It hasn’t been a good year for American organized labor. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual estimate of union membership in the United States. The graphic below summarizes the major trends, drawing on the work of …
Cross-posted from 972mag.com: 1. The Future Government At the time of writing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s base of Orthodox and right-wing parties has sixty Knesset seats—the same as the potential opposition. Estimates are that the Jewish Home party will finish …
An Unlikely Martyr I’m not going to waste my life fighting over a little issue like copyright. Health care, financial reform—those are the issues that I work on. Not something obscure like copyright law. This was Aaron Swartz’s initial reaction, …
If you go to Metacritic and look up the reviews of Zero Dark Thirty, you’ll come away with the impression that it’s a masterpiece. It has a “metascore” of 95, signifying “universal acclaim.” The New York Times called it “unexpectedly …
In recent posts I’ve suggested various ways of looking at the national job numbers. In “Unemployment Numbers: The Long View,” I used a simple “back to pre-recession jobs” threshold to compare the 2007 recession and recovery to the trajectories of all …
Beate Sirota Gordon secured her place in Japanese history practically by virtue of being “the only woman in the room.” That room was the ballroom of the Daiichi Building in occupied Tokyo where the American Occupation’s Government Section cobbled together …
Even among ambitious, intelligent, type A+ activists, there are extraordinary people who stand out above the flock: leaders and individuals who by force of effort, intellect, oratory, or good works are remarkable and attract and demand our attention. Gerda Lerner, …
In the last month, two Dissent editors have hosted installments of After Words, a show broadcast on C-SPAN’s Book TV. Co-editor Michael Kazin interviewed historian Peter Kuznick and director Oliver Stone about the companion book to their recent Showtime series, …
The December U.S. jobs report offered little to cheer about. The country counted 155,000 new non-farm jobs in the last month of 2012, a rate of growth that echoed the average monthly job gain for the last year (about 153,000). …
One of Robert Bork’s last acts was to bless Google’s near-monopoly over search advertising as “pro-competitive” in an October 2012 white paper commissioned by Google. On Thursday the Federal Trade Commission showed, once again, Bork’s enduring influence.
Seventy-four years ago this month, sit-down strikers in Flint, Michigan began to give organizational shape and meaning to New Deal labor law. Last week, in a lame-duck legislative tantrum, Michigan marked that anniversary by becoming the nation’s twenty-fourth “right-to-work” state. …
Another mass shooting has rocked the country, the second most deadly in our history after Virginia Tech. As we try to make sense of it, we look for patterns in an attempt to preempt future slaughters. Were the guns purchased …
In the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting in Newtown, many Americans are wondering when we can begin a calm and rational public discussion of gun policy. Once upon a time in America, even Republicans favored robust regulation of firearms. …
The murders in Newtown, Connecticut bring fourteen-year-old Emmett Till to mind. Till was murdered in the town of Money, Mississippi in August 1955. Some say this was the spark that started the civil rights movement. Less than six months after …
Unionists have never enjoyed true security in America. During the early nineteenth century, they got hauled into court for “conspiring to restrain trade.” In the heyday of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, they got accused of fomenting violence and …
