Categories

Microfinance Company’s Own Investigation Proves SKS Provoked Suicides

Mother holds one child which the other plays with a photograph of her debt-ridden husband Hari Prasad, who consumed fertilizer chemical to kill himself on Aug. 1, 2010, in the village of Kadiri near Bangalore, India

New Orleans    Working with ACORN International, Melanie Craxton from the University of Edinburgh and I produced a hard [...]

How Can Kamal Abbas be Sentenced to Jail Now in Egypt?

Here is a picture of Kamal Abbas that I took at his office in Cairo

New Orleans   When the Organizers’ Forum visited Cairo in the fall of 2011 one of the most impressive people we met was Kamal Abbas, the long time director of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), based in Cairo.  [...]

My Bet: Apple Makes China’s Foxconn Blink

New Orleans   Foxconn, the huge Chinese manufacturing operation that provides the sweat and often the blood and tears that go into making all of the fancy and expensive Apple products, announced huge wage increases of more than 25% (bringing workers up to $400 per month!) and reductions of overtime in plants where workers sometimes work [...]

Van Heerden Must Resign, Apple Must Replace Fair Labor Association

New Orleans   In the space of days the attempt by the giant Apple Computer company, that, let’s be honest, knows better, to scam consumers by foisting off a so-called monitoring outfit that it has bought and paid for, has gone from being controversial to being simply pathetic.  The news today has the Fair Labor Association’s [...]

Apple Scamming Consumers on Sourcing and Worker Conditions

Tim Cook CEO of Apple and Workers at Foxconn Plants in China

New Orleans   Steven Greenhouse reported in the Times that Apple was claiming it was finally going to “come clean” on the real conditions of the work and workplaces of its largely Chinese subcontractors.  The reaction from those who understand the real issues and [...]

USA Voter System a Black Mark for Global Democracy

 Atlanta    In Rome I was talking in the halls of the Italian Parliament to policy makers and others about Democracy in the XXI Century, where we had an engaging conversation about the role of community organizations at the grassroots level increasing democracy and the disturbing trends in the United States through various repressive voter regulations, especially [...]