Knocking on Labor’s Door

Knocking on Labor’s Door
Author: Lane Windham
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 146963208X

The power of unions in workers' lives and in the American political system has declined dramatically since the 1970s. In recent years, many have argued that the crisis took root when unions stopped reaching out to workers and workers turned away from unions. But here Lane Windham tells a different story. Highlighting the integral, often-overlooked contributions of women, people of color, young workers, and southerners, Windham reveals how in the 1970s workers combined old working-class tools--like unions and labor law--with legislative gains from the civil and women's rights movements to help shore up their prospects. Through close-up studies of workers' campaigns in shipbuilding, textiles, retail, and service, Windham overturns widely held myths about labor's decline, showing instead how employers united to manipulate weak labor law and quash a new wave of worker organizing. Recounting how employees attempted to unionize against overwhelming odds, Knocking on Labor's Door dramatically refashions the narrative of working-class struggle during a crucial decade and shakes up current debates about labor's future. Windham's story inspires both hope and indignation, and will become a must-read in labor, civil rights, and women's history.

Beyond the Fields

Beyond the Fields
Author: Randy Shaw
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0520268040

Much has been written about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' heyday in the 1960s and '70s, but the story of their profound, ongoing influence on 21st century social justice movements has until now been left untold. This book unearths this legacy.

Brewing a Boycott

Brewing a Boycott
Author: Allyson P. Brantley
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469661047

In the late twentieth century, nothing united union members, progressive students, Black and Chicano activists, Native Americans, feminists, and members of the LGBTQ+ community quite as well as Coors beer. They came together not in praise of the ice cold beverage but rather to fight a common enemy: the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company. Wielding the consumer boycott as their weapon of choice, activists targeted Coors for allegations of antiunionism, discrimination, and conservative political ties. Over decades of organizing and coalition-building from the 1950s to the 1990s, anti-Coors activists molded the boycott into a powerful means of political protest. In this first narrative history of one of the longest boycott campaigns in U.S. history, Allyson P. Brantley draws from a broad archive as well as oral history interviews with long-time boycotters to offer a compelling, grassroots view of anti-corporate organizing and the unlikely coalitions that formed in opposition to the iconic Rocky Mountain brew. The story highlights the vibrancy of activism in the final decades of the twentieth century and the enduring legacy of that organizing for communities, consumer activists, and corporations today.

From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend

From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend
Author: Priscilla Murolo
Publisher: The New Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2018-08-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1620974495

Newly updated: “An enjoyable introduction to American working-class history.” —The American Prospect Praised for its “impressive even-handedness”, From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend has set the standard for viewing American history through the prism of working people (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From indentured servants and slaves in seventeenth-century Chesapeake to high-tech workers in contemporary Silicon Valley, the book “[puts] a human face on the people, places, events, and social conditions that have shaped the evolution of organized labor”, enlivened by illustrations from the celebrated comics journalist Joe Sacco (Library Journal). Now, the authors have added a wealth of fresh analysis of labor’s role in American life, with new material on sex workers, disability issues, labor’s relation to the global justice movement and the immigrants’ rights movement, the 2005 split in the AFL-CIO and the movement civil wars that followed, and the crucial emergence of worker centers and their relationships to unions. With two entirely new chapters—one on global developments such as offshoring and a second on the 2016 election and unions’ relationships to Trump—this is an “extraordinarily fine addition to U.S. history [that] could become an evergreen . . . comparable to Howard Zinn’s award-winning A People’s History of the United States” (Publishers Weekly). “A marvelously informed, carefully crafted, far-ranging history of working people.” —Noam Chomsky

Knocking on Heaven's Door

Knocking on Heaven's Door
Author: Katy Butler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2014-06-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451641982

"A blend of memoir and investigation of the choices we face when our terror of death collides with the technological imperatives of modern medicine"--

Knocking on Heaven's Door

Knocking on Heaven's Door
Author: Lisa Randall
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2011-09-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0062096893

“Science has a battle for hearts and minds on its hands….How good it feels to have Lisa Randall’s unusual blend of top flight science, clarity, and charm on our side.” —Richard Dawkins “Dazzling ideas….Read this book today to understand the science of tomorrow.” —Steven Pinker The bestselling author of Warped Passages, one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” Lisa Randall gives us an exhilarating overview of the latest ideas in physics and offers a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives. Featuring fascinating insights into our scientific future born from the author’s provocative conversations with Nate Silver, David Chang, and Scott Derrickson, Knocking on Heaven’s Door is eminently readable, one of the most important popular science books of this or any year. It is a necessary volume for all who admire the work of Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, Simon Singh, and Carl Sagan; for anyone curious about the workings and aims of the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest and most expensive machine ever built by mankind; for those who firmly believe in the importance of science and rational thought; and for anyone interested in how the Universe began…and how it might ultimately end.

An Organizer's Tale

An Organizer's Tale
Author: Cesar Chavez
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2008-04-29
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 110120155X

The first major collection of writings by civil rights leader Cesar Chavez One of the most important civil rights leaders in American history, Cesar Chavez was a firm believer in the principles of nonviolence, and he effectively employed peaceful tactics to further his cause. Through his efforts, he helped achieve dignity, fair wages, benefits, and humane working conditions for hundreds of thousands of farm workers. This extensive collection of Chavez's speeches and writings chronicles his progression and development as a leader, and includes previously unpublished material. From speeches to spread the word of the Delano Grape Strike to testimony before the House of Representatives about the hazards of pesticides, Chavez communicated in clear, direct language and motivated people everywhere with an unflagging commitment to his ideals. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Common Sense and a Little Fire

Common Sense and a Little Fire
Author: Annelise Orleck
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807863718

Common Sense and a Little Fire traces the personal and public lives of four immigrant women activists who left a lasting imprint on American politics. Though they have rarely had more than cameo appearances in previous histories, Rose Schneiderman, Fannia Cohn, Clara Lemlich Shavelson, and Pauline Newman played important roles in the emergence of organized labor, the New Deal welfare state, adult education, and the modern women's movement. Orleck takes her four subjects from turbulent, turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe to the radical ferment of New York's Lower East Side and the gaslit tenements where young workers studied together. Drawing from the women's writings and speeches, she paints a compelling picture of housewives' food and rent protests, of grim conditions in the garment shops, of factory-floor friendships that laid the basis for a mass uprising of young women garment workers, and of the impassioned rallies working women organized for suffrage. From that era of rebellion, Orleck charts the rise of a distinctly working-class feminism that fueled poor women's activism and shaped government labor, tenant, and consumer policies through the early 1950s.

On Strike for Respect

On Strike for Respect
Author: Toni Gilpin
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 100
Release: 1995
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780252064548

It is we who push the papers, put the paychecks in the mail; It is we who type the letters, mind the office without fail. And until we get a contract, it is we who'll shut down Yale, For the union makes us strong. (To the tune of "John Brown's Body") "Must reading for anyone who wants to learn what a revitalized labor movement would look like." -- Labor Notes "A textbook on solidarity unionism." -- Staughton Lynd "One of the very best books on labor in the 1970s and 80s." -- Dana Frank, University of California at Santa Cruz "There are very few case studies in recent labor history as readable and provocative as this one." -- Karen Sawislak, Stanford University On Strike for Respect is a lively account of the 1984-85 strike by clerical and technical workers at Yale University. Members of Local 34, with a strong female majority, mobilized themselves and the public, breathing new life into the labor movement as they fought for and won substantial gains. A short update on current conditions concludes this volume.