Two key steps have helped to ruin May Day in the United States.  First, Labor Day was created at a completely different time of year — labor day without the struggle, labor day without the history, labor day without the labor movement.  Second, Loyalty Day was created on May 1^st. 

Loyalty Day is a monstrosity for a few reasons.  We already have Veterans Day (created by ruining Armistice Day), Memorial Day, Yellow Ribbon Day, Patriots Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Pearl read more

10 years ago I debated Berman’s “Chief Economist” on C-Span:

Let’s approximate (and let’s go high) that the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has 2,000 direct and contracted (it won’t say how many contracted, so we have to guess) employees working for under $13 per hour as demanded by the Living Wage campaign.  And let’s imagine they work on average 40 hours per week and 50 weeks a year, and let’s imagine they earn the bare legal mimimum of $7.25 per read more

How do you get politicians living off legalized bribery to criminalize bribery? How do you persuade the corporate media to report on the interests of flesh-and-blood, non-corporate people? How do you take over a political party when the only other one allowed to compete is worse? These are not koans, but actual problems with a single solution.

It might seem like there are a million solutions: pass state-level clean election laws, build independent media, build a new party, etc. But the fundamental read more

The University of Virginia is reviewing a proposal to import hundreds of Asian workers for various campus services, pay them less than a dollar per hour, and possibly deny them egress from their campus housing outside of work hours.

This is according to a report of which I have obtained a copy and which has been verified by three independent sources. The report was apparently inspired by a recent conference held at the university that sounds fictional but was actually about fiction. As recounted, read more

Listen to this mp3 recording of the Schilling Show. It’s a right-wing show that provided a totally fair format for a civil debate. I argued for a living wage at UVA. David Marotta and the host Rob Schilling argued against. For more on the Living Wage campaign at UVA go here.

Charlottesville-Right Now: David Swanson

From CvillePodcast

Dave Swanson joins Coy to discuss the latest on the outcry in Wisconsin over cuts to collective bargaining rights and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder seeking emergency powers.

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2.21.11 Best-selling author David Swanson joins Coy to discuss the labor unrest in Wisconsin. Be sure to check out his most recent book War is a Lie.

By David Swanson

To kneel before the corporate throne of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And here’s what he had to say there on Monday.

President Obama again stressed that he wanted to freeze non-war/military spending well into the next president’s tenure:

“That’s why I’ve proposed that we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. Understand what this means. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and bring this spending read more

I attended a rally at the University of Virginia Monday evening that was organized by students who would like UVA to pay its workers a living wage. The event was inspiring, but it could easily have been aggravating — for the simple reason that 12 years ago I and a lot of other students held similar rallies to make the same demand.

Back then our demand was for a minimum of $8 per hour, and we displayed that $8 in orange and blue on buttons and stickers, on shirts and in store windows, and read more