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Category: Politics and Current Events

  • All the News That’s Fit to Print: How the Media Hide Undocumented Workers

    By Aviva Chomsky In our post-modern (or post-post-modern?) age, we are supposedly transcending the material certainties of the past. The virtual world of the Internet is replacing the “real,” material world, as theory asks us to question the very notion of reality. Yet that virtual world turns out to rely heavily on some distinctly old…

  • Reverend William J. Barber Learns the Power of Standing Together

    By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove I learned a great deal in Martinsville about moral leadership—more than I realized at the time. But I did not know what was next for me when our family moved back to North Carolina in 1991. Preaching had helped me find a voice of moral dissent,…

  • North Carolina and the Evolution of Voter Suppression

    By Mary Frances Berry Since the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively lifted preclearance requirements for states and counties with a history of race discrimination, states have passed a raft of new voter ID laws and taken other steps which they claim will prevent voter fraud. The challenge to North Carolina’s voter Identification law underway in…

  • History Repeats Itself in Flint

    By Lydia Denworth In the tragedy of Flint, Michigan’s lead poisoning crisis, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is one of the heroes. Last September, Hanna-Attisha, director of pediatric residency at Flint’s Hurley Children’s Hospital, stood up at a press conference and presented research suggesting that the city’s water supply was poisoning its children. The number of kids…

  • We’re Employees, Not Contractors: Workers Organize to Fight the Gig Economy of Uber

    By Jonathan Rosenblum | What are US workers to do about the problems presented by the gig economy? The past year saw a number of prominent liberals offer policy ideas to mitigate the worst elements of precarious employment. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich proposed that companies pay into a common benefit fund for the…

  • The Big Picture of “Teaching the New Way” in the Ron Clark Academy Video

    By Christopher Emdin My phone buzzes one more time. I look over at the glowing screen to see that I have been tagged once more in the Ron Clark dance video from his school in Atlanta. I nod, give a half smile at the screen, and continue on my school visits. Today, I’m in the…

  • Boston Globe Workers Protest for Delivery of Labor Rights

    By Aviva Chomsky If you live anywhere near the Boston area, you’ve probably heard or read something about the Boston Globe’s recent delivery debacle. Since the newspaper contracted with a new delivery company starting December 28, the entire delivery system collapsed, and subscribers have been puzzled and furious that their daily newspaper has vanished with…

  • Fourteen Steps Forward Together for America’s Third Reconstruction

    By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove America’s Third Reconstruction depends on a moral movement, deeply rooted in the South, emerging state by state throughout the nation. No single leader or organization can orchestrate such a movement, but we who have seen the power of fusion organizing in North Carolina in 2014…

  • A Skirmish Between Colonizers

    By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Two polarized positions mark the ongoing debate in the United States over gun violence, mass killings, and armed citizen militias, such as the militias that seized federal land in Oregon on January 2. These positions rest on the text and interpretation of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution: A well regulated…

  • The Absolution of Racism on College Campuses

    By Leigh Patel | Justice Antonin Scalia’s words during the Supreme Court’s revising of the Fisher v. University of Texas case of affirmative action have been rattling around the insides of many who work and study on college campuses. His words caused outrage, but in fact, they are representative of the widespread and erroneous belief…