By Joe Maniscalco

This week marked the 15th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. But just a small band of activists, many of whom were at the Zuccotti Park encampment in Lower Manhattan that sparked the whole movement back in 2011, were on hand Sept. 17 to actually mark the occasion.

Jerry Ashton, “unintended activist” and proud son of a union trucker out of the state of Oregon, was one of them.

By Steve Wishnia

Ninety-six staffers in the City Council’s central office who joined the Association of Legislative Employees late last year are in negotiations demanding that they be added to the union’s contract covering about 500 other Council staff.

By Bob Hennelly

The Guardian is reporting this week that oil prices are spiking to over $107 a barrel as Iran aligned rebel Houthis in Yemen targeted  Saudi Arabia's east west crude pipeline. As President Trump's war of choice in Iran has continued, the entire Mideast has been destabilized with oil at one point hitting $126 dollars a barrel. 

By Joe Maniscalco

From the time he was 12 until he was 21-years-old, Author John Hanson grew up hearing first-hand accounts about the 1934 Minneapolis general strike from his dad, an old time Wobbly and member of IBT Local 574’s Committee of 100 tasked with guiding the historic worker uprising to ultimate victory.

By Joe Maniscalco

Sixty-two-year-old Queens resident Marlene Urquhart spent seven years working round-the-clock shifts for a home care agency located on Ralph Avenue in Brooklyn called 1st Help HomeCare.

The mother of four quit in March 2025 alleging 1st Help Home Care and its owner Rita Cohen owed her more than $260,000 in unpaid wages following the death of Urquhart’s primary patient that same year.

By Joe Maniscalco

What’s wrong with this picture?

Members of the largest and arguably most powerful public sector union in the City of New York can no longer afford to live in the city they serve—but the strongest opposition they face getting a contract they can live with this fall isn’t coming from the Office of Labor Relations [OLR].  

It’s coming from their own union leadership. 

By Jessica Peralta

Community Sentinel

IRVINE, CA — UCI MIND’s laboratory has 15 freezers and five refrigerators. They are packed — but not with food. 

About 1,200 brains are currently stored in those freezers and fridges.

Each sample represents a person who donated their brain to science with the hopes of helping future generations overcome neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease

By Steve Wishnia

Twenty-five years have passesd since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, but the maladies caused by the resulting poisonous dust continue to linger, and the survivors are aging.

By Joe Maniscalco

One-hundred-and-twenty-three summers have past since iconic workers’ rights activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones led the March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to New York City and Long Island. 

By Steve Wishnia

Eight unions representing federal employees filed a lawsuit Aug. 24 challenging two rules recently imposed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), arguing that they would effectively eliminate the protections civil-service laws give workers against being fired without just cause.

By Steve Wishnia

The National Labor Relations Board is planning to ask federal courts to hold Covenant House in contempt for refusing to bargain in good faith with 1199SEIU after a judge issued an injunction ordering it to do so in September 2025.

By Joe Maniscalco

Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office on Jan. 1 declaring a “new era” in New York City. But for FDNY EMS first-responders in crisis it seems a lot like the same old song and dance.

By Eilean Faltin

Accused fascist Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as the new president of Colombia on Aug. 7 after claiming victory in a fiercely contested election. One day later, the U.S. government pledged $1 billion dollars in “security aid” to the South American nation, pending congressional approval.

By Bob Hennelly

Mount Sinai Health System is facing backlash this week after it stopped accepting some new patients enrolled in Medicaid, Medicare and other publicly subsidized insurance plans—a move the New York State Nurses Association says could further strain safety-net hospitals and deny care to some of New York’s most vulnerable patients.

By Bob Hennelly

In this episode of We Decide: America at the Crossroads we go to Ukraine to consider what's at risk for the world in a war zone where Russia has seized a Ukrainian nuclear power complex in a region with so many vulnerable atomic power plants.

Is the world just watching and waiting? Will we say if there's a Chernobyl-scale disaster that nobody saw it coming?

By Steve Wishnia

As artificial intelligence expands its share of recorded music, musicians need to establish their rights to “consent, compensation, and credit” when their work is used, an American Federation of Musicians spokesperson recently told Work-Bites.

By Joe Maniscalco

New York City is in contract negotiations with FDNY EMS unions, and if that sounds boring or hum-drum it’s only because City Hall wants it to appear that way. In reality, the talks represent a golden opportunity for the Mamdani administration to distinguish itself from preceding ones and do what previous mayors have spectacularly failed to do in the past—rescue FDNY EMS before it’s too late. 

By Harry Weiner

Reviewing the original bylaws of the New York City Organization of Public Services Retirees (sent to me upon request) reinforces my belief that all members should be informed that they have the same right.  For the sake of transparency.

By Steve Wishnia

One week after Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that New York City was being “forced by federal law” to lay off Haitian-immigrant employees whose temporary protected status (TPS) was terminated July 27 when a June Supreme Court decision formally went into effect, it is difficult to find information about how that is playing out.