Before corporate and governmental leaders arrive in New York City this September for the UN Climate Summit, System Change Not Climate Change together with the Global Climate Convergence will be laying the groundwork for an alternative summit: the New York City Climate Convergence. The objective is to build and strengthen an environmental movement that addresses the root causes of the climate crises; a social-economic system that values profits above people, planet and peace. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff will be speaking on Saturday, September 20, at St. John’s University. | more…
Visit the MR Press table at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival, on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014, 10am—6pm, at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza. Alan Wieder, author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, will be at the MRP table for a book signing at 10:30 AM, and will be participating in a festival panel discussion at noon, “Mandela: An American Perspective.” We hope to see you there! | more…
Question 1: Both your new book Save Our Unions: Dispatches From a Movement in Distress – and your previous one, The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor – draw on your experience as a union negotiator and longtime single payer activist. In 2008, liberal foundations, major unions, and the AFL-CIO created and financed Health Care for American Now! (HCAN). This lobbying coalition had a name similar to ours but it soon distanced itself from the goal of single payer. In retrospect, what impact did HCAN have on labor’s quest for a better health care system? | more…
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a long-time contributor to and friend of Monthly Review, will be discussing her new book An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States at Bluestockings Books in New York City, on Thursday, September 25, 7pm. | more…
Labor law is outdated and rotten in the US, corporations have an inordinate amount of power, so it is rare that unions win or even strike these days. Solid activist leadership in our unions is rare in these last decades of concessionary bargaining and the sustained war on the working class. The lack of a class perspective by many Americans makes them susceptible to the ugliest sorts of manipulation against their own interests. Steve Early has seen much of it and described it in a clear-eyed fashion in his latest book, Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review 2013). It should be read by unionists and their supporters and the more than 60% of Americans who pollsters say would like to be unionized. | more…
This is a long overdue account of an important struggle in London’s East End in 1889 with many parallels and lessons for workers today. It was part of a wider upsurge of workers’ struggles that led to a rebirth of the trade union movement, and to the creation of independent working-class political representation in the form of the Labour Party. John Tully explains why this strike has largely been lost in the annals of the labour movement – unlike the famous Bryant & May matchgirls’ strike of 1888 and the London dock strike which was still on as the Silvertown strike started. | more…
MR Press author John Tully discusses his book Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement in this interview on “Nights,” a program broadcast by Radio New Zealand. | more…
Join two MR Press authors, Gerald Horne and Steve Early, at the third annual LaborFest Hawaii, on Friday, September 19th, 2014, 6:00 p.m., at Mark’s Garage in Honolulu, HI. Gerald Horne is the author of Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii and Race to Revolution; Steve Early is author of Save Our Unions. | more…
Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from A Movement in Distress, published by Monthly Review Press, is interviewed by Cindy Sheehan for her radio show “Cindy Sheehan’s Soap Box.” | more…
Don’t let the title scare you. John Bellamy Foster’s The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (Monthly Review Press) is a good read and resource for making sense of the world around us. Foster edits the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review, launched in 1949 with an Albert Einstein essay, and he is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. For the past three decades, Foster has been breaking new ground in writing on the ecology, economy and polity in the pages of MR and MR Press. | more…
On August 15, 2014, Marta Harnecker accepted the 2013 Liberator’s Prize for Critical Thought, awarded for her book, A World to Build: New Paths towards Twenty-first Century Socialism (forthcoming from Monthly Review Press). Available here are her remarks, translated by Federico Fuentes and originally published by Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. | more…
