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BOOKS AND ARTICLES
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Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities
The savviest people in the union and environmental movements understand how sensible and powerful a blue-green coalition between the two can be. Now, University of Florida sociologist Brian Mayer looks at the nuts and bolts of three such coalitions—the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow in Massachusetts, the Work Environment Council in New Jersey and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in California. He finds that "attempts to build blue-green coalitions are likely to succeed when [workplace and environmental] health is the starting point for finding a common ground." Available from . |
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Work Songs of American miners, seamstresses, farm workers, lumberjacks, factory workers, prisoners and cowboys all had rich, exuberant traditions of work songs. (Significantly, when you joined the Wobblies, you got a songbook with your union card.) Author Ted Gioia, who has the distinction of being both an accomplished jazz pianist and a splendid writer, has researched them all. He tells some pretty incredible stories of this music that "simultaneously complains and exults, denies and accepts, pushes forward and holds back"—and has provocative ideas about why the tradition has faded away and what may be replacing it. Available from . |
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How We Were Ruined & What We Can Do
If you read nothing else about the financial meltdown, check out this article. In a review of two recent books on the lead-up to the current economic crisis, journalist Jeff Madrick guides us on a frightening tour of "a financial bubble of tragic proportions in pursuit of personal gain"—and step by step, shows its "deeper cause was a determination among people with political and economic power to minimize the use of government to oversee the financial markets and to guard against natural excess." When you finish, do yourself a gigantic favor and subscribe to the New York Review of Books, which carried the piece. Just don't let the paper's dorky title stop you. It should really be called the "Hip, Well-Written, Opinionated, Usually Progressive Review of Everything under the Sun, Including a Few Books Now and Then." |
FILMS
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At Home in Utopia
The New York city housing co-operatives in the 20th century were among the most fascinating experiments by union workers trying to build a better world. On April 28, PBS's "Independent Lens" focuses on the creation of these co-ops, launched largely by Jewish workers from across the political spectrum united by idealism. Michal Goldman's subtle, beautifully crafted documentary focuses on the United Workers Cooperative Colony, home for hundreds of Communist and pro-Communist working families. The creation of these comfortable, racially integrated apartments replaced workers' previous homes in disease-ridden tenements and helped create a generation that grew up with a passionate vision of justice. Check your local station's schedule . |
TRAINING PROGRAMS
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Making It Work Better: A Work Family Educational Program
More than ever before, union activists are putting such family issues as paid family leave, child care, elder care and flexible work schedules in the spotlight where they belong. The Labor Project for Working Families, whose goal is "partnering with unions to put families first," has plenty of resources you can draw on. "Making It Work Better" is a successful curriculum you can use to engage your union sisters and brothers on family issues and get them up to speed on how to bring these issues into bargaining, the grievance process and organizing. The full training lasts three and a half hours, but you can easily customize it or just extract the sections you need. Download it for free. |
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