I first met Cheri Honkala a couple of years ago at a Philadelphia protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline. Not knowing what she looked like, I had locked arms with her and two or three others trying to block an entrance to the Federal building. We managed to keep the door closed despite the first […]
About Maynard Seider
Championing Postal Workers Is Good Class and Economic Sense
I watched the second Democratic debate hoping that Senator Bernie Sanders would clearly articulate an economic policy that would differentiate him from Hillary Clinton, that would advance the interests of American workers and that would easily resonate with the millions of debate viewers. Unfortunately he didn’t. Instead he continued to lash out at the one […]
Labor Day, American Values and the Status Quo
For the past two years I’ve traveled across the country to film festivals, labor events and public forums to show my documentary, “Farewell to Factory Towns?” With Labor Day on the horizon, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the reactions of audiences to the film. While relatively diverse, the audiences generally support the […]
WANTED: Hospitals That Fully Serve Their Communities
What happens to a poor, working class rural community when its hospital closes — with three days notice? That’s what residents of North Adams, Massachusetts and surrounding towns have been trying to figure out since the North Adams Regional Hospital closed its doors on March 28th. While local and state politicians scurried to at least […]
Pension Cutbacks: The New Normal or Fightback?
We should be as wary now of the mainstream media as Marx was in 1871 when he wrote the following: “The daily press and the telegraph, which in a moment spreads its inventions over the whole earth, fabricate more myths in one day…than could have previously been produced in a century.” And so, for example, […]
Labor Day, 2013: Realities and Hopes
I like to listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” album from time to time, at moments when my spirits need lifting up. In “Jack of All Trades,” the protagonist does outdoor work, carpentry, auto repair and farming (“I’ll harvest your crops”). Given the recent one day strikes in some 60 cities by fast food workers, […]
Philly School Crisis Meets Pushback
While a group of determined teachers, parents and community activists rallied a small crowd in front of South Philadelphia High School on a rainy weekday, the powers-that-be in City Hall, Harrisburg and D.C. did nothing to avert an educational crisis that awaits 150,000 mostly poor and working-class students when school is due to open in […]
President Obama’s Middle Class: the Rhetoric and the Reality
It should come as no surprise that President Obama focused on the “middle class” in his State of the Union speech. He mentioned that term six times, even calling it “our generation’s task…to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.” What the president didn’t mention was the critical […]
Who represents the working class?
There was a time when if one asked, ‘Who represents the working class?’, a reasonable answer would have been the Democratic Party. But since Jimmy Carter that party has moved to the right, supports so-called Free Trade, champions legislation that fosters financial speculation, has forgotten the poor as a group worthy of aid, and goes […]
Wall Street occupation for the 99%
The first thing I felt when I arrived at Liberty Park in New York City this past Saturday was the energy. It brought me back to the late ‘60s when I was a graduate student in Wisconsin. Now, in what might become the American Autumn, hundreds of men and women, mostly in their 20s and […]
A 4th of July Declaration of Dependence
It’s no small irony that on the 4th of July weekend our nation’s largest union surrendered a chunk of its independence. At their annual meeting in Chicago, the National Education Association’s Representative Assembly voted to support the use of student standardized test results in the evaluation of teachers. That vote alters the union’s previous opposition […]
Who represents the working class in Massachusetts?
The vote to take away public employee health care bargaining rights took place thirty minutes before midnight, on April 26th, while most of the state slept, oblivious to the event. The scene would have brought a big smile to the face of Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker. But this wasn’t Madison. This was Boston, and […]
The Politics of “Waiting for Superman”
I fidgeted throughout the film Waiting for Superman, through the bells and whistles, the graphs, the close-ups of the five cute kids and their caring single moms, grandmas and parents, having read enough reviews, and having listened to enough critiques to know that I wasn’t going to like the film. And I didn’t, but what […]
Beware of Cabinet Officers Bearing “Gifts”
“We already have the privatization of the military…; we’ve seen the privatization of the prison system. Well, the next step is the privatization of public schools.” That prediction by Jonathan Kozol four years ago has come closer to reality with the enactment of President Obama’s Race to the Top educational goals. Besides continuing the previous […]
