Archive | September, 2005

  • Paul Buhle Seeks SDS Graphics and Memoirs

    Paul Buhle, a distinguished historian, is scripting a graphic history (in comic art form) of Students for a Democratic Society. He welcomes visual contributions to it and also memoirs of SDS experiences. Potential contributors should contact Buhle at . He may be also reached at Department of American Civilization, Box 1892, Brown University, 82 Waterman […]

  • New Orleans Black Community Leaders Charge Racism in Government Neglect of Hurricane Survivors

    A national alliance of black community leaders will announce the formation of a New Orleans People’s Committee to demand a decision-making role in the short-term care of hurricane survivors and long-term rebuilding of New Orleans. Community Labor United (CLU), a New Orleans coalition of labor and community activists, has put out a call to activists […]

  • Labor Day Poses Hard Questions

    It’s impossible to celebrate Labor Day 2005 without asking some hard questions: How organized is “organized” labor? How much of a movement is the labor “movement”? The last six weeks have torn away whatever shreds of clothing the emperor might have been wearing.  We can deny the crisis no longer. In late July at the […]

  • Keep the “Labor” in Labor Day: Remembering the Lowell Mill Girls

    “In vain do I try to soar in fancy and imagination above the dull reality around me but beyond the roof of the factory I cannot rise.” — anonymous Lowell Mill worker, 1826 Lowell, Massachusetts was named after the wealthy Lowell family. They owned numerous textile mills, which attracted the unmarried daughters of New England […]

  • Solidarity for Never? Northwest Mechanics Strike Against Deep Pay Cuts, Outsourcing

    Airline unions have made wave after wave of wage, benefit, and pension concessions since September 2001– often under the gun of bankruptcy threats. Now Northwest Airlines is upping the ante, pushing for a business model that copies non-union airlines like JetBlue and demanding to lay off more than half its maintenance workforce. So when 4,400 […]

  • Britain to World: Shut Up

    I have often wondered about the legal and moral issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Armed resistance is permitted against an occupier, and there’s no rule requiring that attackers have a getaway planned. I’m not in favor of attacking civilians, of course — in fact, I find it hard to support attacking anyone. But as […]

  • Tributes to David Houston

    David Houston changed my life.  If it weren’t for Dave, I wouldn’t be a political economist, a political activist, and I wouldn’t have a sense of my life as part of a larger historical struggle for economic and social justice. Dave, along with his friend David Bramhall who concentrated on teaching undergraduates, were the sole […]

  • Waiting for the Outside World

    In the “old days” of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on the threat of a global nuclear “exchange,” an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) foretold what would happen if a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb. Horrific scenarios extended far beyond the numbers of dead and […]