Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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The #MeToo of yesterday: ‘High Voltage Women’ tells the story of...

In “High Voltage Women: Breaking Barriers at Seattle City Light,” historian Ellie Belew captures the drama, the events and the personalities of an affirmative action effort that was in the forefront of the national drive toward non-traditional work for women.

‘Refinery Town’

The story of how the Richmond Progressive Alliance took power – as of November 2016 with 5 of 7 seats on a weak-mayor city council – is eloquently and lucidly described by veteran trade unionist and labor journalist Steve Early. Early moved to Richmond late in life, but has now produced a compelling work that describes the halting process of holding Chevron and the real estate lobby accountable for its frequent misdeeds by building a dynamic multiracial coalition that eschews traditional party politics.

Longshore workers: Shut down the fascists!

We longshore workers support the call to action for our union to take the lead for the working class, to stop a deadly threat to the rights and the lives of us all. This weekend, fascist groups plan to stage rallies that threaten to repeat the racist terror of Charlottesville in the Bay Area. We’ve shut down the port against racism, war and police repression. Racists want Charlottesville terror here – It’s up to us to stop it! Assemble on Scott Street in Marina Green on Saturday, Aug. 26, 10 a.m.

Victory for the Black Friday 14

On Black Friday 2014, 14 Black activists chained themselves together on a BART transit platform “to prevent trains from moving at the West Oakland station, in response to the seemingly unending war against Black communities.” The 14, a majority of them women, faced criminal charges. Now, after a year-long campaign by the Black Friday14 and a broad coalition of allies, District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has dropped all the charges.

For Mumia, we demand no retaliatory transfer and treatment to cure...

Mumia’s attorneys have filed a lawsuit charging the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections with medical neglect. On Sept. 5, prison staff boxed up all Mumia’s personal effects from his cell while he was in the prison infirmary trying to recover from the prison’s medical malfeasance and neglect that nearly killed him. A retaliatory transfer to some other prison would be a new blow against Mumia’s health, and would steep him and his family in greater fear and uncertainty.

Joe Debro on racism in construction

In November 2010, Joe Debro sent the Bay View a 200-page “book” he wrote in 1968 on racism in construction. His family has generously agreed that it be published in the Bay View. To begin, here is the prolog he wrote in 2010 to update it. In 1968, three of us undertook a study of the manpower implications of small business financing. In 2010, 42 years later, not much has changed.

Rolling back the Civil Rights Movement, with BART workers as a...

The Civil Rights Movement, which led to a massive expansion of educational, political and economic rights for African Americans and others who were traditionally marginalized, has been under attack since before it started. The ongoing attacks against public sector workers and unions seem to be more of the same. Rather than happening in far away states, though, the attacks are happening to workers in the Bay Area.

Solidarity and solitary: When unions clash with prison reform

The battle over the future of Tamms became the most visible and contentious example of a phenomenon seen around the country: Otherwise progressive unions are taking reactionary positions when it comes to prisons, supporting addiction to mass incarceration. And when it comes to issues of prisoners’ rights in general, and solitary confinement in particular, they are seen as a major obstacle to reform.

Civil rights hero Ray Dones dies

The nation has lost one of its unsung civil rights heroes: Ray Dones was the Martin Luther King of the construction industry. We lost Ray at a time when his kind of leadership is most needed. We all recognize now that the best way to fight violent crime is with a well paying job.

The faces of local hire

The new local hiring law is a tool to maintain and promote San Francisco’s working class by giving local workers a leg up on projects they pay for as taxpayers. It goes into effect this week amid high hopes and growing excitement.

Where did all the jobs go?

America has truly become the land of plenty. There are plenty of Ponzi schemes, plenty of bank failures and plenty of foreclosures. This leaves us with plenty of debt, plenty of crime, plenty of corruption, plenty of inflation, plenty of homelessness, plenty of poverty and plenty of unemployment.

San Francisco locks Blacks out from building our own library

The Bayview Library is a second home for the children and all the people of Bayview Hunters Point. Now the City wants to replace it with a new building, but who will build it? Low bidder on the project was Liberty Builders, located a block from the library and owned by Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff, who is trusted to hire from the community. But the City just snatched the contract from Liberty and gave it to KCK Builders, a white contractor with no Black participation. Will the community allow KCK to build the library?

Union PLAs block Blacks from construction

Construction unions have historically fought affirmative action and excluded Black hiring, and they are still getting away with it. They huddle up to the good unions and pay off our elected officials with campaign donations.