May 9, 2022 New Orleans Here goes my semi-annual contribution to the blog Working-Class Perspectives. Finally, it’s a new morning for workers in America. For at least a brief time, while the Biden administration is alive, even if unwell, and the Supreme Court has not yet brought the darkness and ended our parade, opportunity …
Backseat Driving on Choice: The Fight is Never Over
May 8, 2022 Pearl River With the leak of Justice Alito’s preposterous draft brief overturning Roe v. Wade, the commentariat in the news, social media, city streets, and kitchen tables is in full force. One of the most interesting pieces I have read offered an explanation for this fifty-year rearguard fight to overturn the …
Hail to the Chief and the Rank and File
May 7, 2022 New Orleans Labor Secretary Martin Walsh, also former Mayor of Boston and a union leader before his election and appointment to the cabinet, started his remarks in a refreshing Boston brogue with a laughing jab at the president of Georgetown University as he touted being a graduate of Holy Cross …
John J. Sweeney’s Celebratory and Complicated Legacy
May 6, 2022 Washington John Sweeny was the head of the Service Employees in 1984, when the United Labor Unions, affiliated with SEIU. I met him then. I last saw him in 2009 at a packed, standing room only gathering at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall when he was given an honorary degree there, right …
No Mas Masks
May 5, 2022 Washington In the hassle that air travel has become over the last several years, I was out of the house by 4am for a 6am flight, regardless of having already printed my boarding pass, having no luggage to check, and getting to go through a fast line. You have to …