A literary festival isn’t the obvious place to discuss class, but a couple of weeks ago I found myself introducing a session at my local Faversham Literary Festival on a new book called Know Your Place. Edited by Nathan Connolly and subtitled ‘Essays on the Working Class, by the Working Class’, the book brings together twenty-two writers of working-class origin reflecting on aspects of their lives past and present.
Read more →
Michael K. Honey is the author of the new study, To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice, to be published on the 50th anniversary of King’s April 4, 1968 assassination. He was interviewed by Charles Williams of the Against the Current editorial board.
Read more →
On Feb. 1, 1968, Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death while riding out a cold, driving rainstorm in the back of an outmoded “packer” garbage truck in Memphis. Unsafe working conditions, racism and abuse had long been intolerable for the city’s 1,300 sanitation workers.
Read more →
Dollar General is everywhere.
The most visible manifestation, of course, is the proliferation of their concrete block stores littering the landscape. But it’s more than that. After twenty-seven consecutive years of sales growth, Dollar General is attracting increasing attention from investors as the brick-and-mortar retailer most likely to survive the onslaught of online juggernaut Amazon.
Read more →
When I heard over breakfast that Billy Graham had died, the news ricocheted around my mind and stirred up lots of memories. The counter of George’s Diner on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn was just the place to begin reflecting on the surprising connection between Graham’s legacy and organized labor.
Read more →
“The Labor Beat,” the new issue of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History guest-edited by Max Fraser and me, focuses on labor journalism’s past and present. This post suggests strategies and resources for teachers at high school or university level looking to use this special issue to bring the history of labor journalism alive for students.
Read more →Steven Parfitt, who spoke at LAWCHA’s Seattle conference, asks LAWCHA members to support the ongoing lecturers’ strike in the UK by contributing to the University and College Union’s “fighting fund.” As Steven notes, “I know that at my branch, and many other branches, this fund is being used particularly to help contingent faculty who want to strike but can’t afford to do so otherwise.”
Read more →
Do you have activist students who have questions about how best to build a life around making social change? Do you want to find a classroom resource that weaves together a range of post-war social movements? Looking for ways to inspire hope in the age of Trump?
Read more →
In the tumultuous 1970s, women and people of color streamed into unions, strikes swept the country — and employers launched a fierce counter-attack.
Read more →