Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1103311057240.12780@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>,
Cyberculture <cyberculture@zacha.org>
Subject: Tomgram: Andy Kroll, Union-Busting or Republican-Busting in Wisconsin?
(fwd)
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:57:35 -0400 (EDT)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:32:42
From: TomDispatch <tomdispatch.com@nationinstitute.org>
To: sondheim@panix.com
Subject: Tomgram: Andy Kroll, Union-Busting or Republican-Busting in Wisconsin?
[spacer.gif]
If you're having trouble viewing this email, you may see it online.
Share This: [email.png]
TomDispatch.com: A Regular Antidote to the Mainstream Media
[tdemail_horiz.gif]
March 31, 2011
Tomgram: Andy Kroll, Union-Busting or Republican-Busting in Wisconsin?
One hundred years ago, 146 people, mostly young immigrant women, died in a
fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in downtown New York City, a
building lacking sprinkler systems, fire walls, or adequate fire escapes.
Onlookers watched horrified, writes historian Steve Fraser, as many of the
trapped workers jumped to their deaths from upper-story windows. Those below
?talked of the sky raining flaming bodies.?
Anger at the unnecessarily harsh and dangerous working conditions that
caused such a toll was widespread. One hundred thousand New Yorkers would
file past the coffins of the dead workers. Within days, 350,000 New Yorkers
would take to the streets in a massive march of protest -- many, adds
Fraser, ?to vent their anger and express their determination that tragedies
such as this should never be allowed to happen again.? That moment is now
considered a turning point for the movement to improve working conditions in
America.
That was then, of course, and until this February, the centennial
anniversary of that tragedy would have been considered nothing more than
history, and those thinking about it sentimentalists for a bygone era when
people cared about and organized around the needs of working people in this
country. No one would have imagined that those sorts of mass protests over
the conditions of working people would ever again leave the history books
for the streets of America. But as in the Middle East, so here, it?s often
true that what no one expects or predicts happens, that one day the streets
in Madison, Wisconsin, or Cairo, Egypt, suddenly, miraculously begin to
fill. Now, in a moment when labor is under assault and some leading
politicians seem to be dreaming of returning American workers to a state of
powerlessness not seen in perhaps 80 years, something?s happening, even if
we don?t know what it is, Mr. Jones.
What occurred in Madison may already be altering the normal political
landscape of this country. The question is whether it will also, perhaps in
unexpected ways, create a new terrain beyond the usual electoral politics.
TomDispatch associate editor Andy Kroll covered the Madison protests for
Mother Jones magazine and for this site in a stirring piece, ? Cairo in
Wisconsin.? Now, he begins to explore the spread of what might be called
"the Madison effect" and the changing contours of political America. (To
catch Timothy MacBain?s latest TomCast audio interview in which Kroll
discusses his time in Madison and the larger meaning of those protests,
click here, or download it to your iPod here.) Tom
Return to Wisconsin
The Beginning or the End?
By Andy Kroll
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see
the ends.
-- Joan Didion
In the February weeks I spent in snowy Madison, Wisconsin, that
line of Didion's, the opening of her 1967 essay "Goodbye to All
That," ricocheted through my mind as I tried to make sense of
the massive protests unfolding around me. What was I witnessing?
The beginning of a new movement in this country -- or the end of
an existing one, the last stand of organized labor? Or could it
have been both?
None of us on the ground could really say. We were too close to
the action, too absorbed by what was directly in front of us.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
[tdemail_vertical.gif]
Visit our sister sites:
The Nation Institute
Nation Books
The Investigative Fund
[tdemail_horiz.gif]
Recent Posts
2 days ago...
Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, Intolerance "R" Us
5 days ago...
Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, The Earthquake Kit
1 week ago...
Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Nuclear Myth Melts Down
1 week ago...
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Worst That Could Happen
[tdemail_horiz.gif]
Recent Highlights
10 days ago...
Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, Hope and Turmoil in 2011
2 weeks ago...
Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon and Murder in Bahrain
[tdemail_horiz.gif]
[tdemail_horiz.gif]
Consider supporting TomDispatch by making a donation. Click here.
116 East 16th Street 8th Floor | New York, NY 10003 US
This email was sent to sondheim@panix.com. To ensure that you continue
receiving our emails, please add us to your
address book or safe list.
manage your preferences | opt out using TrueRemove[tm]
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.
Network for Good
EmailNow powered by Emma