By Joe Maniscalco

In 2018, my partner and I found ourselves in Paris, France on the eighth day of the burgeoning Yellow Vest Movement navigating the bonfires openly burning along Franklin Delano Roosevelt Avenue.

By Bob Hennelly

In our current dystopian circumstance, it's hard to sort out the signal from the static. The barrage of Trump assaults on science, human rights, public health, global humanitarian aid, as well as on democracy and the rule of law itself make it near impossible to get our collective equilibrium.

By Joe Maniscalco

Songs have always been integral to working class struggle and the broader labor movement overall. Think of your favorite anthems from Odetta, Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, or Bob Dylan and their amazing ability to instantly invoke the spirit of solidarity in anybody listening.

Work-Bites

Hello Work-Bites Builders! Today we kick off a new weekly cartoon series from Work-Bites friends and contributors Tim Sheard and Ryn Gargulinski. ‘That’s Outrageous!’ imagines an ongoing mock debate portraying two very different political ideologies…

WAR STORIES By Phil Cohen

I returned to New York in 1979 after a year of traveling across Asia, accompanied by woman named Faye. I found an apartment in Sunnyside, Queens, a working-class neighborhood bordering Long Island City, and resumed driving taxis. But my new friend was a country girl and terrified of the urban environment.

By Joe Maniscalco

As author Len Shindel says in the introduction to The Strike That Changed Maryland’s Wilderness County, he was “intent on getting some of the real dirt and gravel on the 1970 strike.”

By Joe Maniscalco

Patricia Hills, PhD and professor Emerita at Boston University’s Department of History of Art & Architecture, spent her entire academic and curatorial career helping to open up some of the top museums and cultural institutions in the nation to women, people of color, the poor, and other marginalized communities—everything the Trump administration is now attempting to roll back.

By Steve Wishnia

Since 2011, the annual Clara Lemlich awards have celebrated the lives of “women whose many decades of sustained activism have made real and lasting change in the world.”

“The idea of the evening is to give us all hope. We have to act. We can never give up,” Esther Cohen of LaborArts, a cofounder of the event, told Work-Bites.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Part III – The Fine Art of Hustling

Every afternoon as I took my seat in the taxi, regardless of exhaustion levels or mood, my awareness shifted into overdrive. I felt like a fighter pilot about to go out on a mission. From the moment I hit the streets I was in a state of pure reaction time. If a cockroach tweaked its antenna in a garbage can a thousand yards away, I’d sense it. The street has zero tolerance for people who let their guard down. One has to constantly remain prepared for the unexpected and the only thing that can be trusted is instinct.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Part II – Driving Upside Down

I was always on high alert when walking to the subway several hours past midnight. The majority of muggers initiate contact with victims by asking a polite question requiring an answer, leading to a discussion and building trust while casually approaching. A typical scenario goes like this:

By Joe Maniscalco

We saw a lot homemade signs at this past weekend’s mass anti-Trump rally in New York City all reflecting the working class anger and disgust many have about the current administration’s existential threat to the United States.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of Phil’s three-part saga returning to his wild days driving a cab on the streets of NYC in the early 1970s.

The truth is that life is hard and dangerous…. joy is only for him who does not fear to be alone; life is only for the one who is not afraid to die - Joyce Cary

During the fall of 1973, I was paying the rent by writing stories for second-string magazines and handing out flyers for an abortion clinic on 42nd Street.

By Steve Wishnia

Joined by El Salvador’s self-styled dictator Nayib Bukele, the Trump regime on Apr. 14 escalated its defiance of multiple court orders to “facilitate” the return of Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The 29-year-old Maryland construction worker has been in CECOT—El Salvador’s black-hole Terrorism Confinement Center prison for a month—along with 260 other immigrants who were seized and flown there March 15.

By Steve Wishnia

With the Trump regime’s minions defying court orders to turn over information about deported Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts, labor unions are calling on the government to “bring him home.”

By Steve Wishnia

To the Trump regime, 29-year-old Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an “enemy alien.” In a brief filed with the Supreme Court April 7, Solicitor General D. John Sauer called him “a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization,” to wit, “a ranking member of the MS-13 gang.”

War Stories By Phil Cohen

I scheduled a war council with committee members and stewards for Thursday afternoon. “Talk is getting us nowhere so we’ve got to up the ante to get their attention. I want to schedule shift meetings for next week and use them to organize a picket line the following week.”

War Stories By Phil Cohen

During the shutdown period, I received a Cone Mills document filed in court for the purpose of justifying bankruptcy despite a recent return to profitability, explaining its primary liabilities:

A huge debt and huge dividend payouts to class A shareholders are bleeding the company. Interest rates and preferred dividends are exorbitant, and prevent the company from paying off $145 million in debts.

There was no reference to labor costs.

War Stories By Phil Cohen

For over a century, Cone Mills was an iconic denim manufacturer, spinning bales of raw cotton into yarn which was then woven into enormous rolls of cloth. Once the material had gone through the final stages of finishing, it was sold to large jean companies. Levi Strauss was their largest customer.