Wisconsin Wave

06/24/2021

“It is bad enough that corporations can hijack Fifth Amendment rights against takings to overturn or demand compensation for lost profits from community-backed regulations, but now it’s been expanded that right to directly undermine a workers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and free association. We reject the Court’s disturbing opinion and call on Congress to amend the U.S.Constitution by passing H.J.R. 48, the We the People Amendment, to make clear that constitutional rights belong to human beings, not artificial corporations.”

- Move to Amend Condemns ’s v. Hassid Decision

"The ruling marks the latest blow in a devastating campaign to roll back hard-won victories for the US labor movement in favor of businesses."

Read more:
https://www.movetoamend.org/cedar_point_nursery_decision

04/30/2021

"The good news on this May Day is that we're on our way. The fact that there are not one, two, three, but actually four separate sets of networks coordinating labor-climate actions from April 22 through May 1st tells us something. This wave has been building momentum for some time . . . Working people will save our home. Elon Musk can go to Mars. Like James Connolly said a century ago, "Our demands most moderate are: We only want the Earth.""

"By 2030 we will be on our way to a global economy that provides a good life for all on a living planet," states the Declaration of the 2020's. "Or we will be on an irreversible path to global misery through ecological collapse."

03/04/2021

NEXT WEEK: "The 1990s-2020s: The Millennial Turns and this Decisive Decade" . . . On Thursday, March 11th, starting at 7pm Eastern (U.S., Canada) time, join Bill Fletcher, Jr., Shannon Gleeson, Hillary Lazar, Ben Manski, Suren Moodliar, Jackie Smith, Norman Stockwell, and Lesley Wood in conversation. REGISTER HERE: https://bit.ly/3qhTUeC

The 2020s may prove to be “The Decisive Decade.” But what are the origins of the movements of these times? And what difference do those histories make today? We often are called to look back to the 1960s for lessons. But what of the 1990s and the movements at the turn of the millennium?

Recently a group of social movement scholars and activists took up the question of “the millennial turns” - global, democratic, and anarchist - that produced not only the shutdown of the World Trade Organization in Seattle twenty years ago, as well as other major mobilizations of the period, but also many of the elements of social movements that are still in play today. This scholarly group produced a remarkable collection of studies, essays, and personal accounts of the 1990-2010 millennial period published just now in the journal of Socialism and Democracy’s special issue, “Movements at the Millennium: Seattle +20" (see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08854300.2019.1841711),

Our discussion on Thursday builds on that special issue. Join us!
REGISTER HERE: https://bit.ly/3qhTUeC

The 2020s may prove to be “The Decisive Decade.” But what are the origins of the movements of these times? And what difference do those histories make today? We often are called to look back to the 1960s for lessons. But what of the 1990s and the movements at the turn of the millennium? On March...

04/10/2019

"At this political moment of U.S. hegemonic decline, popular insurgencies are among the counter-hegemonic forces seeking to challenge “petro-hegemony” and to reshape the global order. Activists engaged in community-based campaigns against corporate power are generally operating on terrains defined by the translocalization of local resistance, or by contests over sovereignty, the corporation itself, or alternative global constitutionalisms." Read the whole issue, with all the great essays, here: http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/index

Just out, this symposium on corporate power and local democracy, appearing in the Spring 2019 issue of the Journal of World-Systems Research. All six contributions to this symposiu

07/13/2018

Good job - good group: http://midwestadvocates.org/about/jobs-volunteers/

06/27/2018

"This leads to our second lesson. In this period of Janus, federal austerity, hate-mongering, and extreme democratic collapse (national developments that seem to have been prefigured by what happened earlier in Wisconsin and other labor heritage states), identifying, strengthening, and pushing forward the popular actors most prepared for the challenges of the coming period of struggle are not just advisable course of action, they are vitally necessary to the success of the cause of labor."

The rise and fall of Wisconsin’s remarkable 2011 uprising holds lessons for a post-Janus world.

03/01/2018

"A myopic focus on Janus and its meaning for labor unions — developed in isolation from a broader analysis of the struggles of working class and allied organizations, networks, and communities in the broader popular movement — will result in costly and perhaps avoidable mistakes."

The rise and fall of Wisconsin’s remarkable 2011 uprising holds lessons for a post-Janus world.

05/04/2017

News, articles, and events related to the book, "A People's Guide to Greater Boston" - released on July 7, 2020