Chicago's New Lady Labor Slugger Reactivates Social Movement Unionism

Chicago's New Lady Labor Slugger Reactivates Social Movement Unionism:

Two ideals are struggling for supremacy in American life today: one the industrial ideal, dominating through the supremacy of commercialism, which subordinates the worker to the product and the machine; the other, the ideal of democracy, the ideal of the educators, which places humanity above all machines, and demands that all activity shall be the expression of life. If this ideal of the educators cannot be carried over into the industrial field, then the ideal of industrialism will be carried over into the school. Those two ideals can no more continue to exist in American life than our nation could have continued half slave and half free. If the school cannot bring joy to the work of the world, the joy must go out of its own life, and work in the school as in the factory will become drudgery.

~ Margaret "Lady Labor Slugger" Haley, Chicago teacher, at the 1904 National Education Association convention

Reflecting on her struggles for women's rights and public education, Haley remarked:

When I look back over my 75 years of life, 40 of them spent on hectic battle fronts of the unending war, I realize that, like all crusaders, I have stormed in where kings and courtiers feared to tread. I have beaten my fists, and sometimes my head, against stone walls of power and privilege. I have railed at mayors, at governors, at legislators, at presidents of great universities. I have banged machine guns in defense of certain basic principles in which I believe and continue to believe. For them I have fought without fear and without favor; but within my own soul I know that I have never sought a battle for its own sake, although I have never evaded one when it was forced upon me.

Karen Lewis, 2010 acceptance speech, after winning the Chicago Teachers Union presidency:

Today marks the beginning of the end of scapegoating educators for all the social ills that our children, families and schools struggle against every day. Today marks the beginning of a fight for true transparency in our educational policy - how to accurately measure learning and teaching, how to truly improve our schools, and how to evaluate the wisdom behind our spending priorities. This election shows the unity of 30,000 educators standing strong to put business in its place - out of our schools. Corporate America sees K-12 public education as $380 billion that, up until the last 10 or 15 years, they didn't have a sizable piece of.... Our teachers and para-professionals are poised to reclaim the power of our 30,000 members and protect what we love: teaching and learning in publicly-funded public schools.

Cannabidiol as a novel inhibitor of Id-1 gene expression in aggressive breast cancer cells

Cannabidiol as a novel inhibitor of Id-1 gen... [Mol Cancer Ther. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI

McAllister SD, Christian RT, Horowitz MP, Garcia A, Desprez PY.

Source

California Pacific Medical Center, Research Institute, 475 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. mcallis@cpmcri.org

Abstract

Invasion and metastasis of aggressive breast cancer cells is the final and fatal step during cancer progression, and is the least understood genetically. Clinically, there are still limited therapeutic interventions for aggressive and metastatic breast cancers available. Clearly, effective and nontoxic therapies are urgently required. Id-1, an inhibitor of basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors, has recently been shown to be a key regulator of the metastatic potential of breast and additional cancers. Using a mouse model, we previously determined that metastatic breast cancer cells became significantly less invasive in vitro and less metastatic in vivo when Id-1 was down-regulated by stable transduction with antisense Id-1. It is not possible at this point, however, to use antisense technology to reduce Id-1 expression in patients with metastatic breast cancer. Here, we report that cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabinoid with a low-toxicity profile, could down-regulate Id-1 expression in aggressive human breast cancer cells. The CBD concentrations effective at inhibiting Id-1 expression correlated with those used to inhibit the proliferative and invasive phenotype of breast cancer cells. CBD was able to inhibit Id-1 expression at the mRNA and protein level in a concentration-dependent fashion. These effects seemed to occur as the result of an inhibition of the Id-1 gene at the promoter level. Importantly, CBD did not inhibit invasiveness in cells that ectopically expressed Id-1. In conclusion, CBD represents the first nontoxic exogenous agent that can significantly decrease Id-1 expression in metastatic breast cancer cells leading to the down-regulation of tumor aggressiveness.

Support the Half the Sky Movement

Singer-songwriter Gemma Hayes -

"For a long time when I would see or experience for myself the absolute unfair treatment of women in society I would become overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness. Part of me would want to stand up and shout 'stop' but I felt small and unheard. Once I heard of the Half The Sky Movement I gave a sigh of relief. Its members are proactive about waking society up in a positive way and it is making a difference. It's a real honor to contribute my song "Sorrow be Gone" to the 30 songs 30 days campaign. I chose to contribute this song because it deals with a woman moving forward in her life even when the very wind is pushing her backwards. She still moves forward. She carries the sorrow of all she is denied but she knows the sadness will leave one day."

Support the Half the Sky Movement:

Hidden in the overlapping problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality is the single most vital opportunity of our time — and women are seizing it. From Somaliland to Cambodia to Afghanistan, women's oppression is being confronted head on and real, meaningful solutions are being fashioned. Change is happening, and it’s happening now.

People died for a forty-hour workweek

This should be required reading in middle school history classes. Everyone needs to be aware of the history behind the rights they take for granted.

People died for a forty-hour workweek.

by James Robert Porter

This is a true thing. It happened. The one thing you’re virtually guaranteed to have when you get a job in this country. You might not get insurance, you might not get regular breaks…but you know when you walk in the door, you’re only going to be asked to work forty hours a week, or else you’re due overtime. This is basic. It’s not even a talking point anymore.

A couple of centuries ago, people felt so strongly about this right that they gave their lives for it. They died so you could enjoy it. They were shot, hanged, starved, let’s face it, they were MURDERED, and this happened so that you could enjoy a right that we now take for granted.

In the early part of the 20th century, the majority of Americans were working a 12-14 hour workday, regularly. When the average American walked into a new workplace, he could reasonably assume he would be working that kind of a schedule. It was expected. What most of us now consider a punishing overtime schedule, the majority of the workforce in 1905 regarded as a normal workweek.

And they thought it was bullshit.

As far back as 1791, Americans were lobbying for a shorter workday. This wasn’t a bunch of lazy New Deal liberals wanting to sit on their laurels. This was shortly after the founding of our country. This was the majority of carpenters in the nascent United States, sick of putting in long, grueling hours and knowing that there were better alternatives. In the next century, this demand had become commonplace. It turned out that the average employer worked their business from sunup to sundown, every single day, a schedule most of us can’t even comprehend. By the 1830s, people were pissed off about it.

People died for a forty-hour workweek.

At the close of the 1800s, most Americans still didn’t have what they wanted. Apparently, an eight hour workday was simply too much to ask from employers. So much so, that a great many employers found the need to hire their own police force to enforce the longer work days. When people talk of unionizing nowadays, many of them think it was just a bunch of socialists and liberals trying to push around their bosses, but that’s not the case. The reason unions took off was because, if you complained about something like a fourteen hour workday to your employer, and you didn’t have people backing you up, there was a real chance you were going to have your ass beat. Employers paid people to do this for them. If you were lucky, you just got fired for shooting your mouth off, but most people were not lucky. At least if you had a union, you had a sort of safety in numbers, even if it usually meant a more distributed beat down courtesy of the in house police force.

People died for a forty-hour workweek.

Pretty soon, people figured out they really only had one weapon they could use against their employers, and that was a general strike. Complaining just got you fired or beaten, going to the newspapers was about as effective as it is nowadays, since the people who printed the news, nine times out of ten, were the same people that made you work fourteen hours in the first place. But if you and all your union friends stopped working, you stopped production. If you stopped production, then the company loses money, and if that happens, you finally have their attention. In a sane world, this would lead to a civil airing of grievances and an honest attempt to address them.

This is not a sane world, because people died for a forty-hour workweek.

In 1886, a group of workers on strike at the McCormick plant in Chicago went on a march to Haymarket Square to protest the people trying to break the strike. This was a completely nonviolent demonstration. In return, police opened fire on them, wounding many and ending the lives of four people.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you think those were the company police? No, this was the city police. Paid for by the tax money of those dead men. They shot them because they wanted an eight-hour workday.

Soon afterward, during another rally, someone threw a dynamite bomb as the police tried to disperse the crowd. It went off, killing some officers, and in the ensuing chaos a gunfight broke out. Labor leaders were rounded up and, even though everyone agreed none of the people arrested actually had anything to do with the bomb, they were given death sentences anyway. Four of them were hung. Afterward, after pressure from the public, a judge repealed the death sentence for the remaining leader, saying that he and the four dead men were actually innocent and their execution was the result of "hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge".

People died for a forty-hour workweek.

In 1916, in the town of Everett, Washington, a contingent of striking shingle workers, supported by members of the IWW (Wobblies), were confronted by the town police led by the sheriff, one Donald McRae. McRae drew a gun on the nonviolent protestors and told them to turn around and leave. A shot rang out, starting a gunfight that, again, left a lot of dead people. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but most historians agree that it’s unlikely it was from the worker side, considering they suffered the bulk of the losses and the few officers that were wounded during the battle were injured by their own side.

People died so you could work a forty-hour workweek.

There’s more. Much, much more. People were willing to die for this basic right we all enjoy now.

Employers were so against it that they were willing to murder so we couldn’t have it. Back in the early 1900s, an eight-hour workday was so threatening that it was worth killing someone over. The American people finally won it, paid for with blood and corpses, and now we don’t even think about it.

People died for a forty-hour workweek.

James Robert Porter is the son of 31-year IBEW member Donald Porter. His message is especially timely on May 1, which is the anniversary of the famous Haymarket Square rally in Chicago in 1886, which was the springboard for the long fight for an eight-hour day.

In All the Debate About Breastfeeding, Where Is the Support For Mothers? | RH Reality Check

In All the Debate About Breastfeeding, Where Is the Support For Mothers? | RH Reality Check:

[T]he decision to breastfeed (or not), it should be supported. In all the debate about breastfeeding, I feel that it is a personal choice that may or may not work for all mothers; however, it is critical that as a society, we have the policies and infrastructure in place to support those decisions.  

We should not be relegated to a bathroom or closet because society has not deemed it critical to create private nursing or pumping spaces in public locations.  

We should not have to feel the burning judgmental stares because we decide to breastfeed on a plane, or anywhere in public.  

We should not have to hear the banter of folks who are uncomfortable with the idea of mothers continuing to nurse when children are ‘too old.’  

We should not have to hear the denigration of mothers who are unable or uninterested in nursing at all.  

On this mama’s day, we -- as a society -- need to respect and support the decisions that women and families make when raising their children. We also need to serve as advocates for change at the political and societal level so that the U.S. is no longer one of the lowest-scoring industrialized countries to be a mom, with a dismal breastfeeding policy score of ‘poor’ and the only developed country to not guarantee paid parental leave.

(Breaks and bolding added.)

Forget Flowers This Mother's Day: 11 Ways to REALLY Help Mothers | AlterNet

Forget Flowers This Mother's Day: 11 Ways to REALLY Help Mothers  | AlterNet:

The reality is that mothers are not as supported as they should be in this country, and the recent, ongoing war against reproductive rights, unions, and legislation like the Violence Against Women Act have only made things worse.

Below are several ways (among many) that we, as a nation, could do a much better job of supporting mothers.

1. Require paid parental leave.

2. Support workplace flexibility and other leave policies.

3. Address the gender wage gap.

4. Stop trying to roll back access to birth control.

5. Support safe, legal access to abortion.

6. Support unionization.

7. Fight for affordable health care.

8. Reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

9. Address cuts to safety net services.

10. Ensure that mothers behind bars are treated with dignity.

11. Celebrate mothers of all stripes, from all backgrounds.

All mothers deserve love and respect, on Mother's Day and every day.