Unions: Safety and Discrimination Protection

The tragic fires that killed workers in Bangladesh remind us of labor’s history in the early years of the twentieth century when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers most of them Jewish and Italian immigrant women. Capitalism actively condones the murder of dispensable commodities like people who provide unskilled or semi-skilled labor. Now even the sweatshops of China are moving to even cheaper, less-regulated Bangladesh. American companies [...]

 

Newsflash! Lesbians Are Women

In this day and age the title of this post seems ridiculous to have to justify. Of course lesbians are women. You would think this bit of information is quite obvious but, reading the articles about women and their/our issues, this point gets lost. It would be impossible to itemize the deluge of writing about “women’s issues,” that pours out from keyboard across the country, which excludes queer women, placing [...]

 

Occupy Language: The [word] is mightier than the sword

Semantics are often dismissed with defensive snarkiness denouncing the “PC police” or accusing the offended of detracting from the “real issues” by quibbling over hurt feelings. We do have to be careful not to lose sight of the bigger picture, and we must stay focused on the goal(s), but we also need to pay attention to the edge on our swords. If we win the battles fought by our movement [...]