Alexandria Neason

Photo by Garry Knight via flickr (CC-BY)