Belabored Podcast #78: The Union and the University
Organizers from five private universities discuss what’s next for grad student unionism.
Organizers from five private universities discuss what’s next for grad student unionism.
Pro-democracy activism in China takes many forms. For longtime labor activist Han Dongfang, it starts on the shop floor. In this Belabored bonus edition, the veteran of the Tiananmen Square uprising and director of China Labour Bulletin discusses his vision for social change in China, and the promise and the peril of labor organizing in the engine of global capitalism.
As our television screens toggle between pundits squabbling over Obamacare’s insurance rules and ads for erectile dysfunction remedies, another health care battle rages in village clinics and corporate boardrooms. Multinational brands and technocrats are concocting supranational policies to hold poor patients hostage to pharmaceutical markets across the Global South through elaborate intellectual property schemes in international trade.
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.
Patricia thought she had crossed the border to a land where she could finally earn a good living. She ended up in one of the worst places to be a woman. As a migrant farmworker, she was brutalized and raped …