Fast-food workers all over the US are on strike today, demanding a living wage and the right to form a union without retaliation. Did you know that the majority of fast-food workers are adults trying to support families on those crap wages? Their pay is so low, they qualify for
Continue readingTag: poverty and class
wmtc: revolutionary thoughts of the day: kareem abdul-jabbar, the new yorker, howard zinn
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has an excellent essay in Time, something only a big-name writer can get away with in the mainstream media. Abdul-Jabbar names the stark truths behind the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri. And the mere fact that this appears on Time.com is reason for hope. This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial
Continue readingwmtc: dark times in canada, part 3: adding my voice to oppose andrea horwath’s rightward shift
I’m quite sure that Canadians who read this blog already know about this, and for others, it’s not relevant. But I want to add my small voice to the chorus of progressive Canadians who are angry, hurt, and disgusted at the Ontario New Democratic Party. Thousands of Ontarians who would
Continue readingwmtc: the ndp: so sad, so frustrating, so maddeningly predictable
Where oh where has the NDP gone? One of the most wonderful things about Canada, for me, has always been the presence of a viable third party on the left. When we first moved here, it was so amazing to hear Jack Layton, Libby Davies, Peggy Nash, Paul Dewar, Olivia
Continue readingwmtc: open letter to james moore
To the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Industry: In answer to your recent question, yes, it is your job to feed your neighbour’s child. And it’s my job, and it’s my neighbours’ jobs, too. It is all of our jobs to feed every hungry child, because we live in a
Continue readingwmtc: former walmart executive leads covert smear campaign against activist workers: watch their hilariously awful video
From The Nation: Last night, Worker Center Watch – a new website dedicated to attacking labor-affiliated activist groups like OUR Walmart, Restaurant Opportunities Center, and Fast Food Forward – began sponsoring advertisements on Twitter to promote smears against the protests planned for Black Friday. In one video sponsored by the group, activists
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: nw by zadie smith
If you haven’t read anything by Zadie Smith, I highly recommend finding White Teeth, her debut novel, and diving in. Smith wrote White Teeth while still attending university, and it was published to great acclaim when she was only 25 years old. It’s a wonderfully sprawling novel, by turns wry,
Continue readingwmtc: more moyers: democracy and plutocracy don’t mix
I found the preceding rtod post buried in Blogger drafts, something Allan saved there years ago. I never got around to posting it, but I never had the heart to delete it, either. If you’re not familiar with Bill Moyers, he is an American independent journalist, producer, and public intellectual.
Continue readingwmtc: rtod
Revolutionary thought of the day: The Gilded Age returned with a vengeance in our time. It slipped in quietly at first, back in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began a “massive decades-long transfer of national wealth to the rich.” As Roger Hodge makes clear, under Bill Clinton the transfer
Continue readingwmtc: faludi: corporatist pseudo-feminism vs radical change for women and all working people
I would like to draw your attention to an excellent article by Susan Faludi in The Baffler: Facebook Feminism: Like It or Not. Faludi contrasts the corporatist, individualistic, me-first, privileged, self-centered, pseudo-feminism of “Lean In” with the collective, cross-class activism of some of the original feminists: the “Mill Girls” of
Continue readingwmtc: hedges: "when harper passes right-to-work, you must go on a massive general strike, or you’re finished"
Last night, I heard author, journalist, and activist Chris Hedges speak at the Bloor Street United Church in Toronto, sponsored by the excellent Canadian Dimension. Hedges is a radical intellectual, in the Chomsky vein, also compassionate and fearless, in the mode of Howard Zinn. He touched on many subjects –
Continue readingwmtc: rtod
This Revolutionary Thought of the Day brought to you by my abiding hero, Clarence Darrow. Darrow dismissed many of the remedial bandages that he and the labor movement had battled for: eight-hour-day laws, women’s suffrage, child labor legislation. “We are busy patching and tinkering, and doing a poor job patching
Continue readingwmtc: hey mcdonald’s: the working poor don’t need financial advice or higher banking costs. they need higher wages.
Part 1: McDonald’s version of company scrip (Part 2 below) Any minute now we’ll see the return of company scrip. In the bad old days before labour unions forced reforms, companies – especially in industries where workers were isolated, like mines, lumber, and farming – would pay their workers in
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: the casual vacancy by j. k. rowling
The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling’s first non- Harry Potter book, received almost universally poor reviews, ranging from tepid to savage. Reviewers found the book too long for the subject matter, too slow, poorly paced. They thought the plot was a soap opera. They found the writing cliched, studied, heavy-handed.
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: youth fiction: the hunger games
This is the first in a series of reviews of youth (formerly called YA, or young-adult) novels, which I will be reading in no particular order and with no particular method. I love youth literature, and it’s simply a pleasure to read what I want once again, with no schoolwork
Continue readingwmtc: can money buy happiness? yes. no. sometimes. maybe.
My friend Impudent Strumpet writes a series of posts that dispute the oft-repeated notion “money can’t buy happiness”. (Here’s an example.) I find this idea very thought-provoking. I’ve definitely subscribed to the idea that money doesn’t equal happiness – that making the acquisition of riches a primary life goal does
Continue readingwmtc: what could baseball, sexual abuse, and pitbulls possibly have in common?
It’s Opening Day! It’s always a long, cold winter for a baseball-only fan, but winters for Red Sox fans have been especially long and cold lately. When was the last time we saw a meaningful game? (Don’t answer that.) I lost interest ’round about July last season, unusual for me,
Continue readingwmtc: hugo chavez 1954-2013
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, July 28, 1954 – March 5, 2013.From Derrick O’Keefe at Rabble: Hugo Chavez has died — undefeated. Yes, undefeated. Chavez, no matter how many times the corporate media and the cheerleaders of the status quo call him a dictator, was elected repeatedly with overwhelming majorities. No
Continue readingwmtc: three library issues, part 1: the all-digital library
An enormous number of library-related stories cross my path, either through school or this blog. A few have stayed on my mind and seem worth fleshing out. A San Antonio, Texas public library will become the first in the US (and possibly in the world) to go completely bookless – that
Continue reading