Books

6/12 Book Talk: Steve Early on "Save Our Unions"

9 June 2014 - 12:00am | superuser

by Editor

How can we save our unions? Find out at a book talk and discussion of progressive labor initiatives in Massachusetts and other states.

Date: Thursday, June 12th
Time: 7 p.m.
Porter Square Books
Porter Square Mall
25 White St., Cambridge, MA 02140
(and join the after-party, 8:30 to 10 p.m. at Christopher’s Bar, 1920 Mass Ave, just across the street)

"This book shows what it takes to defend democracy, workers rights,and social justice unionism."
DOLORES HUERTA, co-founder, United Farm Workers

Rebuilding the Labor Movement

29 November 2013 - 6:39pm | superuser

by Greg King

Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress
by Steve Early
New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013

At the beginning of 2013, American workers were reeling from body blows -- in Michigan among other places. How does that state transmogrify from being the heart of the labor movement to a "right-to-work (for less)" locale, taking its place alongside the Deep South? This anti-worker plague swept through surrounding states. Indiana, Wisconsin and Ohio, in that order, took away workers' right to negotiate their conditions, even though this tack was defeated by a vote of the public in Ohio in November 2011. Indiana enacted a right-to-work law affecting private sector employees. A year after the Ohio vote, workers in Michigan were defeated on two referenda concerning government workers' ability to negotiate. At that stage, what happened in the latter state shouldn't have shocked anyone.

Book Review: Gold Rush In The Jungle

12 June 2013 - 2:34am | superuser

by Shirley Moskow

Gold Rush In The Jungle by Dan Drollette Jr, The Race to Discover and Defend the Rarest Animals of Vietnam’s “Lost World” (Crown Publishers, New York, 316 pages, $25.00)

Award-winning science writer Dan Drollette’s first book is as exciting as an Indiana Jones jungle adventure, with important differences. The good guys and the bad guys in “Gold Rush in the Jungle” are real people, and the timely tale is true.

Endless Resistance as Chronicled by a Former Boston-based Organizer

6 September 2011 - 11:54pm | suren

by Suren Moodliar

"No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy" by writer and formerly Boston-based organizer Wendy Call covers a range of topics better known of than they areunderstood: indigenous struggles to preserve livelihoods, environments, language and identity; resistance to corporate globalization; popular education, bi-lingualism and interculturalism; and, in an older frame, development and underdevelopment.

Review: "30 Days of Race"

4 May 2011 - 4:18pm | CCI

by Amy Ferguson (Advocate)

A young man decides to confront race by questioning strangers on the street. The result of the process is powerful. In his first conversation, the stranger seemed to search deep inside himself for his understanding of race in order to genuinely help J.A. Mitchell and offer him some closure. Mitchell developed these conversations into the book 30 Days of Race.

Fratricidal Conflicts: A Review of Steve Early's "Civil Wars in U.S. Labor"

30 October 2010 - 12:00am | superuser

by Greg King

Steve Early's new book goes into the sad, recent history of fratricide within and between unions. He particularly concentrates on the roles SEIU has played in this battle between brothers and sisters. To any reader, this book may seem to be overly anti-SEIU. The sad truth, however, is that, especially under Andy Stern, SEIU's roles have been not much short of nefarious.

Open Media Boston

metro news from the ground up