My Life as a Caddy: Crash Course in Race and Class or Career Networking Opportunity?
The intersection of class and race at Winged Foot golf course was pretty hard to miss. For me, it began to raise a few questions about how wealth and income is distributed in America and who, in the majestic equality of the law, gets to sleep under the stars and in sand traps after a bad night with the bottle. {…}
Belabored Podcast #10: Whose Walmart?
Josh and Sarah recount the spectacle and ideology of last week’s Walmart shareholder meeting. Also discussed: a GOP effort to pre-empt paid sick days; a landmark legal ruling on unpaid internships; a letter from Elizabeth Warren on trade deal transparency; and two rallies in New York. {…}
Revenue Blues: The Case for Higher Taxes
The tempest surrounding the IRS has cemented the view on the right that the American tax system is out of control. We are “taxed enough already,” Tea Partiers complain. When a Senate committee detailed corporate tax-dodging by Apple and others, … {…}
Opening Taksim Square
Istanbul’s Taksim Square rose up on May 29, and the “Occupy Gezi” movement has since exploded across several Turkish cities, taking various forms. Last week, it went on strike. {…}
Belabored Podcast #9: Who Stole My Wages?
Uprisings in Turkey and the role of labor unions, international actions targeting McDonald’s, ongoing conflict at Palermo’s Pizza, and an independent organizing campaign at an upscale New York deli. Plus the debut of Belabored Explainers! This week: wage theft. {…}
Banality and Brilliance: Irving Howe on Hannah Arendt
Margarethe von Trotta’s new film, Hannah Arendt, revisits the furor provoked by Arendt’s analysis of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. “Within the New York intellectual world,” wrote Irving Howe, Eichmann in Jerusalem “provoked divisions that would never be entirely healed.” {…}
Looking Back at the June 4 Massacre, Twenty-Four Years on
Many supporters of the Tiananmen movement hoped that the regime would reassess the protests of 1989. A similar set of 1976 demonstrations were initially dubbed “counterrevolutionary riots” but then reassessed as a “patriotic” struggle. But the situation relating to the June 4 Massacre is very different. {…}
Belabored Podcast #8: Bad Green Jobs and the Long Strike
Savannah port truckers organizing; Seattle fast food workers striking; Chicago teachers suing; and a bankruptcy judge’s blow to retired mineworkers. Sarah discusses the new NYC bike share program through a labor lens. Josh talks about the first prolonged strikes by US Walmart employees. And find out how to participate in Belabored’s new explainer! {…}
A Realistic Radicalism
Gar Alperovitz argues that a return to the welfare state is now rendered impossible by globalization and ecological brinkmanship; state socialism is equally unacceptable, but something more just and viable is possible. {…}
The Most Dangerous Court in America
The D.C. Circuit is the training ground for the Supreme Court and the place where much of the nation’s regulatory framework is decided. In its current form, it is one the most dangerous courts in the land. {…}
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Unfair Hike: Brazilians Protest Rising Public Transit Costs· June 18, 2013 ·
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Partial Readings: Whistleblowers and Job Security· June 17, 2013 ·
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Belabored Podcast #10: Whose Walmart?· June 14, 2013 ·
