Steve Early has been a DSA member for forty-two years, active in the Communications Workers of America even longer, and authored a book called Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Making of an American City, which profiled Jovanka Beckles and other leaders of the Richmond Progressive Alliance.
Unlike other Trump administration officials who have gotten, or may soon get, the axe, Veteran Affairs head Doug Collins seems safe in his position. In the absence of legislative and grassroots pushback, he is set to continue dismantling the VA.
US police have long recruited military veterans with conditions that make them prone to violence and aggression. The problem is even worse when it comes to ICE, whose leaders valorize brutality and allow officers to kill with impunity.
Many candidates for public office in the US tout their status as military veterans. Yet many of those same candidates, like US Senate hopeful Seth Moulton, want to privatize and undermine veterans’ health care.
Experiments with a shorter workweek have shown that working fewer hours improves worker well-being and productivity. But we can’t expect employers to implement this transformative change of their own volition.
In the latter half of the 20th century, labor leader Tony Mazzocchi fought for a progressive political vision that put working-class concerns front and center. His example continues to be invaluable for labor and the Left today.
In the 1970s and ’80s, rank-and-file workers often took great risks to attack a culture of corruption in the labor movement — including Mafia-controlled union locals.
In May 1970, four million students went on strike across the country, shutting down classes at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools and demanding an end to the Vietnam War.
Like many left-wing groups in the 1970s, the International Socialists hoped to build the class struggle by making a “turn to industry.” The IS’s efforts generated an important legacy in the form of Labor Notes and Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Military veterans are more likely than other Americans to work union jobs. Vets in the labor movement have increasingly joined and led fights against Donald Trump’s attacks on Veterans Affairs and on federal workers’ jobs and collective bargaining rights.
The meeting of New England’s newer low-wage immigrant working class and its older industrial working class is beautifully rendered, warts and all, by Ocean Vuong in his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness.
In a new memoir, New Left leader Michael Ansara wants to impart lessons from his own time as a campus activist to today’s protesters. But his later role in a corruption scandal that set back Teamsters reform for decades offers its own cautionary lessons.
The Trump administration wants to cut more than 80,000 VA jobs this year and further privatize veterans’ health care. Last week’s D-Day anniversary saw the biggest veteran mobilizations yet against Trump’s cuts to veterans’ benefits.
A look at recent bottom-up efforts to win endorsements for Bernie Sanders and mobilize trade unionists against Donald Trump offer insights into how the labor movement can better and more democratically engage its members in politics.
Military veterans are among those being hit hardest by Trump’s austerity push, which threatens many of their jobs as well as health care and other benefits. The cuts are starting to mobilize the conservative-leaning demographic against the administration.
Last year Dan Osborn, a former union president and strike leader, almost won a Senate seat in deep-red Nebraska as a populist independent. Osborn has now started a PAC to recruit, train, and support more blue-collar candidates for public office.
US military veterans are significantly more likely than other Americans to be jailed at least once in their lives. Thanks to mass incarceration, the number of vets in prison doubled between the end of the Vietnam War and 9/11.
Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has come under fire for a checkered past and lack of relevant experience. He’s also shown himself to be zealously committed to privatizing military veterans and service members’ health care.
In the US, the past 40 years have seen the explosive growth of a new call center workforce, which now employs nearly 4 million people. Despite vigorous organizing efforts, the sector remains largely nonunion.
It doesn’t often make national headlines, but the city of Richmond, California, has been home to a successful progressive political reform project in recent years. Here are ten lessons for other municipal reformers from the Richmond Progressive Alliance.
At tonight’s VP debate, two US military veterans, Tim Walz and J. D. Vance, will face off. Walz has a chance to stand up against the dangerous privatization of Veterans Affairs — which Biden has overseen and Trump and Vance are promising to push further.