In the long relay race of oppressed communities and the global working class, Chuck Turner picked up the baton in the 1960s as a young activist in the Northern Student Movement (a wing of the civil rights movement). By Christmas Day 2019 when he walked on, that beginning had been eclipsed by a series of powerful base-building projects—many that at once challenged the ruling class while creatively empowering the excluded and the exploited.
BOLD EAGLES: FOLLOWING DISAPPOINTING CITY COUNCIL HEARING ON STUDENT LABOR, BC’S GRADUATE UNION PUSHES HARDER
This is not the first time BCGEU-UAW has caught the attention of the Boston City Council, which passed the Resolution Affirming the Rights of Graduate Student Workers to Organize for Fair Working Conditions in April to specifically call out BC’s treatment of their graduate student workers.
GIVE MA JOURNALISM COMMISSION SEATS TO WORKING JOURNALISTS
This week, I joined fellow journalists, journalism educators, and members of the public at large in testifying on a bill to form a Mass journalism commission that is currently before the state legislature. In view of the potential importance of the initiative, my column this week is simply the text of my testimony. For […]
LABOR ACTION IN LYNN
Union and community activists respond to work accident at luxury development site On June 19, a diverse group of 50 people, union members and community allies together, entered a Transformative Transit Oriented Development meeting in Lynn. They marched into the Lynn Museum in silence, carrying signs linking safe working conditions, affordable housing, and […]
RECYCLING FOLLOW-UP: THE ROAD TO ZERO
Despite a relative win for recycling workers, living wage advocates pledge to keep on fighting
WILL BOSTON SET A NEW REGIONAL PRECEDENT AND FINALLY PAY RECYCLING WORKERS A LIVING WAGE?
For the first time in the city’s history, Boston’s living wage ordinance might finally get applied to low-paid workers sorting the city’s recycling …
NONPROFIT MODEL NOT A PANACEA FOR AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA
Would-be reformers need to keep that in mind A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column about a bill (S. 80) filed with the Mass legislature by Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D – Marblehead) and Sen. Brendan Crighton (D – Lynn) that aims to start a volunteer commission to assess the state of local […]
IT’S TIME TO BRING BACK RENT CONTROL IN MASSACHUSETTS
Some cause for hope in new tenant protection legislation being filed at the State House Yesterday, I saw some good news in the local press. A rarity to be sure. The Boston Globe reported that Rep. Mike Connolly and a coalition of other state legislators are about to file a rent control bill. […]
PROPOSED STATE JOURNALISM COMMISSION NEEDS BROADER MEMBERSHIP
More working journalists, less elite institutes Chris Faraone,* John Loftus,** and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to rebuild American journalism. Pretty much from the ground up, since so many news outlets and jobs in the field have been destroyed in the last quarter century. And a growing number of […]
THIS IS U.S.: A COMMUNITY CONFRONTS STIGMAS HURTING IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA
“Why blame immigrants, and especially immigrant youth, for being criminals when overall crime rates are now historically low, when we don’t have a crime crisis, and when immigrants actually make our communities much safer?” Seiber asked. “I suggest that it has a lot to do with scapegoating.”
