Postal Cutbacks Blocked by Melissa Rakestraw

Dandelion Salad

Postal worker Melissa Rakestraw reports on a retreat in the attack on the post office.
SocialistWorker.org
April 16, 2013

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

A PLAN to eliminate Saturday mail delivery and slash postal jobs has been canceled for now, according to an April 10 statement from the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors.

Specifically, the board said Congress required the post office to continue 6-day delivery in a continuing budget resolution passed last month. The Government Accountability Office had also issued an opinion that Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe didn’t have the legal right to unilaterally end Saturday delivery.

Sweatshops on Wheels by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
April 15, 2013

Image by Metro Centric via Flickr

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The deterioration of the nation’s public transportation, like the deterioration of health care, education, social services, public utilities, bridges and roads, is part of the relentless seizing and harvesting of public resources and programs by corporations. These corporations are steadily stripping the American infrastructure. Public-sector unions are being broken. Wages and benefits are being slashed. Workers are forced to put in longer hours in unsafe workplaces, often jeopardizing public safety.

A Day To Defend Postal Jobs by Jamie Partridge

Dandelion Salad

by Jamie Partridge
SocialistWorker.org
March 11, 2013

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Jamie Partridge, a retired letter carrier and organizer with Communities and Postal Workers United, reports on the call for protests against attacks on postal jobs.

THE NATIONAL Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), representing 200,000 city postal carriers, has called for a national day of action to save six-day mail delivery on March 24. People everywhere are encouraged to show up and demonstrate to the postmaster general, Congress and the president that Americans are ready to defend postal jobs and service.

Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy

Image by brent_granby via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

LeftStreamed·Feb 9, 2013

Moderated by Leo Panitch. Presentations by Joan Sangster and Meg Luxton: “Feminism, co-optation and the problems of amnesia: a response to Nancy Fraser.” Recorded in Toronto 31 January 2013.

Strategies of Containment — Kettled by the Thought Police by William T. Hathaway

by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
January 26, 2013

Image by Bob Elderberry via Flickr

Many of us on the left have been kettled at demonstrations: surrounded by a wall of police, herded into a small area, and prevented from reaching our goal. The term is a translation of kesseln, the German military tactic of enclosing an enemy force within a tight cordon of troops and gradually wearing it down rather than attacking it directly.

Fast Food Workers Strike, Occupy the Hood Rally + Sen. Gretchen Whitmer Speaks Out Against Right to Work Legislation

Dandelion Salad

Image by oemebamo via Flickr

PressTVGlobalNews, Dec 7, 2012

Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered in the heart of New York City’s Time Square to demand higher wages and denounce harsh working conditions without benefits.

Labor Day: The Unknown Holiday by Walter Brasch (repost)

by Walter Brasch
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
Originally published September 7, 2009
Sept. 3, 2012

Image by Kheel Center, Cornell University via Flickr

It’s Labor Day, and that means millions of Americans are celebrating. Most Americans have no idea what Labor Day is, other than self-serving political speeches, hot dogs, burgers, a pool party, and the last day of a three-day holiday. Few even know that Labor Day exists to allow people to remember and honor the struggles for respect, dignity, and acceptable wages and working conditions for the rank-and-file employees.

Houston janitors take on the 1% — and win! by Gloria Rubac

Image by SEIU Local 1 via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

by Gloria Rubac
www.workers.org
Aug. 16, 2012

Houston — After a hot summer of mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, rallies, almost 70 arrests, prayer vigils and marches, Houston janitors — who had been without a contract since May 31 and went on strike in July — won double what the contractors had initially offered and kept the benefits that had been threatened. The deal was reached with most of Houston’s major cleaning contractors, but union officials are still negotiating with one final contractor.

The Battle of Blair Mountain by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
July 16, 2012

Image by beelaineo via Flickr

Joe Sacco and I, one afternoon when we were working in southern West Virginia on our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt,” parked our car on the side of a road. We walked with Kenny King into the woods covering the slopes of Blair Mountain. King is leading an effort to halt companies from extracting coal by blasting apart the mountain, the site in the early 1920s of the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War.

When Will American Labor Connect the Dots? by Philip A. Farruggio

by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
June 10, 2012

Image by Sharese Ann Frederick via Flickr

In Wisconsin and in two major cities in California, voters (made up mostly of working folks) chose to restrict the benefit packages and wage increases for public service AKA government employees. Some say that since most of the workers in these places, and throughout America, are employed by the private sector, the attitude became one of resentment. The private sector and non union (in most cases) workers were fed up of seeing their counterparts getting better benefit packages and wage increases. I call it Interclass warfare.

Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch: May 1st and an Independent Workers Movement

Image by Fibonacci Blue via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Apr 30, 2012 by TheRealNews

Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin: Occupiers and union activists should build class organizations that challenge for power.

Noam Chomsky on May Day, 2009: Labor History and Anarchism (repost) + May Day Started Here

Chomsky at the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre) in 2003 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dandelion Salad

Posted previously. Updated below.

with Noam Chomsky

Chomskyan
June 29, 2009

David Buccola (Buddhagem) interviews Noam Chomsky on May Day about labor history and anarchism.

May 1st, 2009, at his MIT office, Cambridge, Mass.

The Last Days of the Lilliputians by William T. Hathaway

by William T. Hathaway
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
April 21, 2012

Image by notetoanon via Flickr

In Gulliver’s Travels the tiny Lilliputians attacked the much larger Gulliver while he was sleeping and tied him to the ground with thousands of threads. In a similar way the ruling elite have tied the working class in bondage. Small in number but great in power, the elite have designed myriad mechanisms of control to hold the much larger working class down and force it to work for them. These include institutions such as mainstream politics, media, schools, labor unions, police, courts, military, and patriarchal gender roles. They also include emotionally laden concepts such as rugged individualism, a false image of socialism, and the very way we conceive of social class.

Small Business Owners and Labor in America: The Backbone of the Nation by William John Cox

by William John Cox
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.thevoters.org
March 19, 2012

Small business owners and working people constitute the core of the American electorate. They share the same origins and have far more in common than the major political parties would have them believe. Their shared political, social and family needs are being ignored by both parties, as they are cynically played one against the other.

Decline of the American Left by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Oct. 16, 2011

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

In The New York Times “Sunday Review” of Sept. 25, 2011, Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent magazine, published an article entitled “Whatever Happened to the American Left?” It is drawn from a new book of his entitled American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation. In the article (full disclosure: I have not read the book, only the review that appeared in The Times Sunday Book Review on Sept. 18) Mr. Kazin attributed the aforementioned decline to a number of factors.