When I was a boy, I wore mostly hand-me-down clothes. The neighbors next door had a son a year or two older than I, about my size, and I got his discarded shirts and pants.…
The State of the Unions
The AFL-CIO and most member unions went all-out for Obama, doing their usual get-out-the-vote phone banking, canvassing, and radio advertising. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put 100,000 volunteers in the field the last few…
Fruita, Orderville . . . Mitt Romney
The orchards in Capitol Reef National Park in south central Utah are located in what used to be the tiny village of Fruita. The setting is extraordinary. High rock cliffs, formed when the earth erupted…
"Killing People in Apollo": An Update
Last May I reported on the plight of people in the western Pennsylvania town of Apollo. As a result of gross corporate negligence, many residents have suffered serious illnesses from the uranium fuel plants located…
The Year of the Strike
[Note: This story is from my book, In and Out of the Working Class. Counterpunch was kind enough to post it recently.] With a slight shrug of his shoulders, he began to move toward the…
Us Versus Them: Laboring in the Academic Factory
[Note: This was first published in Monthly Review in January 2000. It was based upon a talk I gave to teachers at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York. Noted scholar of education, Henry Giroux,…
My Mother's Auction
Five weeks after my mother died, we had an auction to sell her worldly goods. I wanted to give everything away, but my attorney said that, as executor, I had a legal obligation to my…
Mucking and Drilling
We spent part of Labor Day watching the mucking and drilling competition in Park City, Utah. Park City is famous for its skiing, but the slopes sit atop the silver mines that were the foundations…
California Dreaming
I walked out onto a rocky pier and sat watching the surfers. They reminded me of seals, bobbing up and down, carried by the relentless rush of the ocean. Then the right wave came in,…