posts categorized asLaborOnline

Sherwood: The Crimes of Thatcher’s War

by on January 12, 2023

Is there life after coal, what future for the collier?

The scab and the hardliner both, wear the blue scars of the miner

Rising up now from the earth, we’re branded and we’re blinded

The sunlight and the dole queue boast, the blue scars of the miner

Is there anything but drink, drugs and last reminders

A single tear drop rolling down, the blue scars of the miner

–Lyrics from the “Blue Scars of the Miner,” The Freakons, 2022.

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The Radicalism of Working-Class Americans

by on January 11, 2023

In the United States there exists today, and has existed since at least the 1950s, a dominant political narrative according to which most Americans, indeed the very history of the country, exemplify a kind of ideological “moderateness.” Democratic Party operatives and sympathizers constantly preach the virtues of occupying the political center, where most of the population supposedly resides.

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Michael Hillard on his book, Shredding Paper

by on December 30, 2022

A Conversation between Emily E. LB. Twarog and Michael Hillard, author of Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry (Cornell University Press, 2020)

I grew up not far from the banks of the Androscoggin River,[1] a river that powered the textile and paper mills of central Maine, and, every summer, I return to Maine to visit family. 

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