Two years ago, a group of local union activists launched a reform campaign, called “Vermont AFL-CIO United!.” They were frustrated with their own labor council’s lack of militancy and creativity, plus its inability to aid new organizing, contract campaigns, or strikes. In a rare contested election, the Vermont reformers called for greater rank-and-file activism, within AFL-CIO affiliated unions and other Vermont labor organizations which represent state employees and teachers. More

On Thursday, April 15, the New York Times posted an article headed, “How the U.S. Plans to Fight From Afar After Troops Exit Afghanistan,” just in case anyone misunderstood the previous day’s headline, “Biden, Setting Afghanistan Withdrawal, Says ‘It Is Time to End the Forever War’” as indicating the U.S. war in Afghanistan might actually come to an end on September 11, 2021, almost 20 years after it started. More

On April 12th, Coney Island’s Luna Park, Brooklyn’s grand amusement playground, opened after a 529-day shutdown.  Its centerpiece is the Cyclone rollercoaster, a rollicking breathtaking adventure of crazy ups-and-downs with tight turns, steep slopes and sometimes inversions. The Cyclone can be a metaphor for the U.S. economy of the last 15 years. More

Science has sought to shrink the realm of the inexplicable. We now understand – at least approximately – the laws of nature that govern the weather and catastrophic events like an earthquake. Telescopes and rocket-ships have also allowed us to probe deeper into the heavens to make a little more sense of the universe outside our tiny corner of it. More