Eighty-three percent of blue-collar temp assignments are staffed by non-white workers in Illinois, a state where non-white workers are just 35 percent of the workforce.

Dawn Paley is a Canadian author.  Drug War Capitalism (AK Press, November 2014) is her first book.  We conducted an e-interview as protests grew against police and military policies in Mexico and the U.S.  The drug war on both sides of the border has played no small role in generating such dissent. Seth Sandronsky: Can […]

University of California faculty, students, and workers rallied against state budget cuts and unfair labor practices at 10 campuses and five medical centers from San Diego to Davis on September 24. As a boycott of classes to protest teachers’ unpaid days off (furloughs) and students’ double-digit fee increases unfolded across the state, members of the […]

Barack H. Obama won the White House on the promise of “change.”  One of the big donors for Obama’s campaign for change was the Service Employees International Union, which spent nearly $30 million for his presidential campaign according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  One of the first changes brought about by the SEIU under […]

What happens when 91 percent of eligible Service Employees International Union members refuse to vote, as the two options given to them exclude the option many of them say they want?  Just ask the international executive board of the SEIU.  After the embarrassing nine percent vote, the SEIU board voted January 9 to merge three […]

Have you been to a University of California campus, hospital or student health center?  If so, a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Local 3299, helped you.  Some 1,300 service workers and 2,600 patient-care techs labor at Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center and the UC campus in Davis.  These university […]

Daily in countless classrooms across the U.S., teachers are using standardized curriculum to prepare their students to take and score highly on high-stakes achievement tests.  But critics say forcing K-12 schools to follow a single standard of education is no cure-all.  In fact, such an approach places students and teachers into a historic trend of […]

After a sustained campaign in which police arrested two dozen non-violent protesters in downtown Davis, California, Sodexho food-service workers at UC Davis have won recognition as university employees.  The recent decision means that 200 career workers and 450 student workers will gain higher wages and better benefits as labor union members on the UC payroll.  […]

New Schools Venture Fund has been funding America’s public schools since 1998.  Why?  NSVF “seeks to transform public education by leveraging the power of entrepreneurs to effect change,” its Web site said, by determining “the most powerful levers for impact on public education.” Apparently, raising the tax rate on corporations and the rich to increase […]

Meet Jesus Iowa.  He’s a teen from Oaxaca whose family moves to a small Iowa town.  Athlete and worker, Jesus leaves his home in the U.S. heartland after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast.  That move partly heats up his community’s fears and hopes in Iowa Terror (Seventh Street Press, 2007), Mike […]

Making ends meet is a fight for Valencia Henley, an ethnic studies major graduating from California State University, Sacramento this spring. “Each semester I have faced being kicked out of classes due not to my grades but to being late paying student fees,” she said.  “At times my professors have let me stay in their […]

Nearly seven million Californians lack health insurance, or about every fifth person in the state.  Big papers such as the San Jose Mercury News and the Sacramento Bee are urging the state Senate Health Committee to pass the Núñez-Perata health-care reform bill, ABX1-1.  Gov. Schwarzenegger backs the speaker and senate leader’s bill, which the State […]

Sodexho food-service workers at University California Davis and social justice groups such as Students Organizing for Change have been busy mobilizing for improved labor conditions.  Their goal is for the company’s 500 contracted-out workers to become university employees, represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. The university and Sodexho, […]

Ed Bruno is the national organizing coordinator for the National Nurses Organizing Committee, a labor union founded by the California Nurses Association in 2004.  Currently, the NNOC is on the ground in Texas, organizing nurses.  The CNA drew national attention when it won a political victory over California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005.  He tried […]

Absent a national antiwar political formation on the horizon, local politics can point to the wave of the future.  Take Sacramento.  A peace-in is underway at the office of Doris Matsui in the Robert T. Matsui Federal Courthouse, named after her late husband who represented California’s 5th congressional district for over two decades.  She was […]

Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]

The recent election win of an incumbent and centrist GOP governor in California over his Democratic rival by double digits might suggest that the political status quo is alive and well.   Is this gubernatorial landslide a triumph of centrism in the face of left and right extremism?  Have California voters spoken and returned to their […]

RAILROADING ECONOMICS: The Creation of the Free Market Mythology by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOKRead Michael Perelman’s blog: UNSETTLING ECONOMICS: A Progressive Look at Economics and the Rest of the Screwed Up World. Michael Perlman is a longtime professor of economics at California State University, Chico.  A prolific author, his newest book is titled Railroading Economics: […]