Sandinistas and Mountaineers: Cultural Politics in Appalachia and Nicaragua
Counter-Planning on the Shop Floor
Gentrification is Dead
5/24/08
Boston transit cops refusing to fine fare jumpers
Authority calls inaction dereliction of duty; Officers say they should focus on violent crime
This year, they were on pace to write more tickets through the first three months of the year.Complicated but pretty sweet. I've seen these thugs harrass homeless folks at stations too many times to count, but it sounds like they're in a fight with T management that benefits fare dodging at a time when lots of commuters are switching to public transit, so the net effect is awesome. The story just hit the news cycle hard (it was the top headline on boston.com this morning) so we'll see what comes out of it. Maybe they'll all just be issued Tasers to defend themselves against unruly jumpers, and the issue will be settled.Then came an emotional meeting of the MBTA Police Patrolman's Association on March 30, when officers railed against the fare-evasion work.
Officers said it is a potentially dangerous assignment because they patrol gates in plain clothes, which they say leads to confrontations with evaders who think they are being stopped by another commuter. [....]
Marino said many of those complaining were 20-year veterans whose opinions influenced younger officers.
Marino said there was no formal agreement at the meeting to stop issuing tickets, but afterward, many officers probably decided to let evaders go with just a warning, not a ticket.
4/21/08
Organizing for Conversion: Three Initiatives
An article from Changing Work (Spring 1986). Of local and historical interest. - MJ
Organizing for Conversion:
Three Initiatives
Converging on a Fundamental Priority
For more information on HR 1398, the "Income and Jobs Action Act of 1985," contact Congressman Charles A. Hayes or his Legislative Assistant, Darryl H. Fagin at 202-225-xxxx or 1028 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515
And in the North Country . . .
In early 1985, legislation was introduced in thew Minnesota Assembly by Representative Karen Clark and Senator Ron Dicklich to create a state office "to promote and assist alternative use planning projects in vulnerable, depleted and weapons industries." Like HR 1398, this legislation drew upon a broad conception of conversion. It was understood as not only offsetting worker and community dependence on military spending and production, but as a strategy for coping with plant closings in any -- civilian or war-related -- declining industry. Labor support for this legislation came from many quarters -- from AFSCME Council 6, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state Council of Machinists, the state Federation of Teachers, and central bodies in Duluth, Willmar, Bemidji, and Minneapolis.
Though the Minnesota legislature failed to enact the measure, conversion advocates won an important "administrative agreement" from state government. This ground-breaking agreement set up a statewide Economic Conversion Task Force composed of representatives from labor, agriculture, peace groups, communities of color, business, and the public sector. The state departments of energy and economic development are charged with assisting the Task Force develop one or more viable models of conversion through the use of economic development and training funds. The hopeful moral here seems to be this: that while fighting for long range federal legislation like HR 1398, we can win some conversion battles on a state-by-state basis.
For more information on this Minnesota initiative, contact Mel Duncan, MN Jobs with Peace Campaign, 2401 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55114, 612-644-xxxx.
A New Direction for Local Organizing?
Local conversion struggles can serve to complement the efforts of those pressing for higher level governmental action. This seems especially true of the Quincy Shipyard "Save the Jobs" Coalition, which has drawn together diverse grassroots groups in the wake of plans by General Dynamics to close the yard. What is unique about the Coalition is their call for public intervention: they are demanding that the state use the doctrine of eminent domain to first purchase the shutdown facility and then develop it as a democratically managed (and converted) enterprise. Eminent domain has been used by labor unions with some success in several contexts. It helped prevent a plant closing by Gulf and Western in New Bedford, MA, and is now under serious consideration in Chicago, in Boston, and by the Tri-State Steel Authority (in and around Pittsburgh) as a strategy for reviving closed factories on a democratic basis.
Shipyard's Future a Political Choice
After the May 17th christening of the Sgt William R. Button, General Dynamics plans to padlock its 101-year-old facility in Quincy, MA, and auction the site in parcels. As the largest plant closing in Massachusetts' history, the repercussions will be widespread and serious. The signs of potential disaster have dogged the shipyard for years. Anyone remotely familiar with the instability of military contracts or with the highly competitive bidding for limited Navy work, would have cautioned against relying on a steady stream of warships. The commercial market in shipbuilding has long offered an even bleaker prospect. With the lion's share of the world shipbuilding captured years ago by Japan and South Korea, U.S. merchant ships have existed solely by federal subsidies, programs canceled in 1982 by the Reagan Administration and unlikely to be reauthorized. In short, the "sudden and shocking" announcement of the demise of the proud tradition of Quincy shipbuilding was entirely predictable.
Conversion: An Alternative Remedy
The absence of planning and foresight leads to significant social dislocation, costs which fall heaviest on workers and communities tied to the failing industry. In Quincy, a steady stream of shipyard layoffs has reduced the ranks from about 6,000 to just over 1,000 workers. Could an alternative solution with some measure of public participation and recognition of the workforce's needs have been devised? In the waning days of the Quincy shipbuilding, it may still be worth taking another look, and demanding a community-based option.
For the beleaguered shipbuilding industry, economic conversion provides a way out of the Fuastian bargain of Navy work or nothing. Conversion involves participation of the existing workforce in planning aimed at different kinds of products, ones which will enhance people's lives and contribute to a productive peacetime economy. Hundreds of useful products, including some proposed by the Maritime Administration and the Navy, are suitable for construction in shipyards. These include advanced technology "plantships" capable of manufacturing at sea or generating electricity to coastal regions; pre-fabricated housing or commercial units; railroad and mass transit cars;p and bridge and tunnel components.
Building a Quincy "Save the Jobs" Coalition
Four years ago during a downturn in work at Quincy Shipyard, a group of laid-off shipbuilders, peace and community activists, educators, social workers and local clergy came together to assess the problem of cyclic unemployment and the yard's increased dependence on military work. Inspired by the alternative plan drawn up by workers at Lucas Aerospace, England's largest defense contractor, the group established the South Shore Conversion Committee (SSCC). With research and organizing help from the Bay State Center for Economic Conversion, the committee investigated General Dynamics' corporate profile, the outlook for world shipbuilding, and the proposals for alternative use of shipyards generated from unions, academics, and government agencies from around the world.
Despite a Boston College study describing a structural crisis in shipbuilding and the SSCC's calls for alternate use plans based on workers' input, most of the union leadership in Quincy opposed the idea of conversion as "anti-shipbuilding." Management at the yard dismissed the notion of worker and community participation in planning for new products as outside the parameters of legitimate discourse. Undeterred, the SSCC continued to advocate conversion among the rank and file and offered a message intended to address the intersection of interests among labor, peace, and community organizations. The campaign rallied teachers, public hospital workers, and other social service providers who supported the shipbuilders and SSCC's slogan that "We can have jobs, and peace, too!"
The project began to draw wider interest from groups outside the South Shore after the International Economic Conversion Conference in 1984 and later, when General Dynamics announced the shutdown. Jobs with Peace, the Cambridge Peace Commission, some Nuclear Freeze organizations and union activists from the yard began to build a coalition around converting the shipyard. The new "Quincy Save the Jobs Coalition" gained the support of a broad range of organizations and the active involvement of a Steering Committee made up of union, peace and community activists. The Coalition has received endorsements from union officials in several U.S., Canadian, and European shipyards as well as from the Boston-based Labor Support Project, a coalition of progressive unions, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, as well as human rights and peace organizations.
Eminent Domain and a Public Authority
The Coalition set up subcommittees to work on different projects and formulate strategies aimed at a single goal: to force public officials to save Quincy Shipyard jobs and put the facility on a stable, peacetime footing. The group decided to push for the state to exercise its considerable powers to attain the intended goals. They did this in two ways. First, they emphasized the need for a public authority to run the shipyard as a critical public asset capable of employing thousands. They proposed that a democratically-elected Board of Directors be responsible for establishing productive enterprises at the site that aimed at fulfilling human needs, not military ones. One shipyard conversion model proposed by the coalition is in Landskrona, Sweden, where new unionized industries are thriving born of a $10 million Development Fund and the active planning of workers.
The second demand of the coalition involves the concept of a state takeover. The sale price of the shipyard has been a major issue. Given the profits General Dynamics has garnered over the years legally and illegally, and the pattern of corruption that has marred the management history at the site, the Coalition contends that the state should purchase the yard for a nominal sum. The Coalition proposes the use of the legal tactic of eminent domain. This is a legitimate public recourse in which definable benefits are at stake: the employment of over 6,000 workers and the economic health of the region. A state takeover could inaugurate a true "social compact" with the workers and community who are most invested in the continued vitality of the shipyard as a center of unionized industrial work. Though Local 5's leaders have tended to downplay conversion, public hearings have stressed the central role that union participation would play in an eminent domain strategy which would retain members' jobs.
A low sale price coupled with the establishment of an accountable public authority could eliminate the barriers to a host of potential products designed for job creation and the fulfillment of social needs. A state-funded study by a consulting firm identified the marketability of three product lines compatible with the yard's resources -- pre-fabricated housing, bridge components, and rail car construction. If paired with a revitalized ship repair operation, the initiation of this type of manufacturing could carry the yard, at least in the short term.
Another key advantage of public ownership is that it opens the door to new and innovative ways of working. A public authority can initiate training programs in worker participation in management and eventually sell the enterprise to the employees. Several coalition members stress the merits of a cooperative work structure to help ensure workers' control of the businesses in which they work. Cooperative ventures in the Quincy yard are being actively encouraged by the Boston Catholic Archdiocese leading to preliminary proposals that feasibility studies be undertaken with this form of enterprise in mind.
The Coalition publicized its demands through a public hearing in April, which addressed the future of Quincy Shipyard. It is likely that coming months will see coalition activity intensify and that some sort of government resolution is likely to emerge. While canvassing the Quincy area, coalition members found strong sentiment for a jobs, peace, and employment stability plan to guide the yard's uncertain future. Whether or not the coalition achieves its goals of industrial resurgence based on new products with social benefits, participants feel that the effort has already been a success. Disparate groups with different agendas are working fruitfully together, building ties that will remain strong for the struggles that lie ahead.
For more information on the Quincy Save the Jobs Coalition, contact Elizabeth Sherman or Steve Meacham, South Shore Conversion Committee, 22 Pond St., Hingham, MA 02043. Elizabeth Sherman is Co-chair of the South Shore Conversion Committee and Assistant Director of the Program for Women in Politics and Government at Boston College.
Organizing for Conversion:
Three Initiatives
by Elizabeth Sherman
The job of the conversion movement ... workers, unions,
and allies in peace and civil rights and community
organizations -- is to mount a political struggle that
will advance government action on conversion. Lance Compa, Labor Research Review, Fall 1985
and allies in peace and civil rights and community
organizations -- is to mount a political struggle that
will advance government action on conversion. Lance Compa, Labor Research Review, Fall 1985
Converging on a Fundamental Priority
Mounting a political struggle to enlist government's support for transforming military to civilian production may sound unrealistic in today's saber rattling climate. Nonetheless there are signs that the struggle Compa calls for has already begun -- cases where government intervention to promote economic conversion has been initiated or is being seriously projected. One of these involves federal legislation introduced by Congressman Charles Hayes of Illinois; a second, an "administrative agreement" by the state of Minnesota establishing a statewide Conversion Task Force; and a third arises from the closing of a Quincy, MA shipyard which last year employed over 6,000 workers.
Besides calling for government action, these initiatives share a fundamental priority: conversion planning should ideally be planned "from the bottom up." That is, those who work in defense plants, or live in communities dependent upon them, must be directly and democratically involved in setting the goals and the pace of conversion efforts.
"Ask for the Whole Loaf!"
HR 1398 was introduced by Congressman Hayes in March, 1985; it now has 40 co-sponsors in the House. Intended as comprehensive approach to federal economic policy, it departs from other bills promoting economic conversion in three ways. First, it mandates a specific formula to fund a "Conversion Planning Fund and Office," i.e., "not less than 1% of the amount appropriated for military purposes during each ... year" (close to $3 billion this year). Second, it fosters decentralized economic planning for job creation by "broad-based partnerships" which include labor and cooperative organizations, the unemployed, small business associations, women, and minorities. And last, it places economic conversion within the much wider context of economic reconstruction: the bill's central aim is to ensure productive employment for all Americans or, where no jobs are available, to guarantee an adequate standard of living. As a result, the projected Conversion Planning Office would focus not only on military-to-civilian conversions, but on those aimed at transforming any "civilian area of declining employment." Congressman Hayes' bill mandates such longer range remedies for chronic unemployment as phased reductions in paid work time (beginning with a 35 hour work week) with no corresponding loss of income. HR 1398 builds on conversion legislation proposed by Rep. Ted Weiss of New York which calls for alternate use planning,m income maintenance and retraining for defense workers. The Hayes bill addresses the need for military conversion as one component of a broader scheme involving widespread participation in formulating solutions to problems of deindustrialization, job loss and underemployment.
In an explanation of HR 1398 sent to Changing Work, Congressman Hayes addressed an obvious misgiving. "You might be asking," he wrote, "if it might take a long time to pass the bill in [full] form, why bother about it now?" His response is worth quoting:
"That is all the more reason to start the process now. Developing support for this overall measure will help get quicker action on many single issue measures that otherwise would get nowhere. An established principle of bargaining...is that if you ask for a small slice you will get nothing -- or a few crumbs over the years. But if you ask for the whole loaf, then you may get a few slices quickly."Besides calling for government action, these initiatives share a fundamental priority: conversion planning should ideally be planned "from the bottom up." That is, those who work in defense plants, or live in communities dependent upon them, must be directly and democratically involved in setting the goals and the pace of conversion efforts.
"Ask for the Whole Loaf!"
HR 1398 was introduced by Congressman Hayes in March, 1985; it now has 40 co-sponsors in the House. Intended as comprehensive approach to federal economic policy, it departs from other bills promoting economic conversion in three ways. First, it mandates a specific formula to fund a "Conversion Planning Fund and Office," i.e., "not less than 1% of the amount appropriated for military purposes during each ... year" (close to $3 billion this year). Second, it fosters decentralized economic planning for job creation by "broad-based partnerships" which include labor and cooperative organizations, the unemployed, small business associations, women, and minorities. And last, it places economic conversion within the much wider context of economic reconstruction: the bill's central aim is to ensure productive employment for all Americans or, where no jobs are available, to guarantee an adequate standard of living. As a result, the projected Conversion Planning Office would focus not only on military-to-civilian conversions, but on those aimed at transforming any "civilian area of declining employment." Congressman Hayes' bill mandates such longer range remedies for chronic unemployment as phased reductions in paid work time (beginning with a 35 hour work week) with no corresponding loss of income. HR 1398 builds on conversion legislation proposed by Rep. Ted Weiss of New York which calls for alternate use planning,m income maintenance and retraining for defense workers. The Hayes bill addresses the need for military conversion as one component of a broader scheme involving widespread participation in formulating solutions to problems of deindustrialization, job loss and underemployment.
In an explanation of HR 1398 sent to Changing Work, Congressman Hayes addressed an obvious misgiving. "You might be asking," he wrote, "if it might take a long time to pass the bill in [full] form, why bother about it now?" His response is worth quoting:
For more information on HR 1398, the "Income and Jobs Action Act of 1985," contact Congressman Charles A. Hayes or his Legislative Assistant, Darryl H. Fagin at 202-225-xxxx or 1028 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515
And in the North Country . . .
In early 1985, legislation was introduced in thew Minnesota Assembly by Representative Karen Clark and Senator Ron Dicklich to create a state office "to promote and assist alternative use planning projects in vulnerable, depleted and weapons industries." Like HR 1398, this legislation drew upon a broad conception of conversion. It was understood as not only offsetting worker and community dependence on military spending and production, but as a strategy for coping with plant closings in any -- civilian or war-related -- declining industry. Labor support for this legislation came from many quarters -- from AFSCME Council 6, the Minnesota AFL-CIO, the state Council of Machinists, the state Federation of Teachers, and central bodies in Duluth, Willmar, Bemidji, and Minneapolis.
Though the Minnesota legislature failed to enact the measure, conversion advocates won an important "administrative agreement" from state government. This ground-breaking agreement set up a statewide Economic Conversion Task Force composed of representatives from labor, agriculture, peace groups, communities of color, business, and the public sector. The state departments of energy and economic development are charged with assisting the Task Force develop one or more viable models of conversion through the use of economic development and training funds. The hopeful moral here seems to be this: that while fighting for long range federal legislation like HR 1398, we can win some conversion battles on a state-by-state basis.
For more information on this Minnesota initiative, contact Mel Duncan, MN Jobs with Peace Campaign, 2401 University Ave., St. Paul, MN 55114, 612-644-xxxx.
A New Direction for Local Organizing?
Local conversion struggles can serve to complement the efforts of those pressing for higher level governmental action. This seems especially true of the Quincy Shipyard "Save the Jobs" Coalition, which has drawn together diverse grassroots groups in the wake of plans by General Dynamics to close the yard. What is unique about the Coalition is their call for public intervention: they are demanding that the state use the doctrine of eminent domain to first purchase the shutdown facility and then develop it as a democratically managed (and converted) enterprise. Eminent domain has been used by labor unions with some success in several contexts. It helped prevent a plant closing by Gulf and Western in New Bedford, MA, and is now under serious consideration in Chicago, in Boston, and by the Tri-State Steel Authority (in and around Pittsburgh) as a strategy for reviving closed factories on a democratic basis.
Shipyard's Future a Political Choice
After the May 17th christening of the Sgt William R. Button, General Dynamics plans to padlock its 101-year-old facility in Quincy, MA, and auction the site in parcels. As the largest plant closing in Massachusetts' history, the repercussions will be widespread and serious. The signs of potential disaster have dogged the shipyard for years. Anyone remotely familiar with the instability of military contracts or with the highly competitive bidding for limited Navy work, would have cautioned against relying on a steady stream of warships. The commercial market in shipbuilding has long offered an even bleaker prospect. With the lion's share of the world shipbuilding captured years ago by Japan and South Korea, U.S. merchant ships have existed solely by federal subsidies, programs canceled in 1982 by the Reagan Administration and unlikely to be reauthorized. In short, the "sudden and shocking" announcement of the demise of the proud tradition of Quincy shipbuilding was entirely predictable.
Conversion: An Alternative Remedy
The absence of planning and foresight leads to significant social dislocation, costs which fall heaviest on workers and communities tied to the failing industry. In Quincy, a steady stream of shipyard layoffs has reduced the ranks from about 6,000 to just over 1,000 workers. Could an alternative solution with some measure of public participation and recognition of the workforce's needs have been devised? In the waning days of the Quincy shipbuilding, it may still be worth taking another look, and demanding a community-based option.
For the beleaguered shipbuilding industry, economic conversion provides a way out of the Fuastian bargain of Navy work or nothing. Conversion involves participation of the existing workforce in planning aimed at different kinds of products, ones which will enhance people's lives and contribute to a productive peacetime economy. Hundreds of useful products, including some proposed by the Maritime Administration and the Navy, are suitable for construction in shipyards. These include advanced technology "plantships" capable of manufacturing at sea or generating electricity to coastal regions; pre-fabricated housing or commercial units; railroad and mass transit cars;p and bridge and tunnel components.
Building a Quincy "Save the Jobs" Coalition
Four years ago during a downturn in work at Quincy Shipyard, a group of laid-off shipbuilders, peace and community activists, educators, social workers and local clergy came together to assess the problem of cyclic unemployment and the yard's increased dependence on military work. Inspired by the alternative plan drawn up by workers at Lucas Aerospace, England's largest defense contractor, the group established the South Shore Conversion Committee (SSCC). With research and organizing help from the Bay State Center for Economic Conversion, the committee investigated General Dynamics' corporate profile, the outlook for world shipbuilding, and the proposals for alternative use of shipyards generated from unions, academics, and government agencies from around the world.
Despite a Boston College study describing a structural crisis in shipbuilding and the SSCC's calls for alternate use plans based on workers' input, most of the union leadership in Quincy opposed the idea of conversion as "anti-shipbuilding." Management at the yard dismissed the notion of worker and community participation in planning for new products as outside the parameters of legitimate discourse. Undeterred, the SSCC continued to advocate conversion among the rank and file and offered a message intended to address the intersection of interests among labor, peace, and community organizations. The campaign rallied teachers, public hospital workers, and other social service providers who supported the shipbuilders and SSCC's slogan that "We can have jobs, and peace, too!"
The project began to draw wider interest from groups outside the South Shore after the International Economic Conversion Conference in 1984 and later, when General Dynamics announced the shutdown. Jobs with Peace, the Cambridge Peace Commission, some Nuclear Freeze organizations and union activists from the yard began to build a coalition around converting the shipyard. The new "Quincy Save the Jobs Coalition" gained the support of a broad range of organizations and the active involvement of a Steering Committee made up of union, peace and community activists. The Coalition has received endorsements from union officials in several U.S., Canadian, and European shipyards as well as from the Boston-based Labor Support Project, a coalition of progressive unions, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, as well as human rights and peace organizations.
Eminent Domain and a Public Authority
The Coalition set up subcommittees to work on different projects and formulate strategies aimed at a single goal: to force public officials to save Quincy Shipyard jobs and put the facility on a stable, peacetime footing. The group decided to push for the state to exercise its considerable powers to attain the intended goals. They did this in two ways. First, they emphasized the need for a public authority to run the shipyard as a critical public asset capable of employing thousands. They proposed that a democratically-elected Board of Directors be responsible for establishing productive enterprises at the site that aimed at fulfilling human needs, not military ones. One shipyard conversion model proposed by the coalition is in Landskrona, Sweden, where new unionized industries are thriving born of a $10 million Development Fund and the active planning of workers.
The second demand of the coalition involves the concept of a state takeover. The sale price of the shipyard has been a major issue. Given the profits General Dynamics has garnered over the years legally and illegally, and the pattern of corruption that has marred the management history at the site, the Coalition contends that the state should purchase the yard for a nominal sum. The Coalition proposes the use of the legal tactic of eminent domain. This is a legitimate public recourse in which definable benefits are at stake: the employment of over 6,000 workers and the economic health of the region. A state takeover could inaugurate a true "social compact" with the workers and community who are most invested in the continued vitality of the shipyard as a center of unionized industrial work. Though Local 5's leaders have tended to downplay conversion, public hearings have stressed the central role that union participation would play in an eminent domain strategy which would retain members' jobs.
A low sale price coupled with the establishment of an accountable public authority could eliminate the barriers to a host of potential products designed for job creation and the fulfillment of social needs. A state-funded study by a consulting firm identified the marketability of three product lines compatible with the yard's resources -- pre-fabricated housing, bridge components, and rail car construction. If paired with a revitalized ship repair operation, the initiation of this type of manufacturing could carry the yard, at least in the short term.
Another key advantage of public ownership is that it opens the door to new and innovative ways of working. A public authority can initiate training programs in worker participation in management and eventually sell the enterprise to the employees. Several coalition members stress the merits of a cooperative work structure to help ensure workers' control of the businesses in which they work. Cooperative ventures in the Quincy yard are being actively encouraged by the Boston Catholic Archdiocese leading to preliminary proposals that feasibility studies be undertaken with this form of enterprise in mind.
The Coalition publicized its demands through a public hearing in April, which addressed the future of Quincy Shipyard. It is likely that coming months will see coalition activity intensify and that some sort of government resolution is likely to emerge. While canvassing the Quincy area, coalition members found strong sentiment for a jobs, peace, and employment stability plan to guide the yard's uncertain future. Whether or not the coalition achieves its goals of industrial resurgence based on new products with social benefits, participants feel that the effort has already been a success. Disparate groups with different agendas are working fruitfully together, building ties that will remain strong for the struggles that lie ahead.
For more information on the Quincy Save the Jobs Coalition, contact Elizabeth Sherman or Steve Meacham, South Shore Conversion Committee, 22 Pond St., Hingham, MA 02043. Elizabeth Sherman is Co-chair of the South Shore Conversion Committee and Assistant Director of the Program for Women in Politics and Government at Boston College.
2/27/08
The big picture right now:
New-Home Sales and Prices Continue to Drop
Paycheck pressure
Worries Grow for Worse 'Stagflation'
As Inflation Rises, Home Values Slump, Data Show
Bernanke Pledges Fed Will Act in a `Timely Manner'
Regulator Lifts Caps on Fannie, Freddie
Dollar Falls to Record Against Euro on Fed Rate-Cut Speculation
Oil hits new peak as dollar slump lifts commodities
Rising grain prices lead to food crisis
"Food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan."
food/energy riots in Cameroon
Food Price Hikes Roil Pakistan
Indonesia warns of unrest as food prices rise
UNWFP warns of potential nutritional crisis in Central America
"Can the world afford a middle class?"
Time for Debate on Ethanol
Bird flu in Bangladesh,
Egypt,
and Vietnam
Mad cow disease in Canada
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
"Another year, another flu vaccine failure."
Florida Power Blackout Remains a Puzzle
Paycheck pressure
Worries Grow for Worse 'Stagflation'
As Inflation Rises, Home Values Slump, Data Show
Bernanke Pledges Fed Will Act in a `Timely Manner'
Regulator Lifts Caps on Fannie, Freddie
Dollar Falls to Record Against Euro on Fed Rate-Cut Speculation
Oil hits new peak as dollar slump lifts commodities
Rising grain prices lead to food crisis
"Food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan."
food/energy riots in Cameroon
Food Price Hikes Roil Pakistan
Indonesia warns of unrest as food prices rise
UNWFP warns of potential nutritional crisis in Central America
"Can the world afford a middle class?"
Time for Debate on Ethanol
Bird flu in Bangladesh,
Egypt,
and Vietnam
Mad cow disease in Canada
Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
"Another year, another flu vaccine failure."
Florida Power Blackout Remains a Puzzle
2/6/08
"Has Mortgage Capital Found an Inner-City Spatial Fix?"
Only a few pages in, but holy crap, this article...
1/18/08
Social insertion during a recession...
... uh, so I kind of quit my job. The squares were keeping me down. Expect this blog to get more active after 1/24. Wish me luck...
11/26/07
Link dump 1
Just some stuff I'm finding interesting, which I don't necessarily endorse, and have no time to comment on. In no particular order. It's not my job to filter the internet for you, I'm just going to cut a few more pathways through it in case you're more bored than me. And I'll keep adding to this pile / editing this post until it's really time to start a new link dump, which probably breaks some blog rule.
Old Left, New Left, What's Left?
Overview of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club in Canada
The 'Turn to Gramsci' in Adult Education: A Review
Ultra Block
"It's not 'them' -- it's us!"
'I'd Prefer Not To': Bartleby and the Excesses of Interpretation
Fragile Prosperity? Fragile Social Peace
Rock In Opposition: the facts
Combat Tactics
Worker centers (2005 analysis)
2007 enacted state legislation related to immigration
Radical Cartography
Death of a Paper Tiger - Reflections on Class War
Interview with Steve Wright on "Storming Heaven"
History of "yuppies"
Nuclear Power in a Warming World
What a work-to-rule action looks like in the news
Iran graffiti blog
A sickout that wasn't even organized!?
Materials on the "mass line"
One side of a good debate on the origins of capitalism
Boston-Area Public Workers' Ferment, 1981-82
some upcoming books:
dec: Getting the Goods
feb: Rebel Rank and File
mar: When The Prisoners Ran Walpole
jun: Solidarity Divided
Old Left, New Left, What's Left?
Overview of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club in Canada
The 'Turn to Gramsci' in Adult Education: A Review
Ultra Block
"It's not 'them' -- it's us!"
'I'd Prefer Not To': Bartleby and the Excesses of Interpretation
Fragile Prosperity? Fragile Social Peace
Rock In Opposition: the facts
Combat Tactics
Worker centers (2005 analysis)
2007 enacted state legislation related to immigration
Radical Cartography
Death of a Paper Tiger - Reflections on Class War
Interview with Steve Wright on "Storming Heaven"
History of "yuppies"
Nuclear Power in a Warming World
What a work-to-rule action looks like in the news
Iran graffiti blog
A sickout that wasn't even organized!?
Materials on the "mass line"
One side of a good debate on the origins of capitalism
Boston-Area Public Workers' Ferment, 1981-82
some upcoming books:
dec: Getting the Goods
feb: Rebel Rank and File
mar: When The Prisoners Ran Walpole
jun: Solidarity Divided
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