USA
Content about workers' struggles and events in the United States of America.
Anti-Capitalism at the New School: An analysis and call for action
The following pamphlet was distributed at The New School following the wave of student occupations in NYC and around the world in late '08 and into '09.
"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency…" – Walter Benjamin
1970-1972: The Lordstown struggle and the real crisis in production - Ken Weller
Fascinating pamphlet by Solidarity on the informal workers struggle against the frenetic pace of work at a General Motors plant, and the later co-optation of the struggle by the auto workers union.
This pamphlet is an attempt to document some important tendencies developing in the motor car industry but which are relevant to modern production as a whole. We feel these trends have important political consequences for revolutionary socialists.
Emergency appeal from fired IWW truckers
Truckers organizing with the IWW in North Carolina and Virginia dealing with retaliation, need support.
The IWW has been organizing Truck Drivers in Eastern North Carolina and Virginia for much of the past year. In response to our growing power and planned founding convention this upcoming weekend, the bosses have begun firing the union's leadership. Two log drivers and five container haulers have lost their job over the past two days. [more recent reports say 27 now out of work.]
Denial networks: on crisis and continuity in the 9/11 truth movement
This article addresses the prevalance of conspiratorial explanations for the events of 9/11. The author breaks down the appeal of the truth movement, and explains how the mode of production requires constant expansion, in an empty mimicry of capitalist production. There is also a section dealing with the vital participation of far-right activists in the genesis of the 'truth' movement and their lasting contributions which many leftists mouth today.
How is it possible that increasingly elaborate conspiracy explanations for the events of September 11th 2001 continue to find appeal amongst a growing population of otherwise rational people, despite the day's events being witnessed by millions and despite these theories being consistently debunked and embarrassed?
The Israel lobby? - Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky responds to the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and argues against the idea that a lobby of pro-Israel interests effectively controls US foreign policy.
Their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy claims that the lobby leads the US into acting against its national interest, and that the Iraq war was a result of the lobby's influence.
'The Wedge' Document - Intelligent Design exposed
In 1998, the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative intelligent-design think-tank based in Seattle, produced the now infamous 'Wedge' document. The document was meant only for members of the DI but was leaked not long after. The Wedge describes the short and long-term goals of intelligent design advocates, not just in displacing evolution from the science curriculum in US public schools, but with the broader cultural, social, and political aim to 'reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.'
[Originally posted on the NCSE site.]
Note - This is the text of the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document," prepared in 1998. It lays out "the Wedge strategy" by which the newly-formed Center for Renewal of Science and Culture would promote "intelligent design" creationism.
THE WEDGE
CENTER FOR THE RENEWAL OF SCIENCE & CULTURE
INTRODUCTION
Update on New School in Exile occupation
Statement and update from the occupation of the University of Exile in New York, including their demands for funding to be redirected from capital improvements to tuition and study space.
To our comrades and fellow workers around the world
Jay Leno - scab
Unfunny talk-show host Jay Leno scabbed on the WGA writers strike of 2007-8.
Though the Tonight Show was not allowed to use writers during the ongoing strike, WGA member Jay Leno told monologue jokes he claims to have written himself.
Statement from Students Occupying University in NYC
Statement from the students occupying New School University in NYC
An Open Letter: Come Occupy a Building with Us…Now
Dear Friends,
We are writing to you from the inside of the New School Graduate Faculty Building on 65 5th Ave. We are occupying it. Right now. Literally.
IWW-affiliated truckers to strike
On Dec 8, North Carolina log haulers and container drivers - many who are misclassified as "independent contractors" - will be holding a work stoppage. They are demanding paper giant Weyerhaeuser and its subcontractors recognize their newly formed union, the United Truckers Cooperative.
On Monday Dec 8, the drivers of the United Truckers Cooperative will hold a work stoppage and picket outside of Weyerhaeuser Mills in Plymouth and Vanceboro, North Carolina.
