Archive | Commentary

  • Katrina’s Aftermath Transforms Work in the Gulf Region

    Six months after Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast struggles with a new challenge — who will do the rebuilding?  The region is awash in clean-up and reconstruction projects, but with more than 1.5 million people displaced by the hurricane, ready hands are in short supply. In many areas, the tight post-Katrina labor market has already […]

  • Declaration of the Unions of College Students, High School Students, and Workers [Déclaration des organisations syndicales d’étudiants, de lycéens et de salariés]

    Les formidables mobilisations unitaires de ces deux derniers mois, le succès encore plus important des arrêts de travail, grèves et manifestations du 4 avril, avec plus de 3 millions de manifestants, le développement du mouvement dans les universités et les lycées, confirment la conscience profonde de la gravité de la situation par les salariés, les […]

  • Pinko Plague Panics President

    (PU) After years of government indifference to viral epidemics, President Bush today called an emergency press conference to launch a federal campaign against the “Human Altruist Virus,” which threatens to blight the nation. “Make no mistake,” stated the President, “this is a terrorist microbe.  Compared with HIV, which mostly kills people we don’t care about, […]

  • April 4, 1968

    April 4, 1968.  I was watching TV that Thursday night when a bulletin flashed across the screen.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead, shot dead in Memphis.  By the time I woke up the next morning to deliver papers, cities were on fire across the land.  The all-news radio station kept replaying part of a […]

  • Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics

    Since my essay on the Danish cartoons was published on 21 February 2006, I have received dozens of emails supportive of my argument that racism has no place on the left.  Additionally, comments on the article posted on MRZine show that there are people willing to stand up against anti-Muslim bigotry.  However, what is deeply […]

  • Business as Usual: Black Males Left Behind

    “I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner.  Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on the plate.  Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. . . . I don’t see […]

  • Cohoes, New York: A Ghost of a Mill Town

    The city of Cohoes, in upstate New York.  Another former mill town, eking out a living who knows how. Harmony Mills Once, thousands of mill workers streamed in and out of Harmony Mills, its great brick walls looming over the cliff by the Cohoes Falls, where the Mohawk made its final plunge before meeting the […]

  • The Appeal of Resistance Fighters [L’appel des résistants]

    Ci-joint l’appel des résistants. On peut aussi trouver une vidéo en ligne de cet appel. http://www.alternatives- images.net/ Ces images ont été tournées en réaction au refus de la publication de ce texte par les médias dominants. Vous pouvez diffuser ce lien sans modération. L’appel des résistants Au moment où nous voyons remis en cause le […]

  • France’s Student-Worker Alliance

    From Paris, March 2006 Students and workers in France have forged a powerful alliance against the government and its neo-liberal economic policies.  Mass organizations of high school and university students, all three federations of unions, and all left parties are coordinating actions together.  This alliance is shaking the French government in ways and to depths […]

  • Concessions in Oshawa: The End of an Era?

    In the early 1980s, General Motors workers in Canada refused to follow their American parent (UAW) in opening their collective agreement.  The ensuing conflict eventually led to the Canadians breaking away to form their own Canadian union (CAW).  Earlier this month, the CAW leadership opened the collective agreement in Oshawa, threatening the end of a […]

  • What’s the Matter with U.S. Organized Labor? An Interview with Robert Fitch

      SOLIDARITY FOR SALE: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise by ROBERT FITCH AUTHOR’S NOTE READ EXCERPT BUY THIS BOOK Michael D. Yates: Robert, let’s start off with a question not directly connected to your book Solidarity for Sale.  Some commentators say that today labor unions and labor movements are irrelevant […]

  • Expand the Mobilization on 4 April, A New Day of Mobilization [Amplifer la mobilisation, le 4 avril nouvelle journée de mobilisation]

    Le succès des arrêts de travail, des grèves et la puissance des manifestations du 28 mars, leur caractère unitaire et intergénérationnel, tout comme la durée du mouvement et son ampleur dans les lycées et universités montrent une mobilisation historique, pour exiger le retrait du CPE et l’ouverture de négociations. II est urgent que les plus […]

  • 28 March, Historic Mobilization against the CPE [28 mars, mobilisation historique contre le CPE]

    Bernard Thibault a donné le ton au départ de la manifestation parisienne qui a rassemblé 700 000 personnes : «Nous sommes près de 3 millions aujourd’hui dans les rues, c’est historique.  Il est impensable que le Premier ministre reste arc-bouté sur sa position.  La prochaine étape, c’est à lui et au gouvernement de la fixer.  […]

  • Latino Milwaukee

      Click on an image to watch a slide show of the immigrant rights march in Milwaukee on 23 March 2006. SOURCE: Kristyna Wentz-Graff, “A Day without Latinos,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 23 March 2006 March 23, 2006 was a historic day for Milwaukee.  It was a day of Latinos in a city that still thinks […]

  • The Cry of the People: The Commune in Image [Le cri du peuple: la commune en image]

    Jacques Tardi, à qui l’on doit notamment l’extraordinaire La guerre des tranchées, s’est lancé en 2001 dans l’adaptation en bande dessinée du roman libertaire de Jean Vautrin sur la Commune de Paris, Le cri du peuple*.  Le projet devait tenir en trois tomes, mais Tardi a finalement décidé de consacrer à l’insoutenable répression des Versaillais […]

  • Union Stewards’ Councils

    I would like to help organize, both at a national and a local level, a network of stewards’ councils.  Such a group would both strengthen existing unions and help organize new members into the labor movement. Stewards are the vital heart of the union movement.  We are the front line leaders in constant contact with […]

  • If a Thousand Were Not to Pay Their Tax Bills This Year. . . .

    Doug Minkler is a San Francisco Bay Area artist specializing in fundraising, outreach, and educational posters. Minkler has collaborated with ILWU, Rainforest Action Network, SF Mime Troupe, ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, CISPES, United Auto Workers, Africa Information Network, ADAPT, Cop Watch, Street Sheet, and Veterans for Peace among others. He can be contacted at […]

  • San Romero of America, Our Shepherd and Martyr [San Romero de América, Pastor y Mártir Nuestro]

    El ángel del Señor anunció en la víspera. . . El corazón de El Salvador marcaba 24 de marzo y de agonía. Tú ofrecías el Pan, el Cuerpo Vivo — el triturado cuerpo de tu Pueblo; Su derramada Sangre victoriosa — ¡la sangre campesina de tu Pueblo en masacre que ha de teñir en vinos […]

  • Remembering Bhagat Singh on the 75th Anniversary of His Martyrdom

    Men cannot be sacrificed to the machine.  The machine must serve mankind, yet the danger to the human race lurks, menacing, in the industrial region. — Scott Nearing, Poverty & Riches Scott Nearing was a frequent contributor to Monthly Review.   His column “World Events” ran in Monthly Review from 1953 to 1972. Bhagat Singh, 23 […]

  • The “New” National Security Strategy, the Same Old Nonsense

    How stupid do they think we are?  The administration has been on the road these past few days trying to package the war in Iraq as a success.  Bush insists that the war is going well and that the US will stay on until final victory and eternal democracy.  Dick Cheney told the world that […]