Part I – Analysis of Situation

The Palestinians in Gaza continue to suffer under the siege created by Israel and Egypt closing the border crossings into Gaza. Who is responsible? What can be done to get the siege lifted?

Such questions are on the minds of many people around the world. The siege of Gaza has gone on for many months and continues, even after the devastation, deaths and injuries of the Palestinians caused by the recent 22 day Israeli military assault on Gaza.

Though these are serious questions, they rarely get public attention and discussion. One recent exception surprisingly was a panel held at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month. The panel session was titled “Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace.” David Ignatius of the Washington Post was the moderator. On the panel were the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the… weiter lesen

Remember when the `Sit Down’ came?
And all the papers laid the claim
Against each Union Member’s name?
“SUBVERSIVE!”
from the poem “Subversive”
by Floyd Hoke-Miller*

Seventy-two years ago, on February 11, 1937, auto workers in Flint, Michigan marched triumphantly out of the factories they had occupied for 44-days. They had endured cold, tear gas, gunshot wounds, injunctions, etc., but they did indeed “Hold the Fort” until G.M. agreed to grant sole bargaining rights to their union, the UAW. One historian, evaluating the significance of the Sit Down, writes:

The era of the New Deal was studded with great strikes, many
of them signifying an upheaval of unskilled labor in the
nation’s mass production industries.
(Thomas Karman, “The Flint Sit-Down Strike,”
Michigan History, June, 1962, p. 98)

The strike wave of the 1930′s made it possible, for… weiter lesen