More than a thousand coal miners at Warrior Met Coal are now in the third month of their strike in the right-to-work state of Alabama. The miners walked off the job on April 1 after their union, the United Mine Workers of America, called the first strike to hit the state’s coal mining industry in four decades. Workers are fighting for improvements to wages and benefits after they agreed to drastic cutbacks in 2016, when Warrior Met Coal took control of the mines after the previous company went bankrupt. Today a group of striking mine workers traveled from Alabama to Wall Street to protest the investment firms backing Warrior Met. “These are the companies that fund Warrior Met and allow Warrior Met to pay their executives millions of dollars a year, while the miners, the workers themselves who are creating that value, are struggling to get by on sometimes as little as $22 an hour,” says labor journalist and organizer Kim Kelly.
As lawmakers in Washington continue to negotiate over an infrastructure bill that Democrats say needs to include major new funding to address the climate crisis, much of the U.S. is experiencing record heat, with many western states seeing record temperatures, drought and water shortages. “The climate crisis is here now,” says climate and energy researcher Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The climate crisis is really happening right now, and every single year we delay on passing a climate bill, the worse the crisis gets.”
As Senate Republicans use the filibuster to block debate on the most sweeping voting rights bill considered by Congress in decades, we look at what is in the bill and the next steps forward. Elizabeth Hira, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, describes the For the People Act as “a massive democracy reform package” that seeks to address systemic flaws in U.S. elections. “This bill creates a wholesale opportunity for us to fix all of the things that have been wrong in our democracy.” We also speak with Reverend William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, who says Republican opposition to the bill exposes their cruelty. “They are committed to keeping alive voter suppression that started with the Southern Strategy. They are today’s Strom Thurmond,” says Barber.
This is a clip from the May 2021 Global Capitalism lecture in which Richard Wolff gives three examples that indicate the US’s position of global power is changing, and its ability to influence global events is shrinking. “[In the case of Russian/German gas pipeline,] the Germans said ‘Sorry, we’re not closing this deal with Russia. We’re going to continue and finish it.’ The United States jumped up and down, yelled, threatened to sanction any company that participated in laying the pipes. It made no difference. The Germans said, ‘You can do whatever you want. We’re doing this. Go away.’… [In
the case of vaccine patents the Europeans are] not gonna budge. And they’ve told Mr Biden the power, the influence of the United States is not what it was in the past.” The full lecture is titled “Biden’s Economic Plans and Likely Results [May 2021].” In the full lecture, Prof Wolff discusses the following topics: 1. Changes in Government Spending and Taxing 2. Joe Biden and Franklin Roosevelt: Differences and Similarities 3. Historic Decline of US Capitalism: Reality vs Denial Watch the full lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9lWJ…
We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work.
Learn more about Prof Wolff’s NEW BOOK, “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.”
Now also available as an eBook! www.democracyatwork.info/books “Wolff clearly explains the ways that capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy; and threatens the health and safety of workers and communities – i.e., most of us.” Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Ph.D. Author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. Check out Prof. Wolff’s other books “Understanding Socialism” and “Understanding Marxism” http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/democra…
So if we can’t regulate the “news” or even stop trolls and foreign operatives from inciting Americans, how can we activate the “immune system” of democracy?
Premiered May 12, 2021
Biden’s Economic Plans and Likely Results [May 2021]
In this month’s lecture, Prof. Wolff will discuss the following:
1. Changes in Government Spending and Taxing
2. Joe Biden and Franklin Roosevelt: Differences and Similarities
3. Historic Decline of US Capitalism: Reality vs Denial
*GCLEU is a @Democracy At Work production. We make it a point to provide the show free of ads. Please consider supporting our work. Donate one time or become a monthly donor by visiting us at democracyatwork.info/donate or become a patron of Economic Update on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/gcleu. Your contributions help keep this content free and accessible to all.
A special thank you to the following GCLEU Super Fans whose generous support makes this lecture series possible: Christopher Vogler, Daniel Jones, Ed Cook, Heather, James and Susan Anderson, John Jones, Kevin Hill, Kimberly Hudnall Family, Kyle Wulle, Larry Jennings, Michael DeFreitas, Mahmood Nooshi, Margaret Farris-Parr, Mary Marx, Matthew Kleu, Paul, Sharon Hanson and Dan Stevens.
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Learn more about Prof Wolff’s new book, “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself.” Available now also as an e-book at www.democracyatwork.info/books
“We don’t look after each other at all,” says Jeffrey Sachs on America today Jeffrey Sachs sits down with Rob Johnson to discuss his new book, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (Columbia University Press, 2018).
Oct 31, 2016
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
How has humanities scholarship influenced biomedical research and civil liberties and how can scholars serve the common good?
Entrepreneur and scholar Donald Drakeman discusses his new book, Why We Need the Humanities, exploring the value and impact of the humanities in the 21st century. He is joined by Stefan Collini (Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge and author of What Are Universities For?), Richard Ekins (Tutorial Fellow in Law, St John’s College, University of Oxford), and Jay Sexton (Associate Professor of American History, University of Oxford). Chaired by Helen Small (Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford and author of The Value of the Humanities).
How can global history can be applied instead of advocated?
The new volume The Prospect of Global History examines this question and explores the fast growing field of global history across a wide geographical and chronological range.
One of the book’s editors,
James Belich (Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History, University of Oxford) discusses this along with T
ORCH Director Professor Elleke Boehmer,
Richard Drayton (Rhodes Professor of Imperial History, King’s College London),
and
Hannah-Louise Clark (Departmental Lecturer in Modern History, University of Oxford).
A TORCH Book at Lunchtime online webinar on ‘Real Oxford’ by Professor Patrick McGuinness, with panellists Professor Patrick McGuinness, Dr Jake Wadham, Professor Joanna Innes and Dr Sneha Krishnan.
Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to attend and open to all.
About the book:
Oxford is a place of fantasy and myth, home to the prestigious university and some of the world’s most iconic buildings. There has been teaching and learning in Oxford since 1096, and its colleges have produced generations of great scientists, writers and thinkers. One of the world’s most photographed cities, it is a tourist-magnet, an architectural jewel, and the location of films and television series.
But the real Oxford is rarely seen, even by those who live here. There’s industrial Oxford, the huge gasworks that once stood a few minutes’ walk from Christ Church’s Tom Tower, and Oxford the car city, home to Morris motors, once the biggest car plant in the world. There’s Oxford the midlands city of factories and breweries, wharves and stations. There’s Oxford’s venerable football history and its unexpectedly radical politics. There’s high-rise Oxford as well as honeyed stone Oxford. There’s the Oxford of OX2, where life expectancy is among the highest in the UK, and the Oxford of OX4, where it’s among the lowest. There is the Oxford whose libraries, buildings and bequests come from slavery and colonial exploitation – an Oxford whose bright statues mask darker histories. There’s the Oxford that broadcasts its achievements, and the Oxford that covers its tracks…
The novelist, poet and Oxford academic Patrick McGuinness guides us through the past, but also the present, of all of these interlinked Oxfords. He walks the city’s streets from the station to the ringroad, tracks its canals and towpaths, its footbridges and tunnels, to evoke the continued presence of the Oxford behind the postcard views.
About the author:
Professor Patrick McGuinness is a British-Belgian writer and academic. The author of two novels, a memoir and two books of poems, he teaches French and Comparative Literature at Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St Anne’s College.
His first novel, The Last Hundred Days (2011), is a semi-autobiographical account of the last days of the Ceasescu regime in Romania. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, The Desmond Elliot Prize, the Authors’ Club First Novel Award and won the Wales Book of the Year and the Writers’ Guild Prize for Fiction.
His memoir, Other People’s Coutries: A journey into Memory (2014), is an account of his childhood in the post-industrial factory town of Bouillon, in Belgium. It was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and The Gordon Burn Prize, and won the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wales Book of the Year Award.
Other books include poetry collections, translations, anthologies, and academic monographs.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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