From NOEBIE.net
Date: May 4, 2014
Time: 10:30am-3:45pm
Location: Forest Home Cemetery, Haymarket Martyr’s Monument
Join the IWW and many other radical, anti-capitalist, and labor organizations at Forest Home Cemetery to eat, drink, talk, and make new friends and connections. This will be a pot-luck style event so please bring food to share. This event is open to all who are interested and is family friendly.
Learn More: May Day Events 2014
The full schedule of workshops, sessions, and performances for the 2014 Labor Notes Conference April 4-6, Chicago is now available online.
Get it here: Conference 2014 Schedule Now Available Online! | Labor Notes.
If you’ll be attending the conference, I’d love to meet you. Get in touch by email to noebie@gmail.com.
Here’s another brilliant piece of reporting from Mike Elk.
During the nearly two years he worked at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., Ed Hunter, 43, spent his days bent over, crawling in and out of cars on the assembly line. He believes the posture slowly destroyed his body and led to an accident he suffered in June 2011. “When I got into the car I felt something go,” he says. “I just lost my foot—I couldn’t feel it.”
When he went to the doctor the next month, Hunter learned that he had ruptured several disks in his back. Despite this, Hunter says, his team leader called him a “pussy” for taking light duty. So Hunter sucked it up and worked through the pain.
Newly elected APWU President Mark Dimondstein is determined to oppose creeping privatization by the Postal Service.
“If you put post offices in Staples stores and pay the workers $8 or $9 an hour, it’ll lead to closing post offices and a shift to non-union poverty-wage jobs from living-wage union jobs.”
Read More: New postal union leader seeks to halt latest privatization scheme » peoplesworld.
The folks from the ICFI have some good analysis this morning concerning the very public spat between Senator Feinstein and CIA Director Brennan.
Only the direst of circumstances could have compelled the California Democrat to make a public declaration that the CIA “may well have violated the separation-of-powers principle embodied in the United States Constitution,” and also “the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”
We seem to be witnessing the complete breakdown of democratic rule.
For all the media publicity devoted to the political infighting between the White House and Congress, or the decisions of the Supreme Court, the real power in America is in the hands of an unaccountable, murderous apparatus of violence, provocation and spying that includes the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, FBI and a dozen other such agencies.
Read More: The CIA, the Senate and the breakdown of American democracy – World Socialist Web Site.
We get our firewood from a fellow that has a blade, tool and saw sharpening business here in town. I’d noticed quite a few old guitars and other instruments around the shop there, and on my last visit I asked Dave, the proprietor, if he played. It turns out that he’s been learning guitar, and he showed me a book of traditional Folk tunes that he works from. His eyes lit up as he spoke about his love for music, and his dream of playing with other musicians.
At the time, I thought of how cool it would be to get together with people in the area and just play for the love of it.
Pete Seeger’s recent passing has stirred me to think about the role of music in our world and in our lives as something other than a commodity. I’ve decided to do more than just think about it.
In searching the Web and asking around at the music store, I wasn’t able to find something like this in our community, so I’m working to organize a gathering of people who love to sing, accompanied by traditional Folk instruments. I picture it as a family environment with people of all ages playing and singing for a couple hours some evening once a month. I’m currently looking for a church hall or other public space that would be available without charge for such an endeavor. If you happen to know of one, please get in touch.
In the meantime, visit Key City Singalong | Folk Music Gathering in Kankakee, if you’d like. It’s where I’ll be promoting the idea, and posting further information as things develop.
Wish us luck.
Deborah Meier writes at Talking Union about the greed behind the “new reform” movement in Education.
“Having failed time after time with vouchers—direct public funding of private schools, the new reformers saw a way around it. Their instincts also suggested that history favors reforms that make repeal difficult, almost impossible. So the motto is: move fast and thoroughly.”
Read the full article: Follow the money to understand education reform | Talking Union.
At Super Bowl XLVIII you had the military, the NFL and of course the smooth taste of Budweiser, all in one Fox camera shot of corporate Americana.
Read more from Dave Zirin: The Super Bowl’s Military Fables | The Nation.
From Thomas Edsall:
Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” described by one French newspaper as a “a political and theoretical bulldozer,” defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism. Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, does not stop there. He contends that capitalism’s inherent dynamic propels powerful forces that threaten democratic societies.
Read More: Capitalism vs. Democracy – NYTimes.com.
“In earlier decades, the working class fomented reform. The labor movement led the charge for a minimum wage, 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, and Social Security. No longer. Working people don’t dare.”
Read the full essay: Robert Reich (Why There’s No Outcry).