Month: April 2006

Union Beer

When it comes to beer, there is only one factor that’s more important than price and taste: is it union? Molsons, Miller, Anheuser-Busch, Pabst are all good union products. Always look for the union label, comrades, even when getting loaded. Beer drinkers, I regret to report that Yeungling is on the Unfair list. Management at Yeungling are busting the longtime union for their workers, Teamsters local 830. They cut off negotiations long before the recent contract expired and threatens employees’ jobs if they didn’t sign a petition to decertify the union – all in blatant violation of federal labor law. But the law won’t mean anything if people keep drinking their union-busting beer. Boycott Yeungling, Yuengling Premium Beer, Yuengling Light, Lord Chesterfield Ale, Dark Brewed Porter, Traditional Lager, Light Lager, and Original Black & Tan. Let the company know that you deplore their wholesale violation of their employees’ rights. Demand […]

The Death and Life of Urban Planning

Hearing of Jane Jacobs’ death, I am reminded that Elana borrowed my copy of “Death and Life of Great American Cities” and never returned it (and people wonder why I’m stingy about lending out books and CDs). She does work in policy, and I’m just a union organizer. I would like to read it again, though. When I was in my final semester at Queens College, I was able to indulge a budding interest in urban planning with a few courses on the subject. Within that stale air of academic urban planning – with baroque architecture, the White City of the Chicago World’s Fair, garden cities and Le Corbusier – Jacobs’ writing still is a breath of fresh air. Her simple theses about the “eyes on the street,” diversity of use and how success can drive out success remain such a useful way for viewing street life. I still think […]

Bernie

Still clearing out my archives, I found this picture of Bernie Sanders speaking at the Socialist Party’s National Convention in 1983. At the time, Bernie was the newly elected independent Mayor of Burlington, VT. He had been a notorious left-wing activist and political gadfly, but he launched a serious populist campaign against corporate power and inequality and was rewarded by the support of the people of Vermont. After a successful stint as Mayor, Bernie ran for Congress and won as an Independent. This year, he’s running for Senate and seems quite likely to win. The Socialist Party is unlikely to endorse his candidacy this year, which speaks more to the puritanism and narrow-mindedness of many of our activists. The fact is that Bernie Sanders is a strong advocate for working people, and his successful independent campaigns point to the way that we can articulate a clear anti-corporate message while accepting […]

Being “Wrong” in the Socialist Party

I recently quit as editor of The Socialist, the magazine of the Socialist Party. After just two issues, I found the intolerance and general stupidity of many of the Editorial Board members that I had to work with too frustrating to continue. There’s real work that has to be done for the movement, and I am no longer willing to waste my time on fruitless endeavors. I’m thinking about leaving the party altogether, but that’s a much tougher decision to make, as I have been a member for nearly ten years – since I was 17 years old. Clearing out my archives, I find an article that I wrote for the journal of the party’s 100th anniversary conference in 2001. At the time, I was being hounded out of office by a caucus of pinheads. I could still find virtue in the party back then. I post it now for […]

Pages From a Worker’s Life

My studies have provoked in me a keen interest in the Trade Union Education League, and its founder, William Z. Foster. The T.U.E.L. was a rank and file movement in the 1920’s to organize millions of workers in the basic industries along industrial lines (that is, in “one big union”). Where this differed from the Industrial Workers of the World was a dogged insistence on working within the existing AFL craft unions and “amalgamating” them. Foster seemed to be a tireless organizer as well as a savvy strategist, but his own beliefs eventually became muddled by the Stalinist party line so that the “real” Foster, in his later years, is something of an enigma. I sought out Foster in his own words. The only book of his that remains “in print” is “Pages From a Worker’s Life,” from International Publishers. One of the great things about International is that the […]