World Wide Work
This edition of the free bulletin, World Wide Work, is published by the
American Labor Education Center, an independent nonprofit founded in 1979.
WORLD WIDE WORK
New and worth noting...
o Forest Blood by Jeff Golden (www.forestblood.com). Don't miss this
excellent novel (best ordered from the web site shown). Set in the Pacific
Northwest, it brings to life the timber wars between big corporate
interests and environmentalists, with forestry workers often caught in the
middle. It has all the elements of good fiction -- suspense,
three-dimensional characters you come to care about, and a real sense of
place and context.
o UNITED WE WIN. SEIU, the AFL-CIO's largest affiliate, has produced a
controversial paper and powerpoint presentation about the crisis facing
working people and the labor movement and what should be done about
it. The paper argues that "the labor movement's current structure and
culture actually stand in the way" of rebuilding workers' strength. To
obtain a free copy, email Nicole Griffith at griffitn@seiu.org.
o Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Scribner). Powerful journalism
as readable as a novel, this account follows ten years in the lives of poor
teenagers growing up in the Bronx surrounded by both big-time and
small-time drug dealing.
o A Disturbance of Fate by Mitchell Freedman (Seven Locks). An ambitious
novel that tries to imagine what the U.S. would have been like if Robert
Kennedy had not been killed in 1968 and had won the presidency. The
Democrats would have helped unions organize the South, Freedman says, and
many other liberal fantasies would have come true.
o Good Faith by Jane Smiley (Knopf). A novel that focuses on a real estate
broker to recall the greed that exploded in Reagan's 1980s.
o Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism by
Ruth Needleman (Cornell). Focuses on five black steelworkers from the
South who migrated to the area around Gary, Indiana. Draws heavily on
interviews so they can tell their own stories.
o After the Strike: A Century of Labor Struggle at Pullman by Susan Eleanor
Hirsch (University of Illinois) provides a case study of how race and
gender have played a role in keeping workers from building a strong labor
movement.
o The Great Terror War by Richard Falk, and Calling The Shots: How
Washington Dominates Today's UN by Phyllis Bennis (both published by Olive
Branch Press). Two more, highly timely books from an imprint of Interlink
Publishing, which has been a leader in getting out quick analysis of U.S.
government responses and alternatives post-9/11.
o War Against the Weak by Edwin Black (Four Walls Eight Windows). This
book shows that genetic engineering is not a new issue by exploring
eugenics -- the effort to create a master race that was funded in the early
twentieth century by the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie
Institution. More than 60,000 Americans were sterilized against their will
in a movement that inspired Hitler's holocaust.
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