Tag Archives: social media

Home, New Labor Forum

New Labor Forum Highlights: Oct. 3rd, 2016

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 AFL-CIO and the Laborers International Union (LiUNA) have come out in support of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), demonstrating the extent to which the construction trades continue to control the federation’s climate change policy. Simultaneously an array of other unions have stood up to publicly oppose it. In this way, the climate crisis calls into question the validity of an old notion of internal labor solidarity that protects unions’ turf in directing policy decisions regarding the industries they represent. The fact that the planet is everyone’s “turf” has begun to force a rethinking of this narrower notion of solidarity.

To provoke discussion on this issue, we’re leading off with an article by New Labor Forumcolumnist Sean Sweeney that will appear in our January 2017 issue in which he asks: Is Labor Putting Its Head in the Gas Oven?

The DAPL has been a long time coming – years in development, with construction already in progress. Yet the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, with the backing of supporters from across the country, have been able to stop the project – so far – through a combination of protests, legal action, and effective use of social media.

Table of Contents:

  1. Standing Rock Solid with the Frackers: Is Labor Putting Its Head in the Gas Oven?  by Sean Sweeney
  2. Dakota Access Pipeline and the Future of American Labor by Jeremy Brecher
  3. Unions Weigh in on the Dakota Access Pipeline: Statements by AFL-CIO, LIUNA, SEIU, NNU, and CWA

Photo by John Duffy via flickr (CC-BY)

Home, Urban Studies

#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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