By a WORKING CARPENTER On Oct. 5, a recently fired carpenter, Samuel Perry, 42, arrived at a Midtown Manhattan job site to pick up his last paycheck. He shot his foreman, 37-year-old Christopher Sayers, twice, killing him. He then turned the gun on himself. Both men were members of Carpenters’ Local 212, a concrete construction…
By MARTY GOODMAN — NEW YORK — B&H Photo, the nation’s largest non-chain photo store, announced during contract negotiations plans to shut down two warehouses in Brooklyn and move facilities 75 miles away to Florence, N.J., by the end of the year. For 330 immigrant B&H warehouse workers who belong to the United Steel Workers…
By MARK UGOLINI As part of a major multi-country assault designed to outlaw advocacy of boycotts of Israel, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on June 5 signed “Executive Order No. 157,” instructing state agencies to divest from companies and institutions that participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In the tradition of McCarthyism, the…
By CHRISTINE MARIE “Astro Noise,” Whitney Museum of American Art, Feb. 5 – May 2, 2016. In the “Seeds of Time,” Frederic Jameson famously wrote of our cultural moment, “It seems to be easier to imagine the thorough-going deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due…
By MARTY GOODMAN NEW YORK—Braving union-busting layoffs and retribution, workers at Brod Kitchen (formerly Hot and Crusty), located on 63rd St. in the wealthy Upper East Side of Manhattan, are fighting to save their union and their jobs. On Jan. 14, the Hot and Crusty Workers Association, a mostly Hispanic immigrant workforce of 19, entered into…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER PHILADELPHIA—Federal judges in a Jan. 13 appeals court hearing have indicated that they are favorable to the premises of a suit against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for its surveillance of Muslims in New Jersey. The suit, Hassan v. City of New York, had been dismissed by a federal district…
By MARTY GOODMAN In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to deny freedom to Dred Scott, a slave living in Missouri. The decision stated that Black people have “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Today, as yesterday, the racist system of capitalism operates much the same in real life—if no longer…
By MARTY GOODMAN — NEW YORK, Dec. 4 — The horror of Ferguson was repeated on Dec. 3 when a 23-person grand jury in Staten Island, N.Y., failed to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old Black man. The cause of death was ruled a homicide by chokehold by the…
By CARL SACK An estimated 400,000 people took to the streets of Manhattan on Sept. 21 for the largest single climate change protest to date. The People’s Climate March, which took place two days before a one-day United Nations Climate Summit, was about twice as large as organizers had expected. There were so many present…
By MARTY GOODMAN New York’s self-proclaimed “progressive” mayor, Bill de Blasio, promised “respect” for the city’s 300,000 unionized public workers and has pledged to fight the city’s vast income inequality. What unions actually got was the same old hustle from the Democratic Party, as part of the city’s 1%. De Blasio, who took office in…
By DANIEL ADAM The People’s Climate March, scheduled for Sept. 21 in New York City, is poised to live up to its promise of mobilizing the largest number of people that the U.S. has ever seen against the mass production of greenhouse gases. With more than 1000 endorsing organizations, buses scheduled to leave from more…
By CLAY WADENA “Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today! I’m minding my business, please just leave me alone.” — Eric Garner, Rest In Power, killed by NYPD July 17, 2014. Eric Garner’s last words ring with righteous anger, disgust, desperation, and fatigue. Garner…
By MARTY GOODMAN On June 19, a quickly called protest was organized against a glitzy award gala in Manhattan that featured a “Leadership in Education” award for the corrupt and repressive Haitian president, Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly. On the same program, a “Lifetime Achievement Award” went to Martelly’s political patron, former U.S. President Bill Clinton,…
Fast-food and other low-wage workers walked off their jobs in some 150 U.S. cities on May 15 to demand a minimum wage of $15 an our and the right to join a union without retaliation. The action was taken in coordination with strikes and protests by low-wage workers in 150 U.S. cities, and in 30…
By LISA LUINENBURG Dozens of protesters were injured in Istanbul, Turkey, this year on May 1 as they tried to reach Taksim Square. A week earlier, the Turkish Prime Minister had announced a ban on demonstrations in Taksim Square on the internationally recognized workers’ holiday. Police in Istanbul used tear gas and water cannons against…
By MARTY GOODMAN This May Day, a day of celebration of the workers’ struggle, many unions were rallying at New York’s City Hall, but the news from inside was not good for workers. The unions backed “progressive” Mayor Bill de Blasio (Democrat), and Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), announced a…
