Troublemakers Blog
May 08, 2020 /
For decades, prisoners in American correctional facilities have worked for no wages or mere pennies an hour. As the United States attempts to reduce transmission of COVID-19, more than a dozen states are now relying on this captive labor force to manufacture personal protective equipment badly needed by health care workers and other frontline responders. »
May 07, 2020 /
May 06, 2020 /
Early general quarantine in Argentina has succeeded in stopping the massive spread of COVID-19. Alberto Fernandez’s government decreed a national quarantine on March 20 when the total number of COVID-19 cases in Argentina hadn’t reached 100. Today the number of cases has not reached 5,000 and the spread appears to be controlled. »
May 05, 2020 /
By January 2020 I was feeling disenchanted with my union. As proud as I was of my colleagues and fellow members, I believed that we had a top-down organization.
I knew we could do better but I didn’t know how to begin. »
May 04, 2020 /
Unionized faculty and staff at the Vermont state colleges are in a fight to defend their jobs and schools, which teach working class students mainly from rural parts of the state. Last month Chancellor Jeb Spaulding announced the immediate, permanent closure of three of the six state colleges. »
May 04, 2020 /
This is an excerpt from the forthcoming revised and expanded 50th anniversary edition of Strike! by Jeremy Brecher, PM Press, June 2020. The publisher is raising funds on Kickstarter to bring the book to new audiences; give here. Also, today at »
May 01, 2020 /
In a cataclysmic health crisis, it’s plain to see how essential the work of journalists has become. The public is turning to news media sources in record numbers, particularly online, to answer burning questions: »
April 29, 2020 /
In United Teachers Los Angeles, our 34,000-member union, we used Contract Action Teams (CAT) in every school to build up to our winning strike in January 2019. »
April 29, 2020 /
My first teaching assignment was in a special education classroom in an elementary school basement; above the door in red were the words “Shelter Inside.”
I read those words every morning on my way in. The relationships inside the classroom were our shelter, and the community we built together made learning possible. »
April 28, 2020 /
For most nurses and other health care workers it's been the most traumatic month of our careers. We knew we were going into this world-historic challenge with a crippled, fractured, understaffed, and under-capacity health care system. What we didn't quite realize was that there would be no real plan to protect us. »