This week, Sarah and Michelle consider tough questions about academic labor, free speech, technology, and incarceration. Plus an interview with Bonnie Castillo on the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and the role of labor in disaster relief.
The past couple of weeks have offered glimmers of hope on the minimum wage front. Successful ballot measures in New Jersey and SeaTac, Washington (the Seattle suburb surrounding the airport) marked the latest efforts of state and local governments to …
What does it mean to lose your citizenship? It’s subtle: you can’t pick out the stateless in a crowd. But lacking national identity, stateless people lack national protection. They are generally barred from access to schooling, health care, and jobs; …
This week on Belabored: looking forward after the elections, Walmart workers on strike again, and the dangers of trading tax breaks for “job creation.” Then, an in-depth look at the world of outsourcing: labor struggles in China and Bangladesh, the shady world of global temp agencies, and outsourcing right here at home. Featuring an interview with Bangladeshi labor organizer Kalpona Akter
On October 24, 2013, we celebrated Dissent’s sixtieth anniversary at the United Federation of Teachers hall in New York City. The event brought together readers, writers, and editors, from all over the country and from every generation of Dissenters. We …
Everyone now knows that “the tuition is too damn high,” but lawmakers have only proposed making it a little easier for the indebted to pay off their creditors. Absent from the debate is a genuinely “public option” that would turn education into a binding democratic right.
The congressional tantrum over Obamacare ended—as most such outbursts do—with lingering sniffles of discontent, general weariness, and stern recriminations. But it also ended, somewhat surprisingly, with most of the adults in the room talking quietly about a grand budgetary bargain …
The progressive Democrat is going to win today’s race for mayor of New York City, but what his victory will mean remains to be seen. As those who seek progressive changes in government and society should know, their work begins, …
This week on Belabored, Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen look at New York after Superstorm Sandy. Who did the work of the recovery and how has it affected them, who’s out of a job, what did Sandy teach us about what a union can do? Featuring NYSNA president Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, with her thoughts on how Sandy made people look at their union–and the world–differently. They also look at some scary stuff for Halloween: a candy factory explosion, inside an anti-union captive audience meeting, and more.
The following remarks were delivered at Dissent’s sixtieth anniversary celebration on October 24, 2013. In the summer of 1956, I had just graduated from Brandeis University; Judy and I were living in a tiny apartment on top of a noisy …
According to a recent article in the New York Times, more than 2 million Syrians have fled or been forced out of the country, and more than twice that number have been displaced from their homes inside the country. This …
Privatization of public infrastructure through “public-private partnerships,” or “P3s,” is the rage in states these days. In Maryland, transportation officials now propose to use this method to build a new light rail line—called the Purple Line—through the suburbs of Washington, …
American politics is a famously contentious theater, especially today. But the vast majority of liberals, conservatives, and Washington journalists all seem to agree that “extremism” is appalling and should be eradicated. Yet the meaning of the term is as prey …
This week on Belabored, Sarah and guest co-host Peter Frase discuss international solidarity campaigns with American workers and give an update on the situation in Detroit. Then, independent journalist Susie Cagle joins them to talk about labor unrest in the Bay Area, where solidarity can be hard to come by.
Lost in the political theatrics of the shutdown and its resolution lies a simple and uncomfortable truth: if congressional Republicans failed miserably in their gambit to defund the Affordable Care Act or put Social Security on the chopping block, they …
