On the heels of what many are calling a historic convention of over 1,200 fast food workers held in the Chicago suburbs last weekend, the campaign for "$15 and a union" won a major National Labor Relations Board decision that, if upheld, could have significant repercussions throughout the industry...
That eating beef is environmentally costly is by now widely appreciated. But little has been done to curtail the amount of cattle farmed for meat consumption.
- By R Jennings
Nothing shocks me too much anymore about online abuses of privacy. It is hard to know just who you can trust online these days. We are being asked "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes". Well, it appears my eyes haven't been lying too much lately...
Mostly, the work of social change is a slow process. It involves patiently building movement institutions, cultivating leadership, organizing campaigns and leveraging power to secure small gains. If you want to see your efforts produce results, it helps to have a long-term commitment.
An estimated 10,000 gallons of the coal-processing chemical MCHM, along with an unknown amount of a second substance called PPH, spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River — just upstream from a municipal water intake that serves nine counties. While government and industry have been slow to respond, some remarkable community organizing has taken place...
All institutions are the mirror image of the motivations that make them work. So when politics and economics are based on the worst aspects of human nature, the inevitable result are societies riddled with inequality and violence.
It is an old question in social movements: Should we fight the system or “be the change we wish to see”? Should we push for transformation within existing institutions, or should we model in our own lives a different set of political relationships that might someday form the basis of a new society?
Raising children in today's world is much more challenging than it was in the Fifties. Many parents, whether in intact families, single-parent families, divorced families, or remarried families with stepchildren and half siblings, are crying out for help. The role of public schools needs to be expanded and revamped...
Research study compares traditional lectures with active learning in science, engineering and mathematics. Traditional lecture-based courses are correlated with significantly poorer performance in terms of failure rates and marks.
- By Robert Reich
More Americans than ever believe the economy is rigged in favor of Wall Street and big business and their enablers in Washington. We’re five years into a so-called recovery that’s been a bonanza for the rich but a bust for the middle class.
International corporate volunteerism gives future leaders real-life experience facing challenges in emerging markets and could create self-perpetuating sustainable businesses.
The girl behind the checkout counter at the Shop Rite supermarket sighed deeply and pushed her manager call button. “WIC,” the checkout girl said, turning the three letters that stand for the government-funded supplemental nutrition program in the USA into a long whine...
Good education for children cannot be deleted from tight budgets or thwarted by religious zealots without a country’s prosperity and very existence suffering. Because this is true, I’m going to tease you with some unique ideas that are already in use and achieving incredible results...
Is it climate change, which makes droughts more severe and more likely to persist? Is it the labor policies that allowed the worker's wages to be cut? Or is it that NAFTA has flooded the Mexican market with cheap, U.S.-grown corn since 1996, forcing him to leave his family’s farm and migrate to California in the first place?
The fact of an ageing society isn’t new; it has been proceeding quietly across all developed countries for 174 years: data on female life expectancies starting in 1840 reveal an increase...
In her new book, Diane Ravitch — one of the leading thinkers behind the controversial Bush-era law — explores how the faulty logic of high-stakes testing, charter school expansion, and privatization hinders education...
While crime rates have dropped dramatically in most US cities over the past two decades, there has been a recent uptick in robberies of cell phones and laptops, which can be easily sold over the Internet. What we can to do to deter criminals, who rob of us of our peace of mind as well as possessions?
The push to reform America’s failing schools dates to a 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” which found that U.S. students’ test scores were plummeting. The study's failure to consider factors like poverty, race, and immigration concealed the fact that scores were actually improving.
There’s a country path I walk often, near where I live, that borders the edge of a vineyard. There’s a place along this path where some grapevines have escaped under and over the barbed wire vineyard fence and now grow wild.
We were about to put this kid out of school, when what he really deserved was a medal. As executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, Fania Davis sees programs like hers as part of the way to end the school-to-prison pipeline.
Lama Tsomo is a Tibetan Buddhist lama, a former homesteader, and an heiress to a family fortune who lives a quiet life in the mountains of Montana. Now she is beginning to teach the practices and insights gained through years of solitary retreats and study.
- By Robert Reich
People ask me all the time why we don’t have a revolution in America, or at least a major wave of reform similar to that of the Progressive Era or the New Deal or the Great Society.
- By Ellis Jones
After surviving near financial meltdown, devastating oil spills, and enormous bank bailouts, we're finally beginning to understand the deep connection between our economic and our political lives. To bring about real change, we'll need some powerful tools...