Who Will Lead the U.S. Working Class

LaborMay 4, 2013

  This essay* is based upon an interrogation of two books: Gregg Shotwell, Autoworkers Under the Gun: A Shop-Floor View of the End of the American Dream (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), 200 pages, $17.00, paperback,…

Cades Cove

Cades Cove: History Is So Much Fun!

TravelApril 21, 2013

While visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we spent a day at Cades Cove. Twenty-seven miles west of Gatlinburg, Tennessee and once a thriving farming community, it is now the park’s major tourist attraction, receiving…

Mike Yates and Bruce Williams in 1972

Bruce and Mike

EconomicsMarch 28, 2013

Bruce Williams was my best friend for nearly all the years I was a teacher. Although he wasn’t happy when I told him I was retiring, I knew that we would keep in close contact…

OWS and the Importance of Political Slogans

EconomicsFebruary 28, 2013

 Radical political movements always employ slogans that encapsulate in a few powerful words the aspirations of those fighting for a new world. The French revolutionaries fought under the banner, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” words that still…

Why Is Our Work So Meaningless?

LaborFebruary 2, 2013

 Workers in a hospital are sick of management violating their collective bargaining agreement. Their work is ever more stressful: hours keep getting longer; patient loads rise; safety rules are ignored. They tell their union steward…

Oliver Stone, Obama, and the War in Vietnam

EconomicsJanuary 11, 2013

 Oliver Stone’s Showtime series, Untold History of the United States, is the most radical mainstream television I have ever watched. Eye-opening scenes, shocking speech by our presidents, splendid narration by Stone, all make for a…

My Christmas Story (for Tatiana)

EconomicsDecember 20, 2012

 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

EconomicsNovember 12, 2012

 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…