Books, Work Won't Love You Back and Necessary Trouble @BoldTypeBooks. Labor journo before it was cool. New Book, From the Ashes, available Sept.
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Jan 7, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
your faves bashing teacher unions again
just tapping the sign: this is what decades of cuts to any sort of social program have left us with: rage at the people who *provide* one of our last public social services rather than the people who have systematically denied us anything else we need.
Jan 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Worth noting how often anticommunism in practice overlapped with antiblack racism, antisemitism, and homophobia. The new wokeness, same as the old wokeness.
And because I have been binge-listening, if you want to learn more I highly recommend the episodes of @badgayspod on Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover
Aug 3, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Today is @ninaturner 's primary, which has turned into a big expensive proxy battle between the left and the mainstream of the Democratic party. Here's my report from her campaign: prospect.org/politics/nina-…
The left always gets blamed for causing trouble by daring to run, to make demands, to criticize. But at this point it should be absolutely clear that the center's efforts to crush the left are a demonstration of, shall we say, skewed priorities.
Jul 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
can you imagine being this mad about ice cream, I think I'm going to declare being unable to buy a Gatorade in the UK when I'm hungover antisemitic now
they were not, I would note, this mad when actual raving antisemitic fash marched in Charlottesville chanting "Jew Will Not Replace Us"
Jul 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
this is interesting--when I was tagged in it I thought it'd be citing Necessary Trouble and my writing on movements but actually situates the question with Work Won't Love You Back
so thanks to a chat with a new comrade I am re-watching @ninaturner's amazing speech from the 2017 People's Summit and I recommend it to everyone
And there's a thing she does in the middle of it where she grabs a couple of people from the audience and says "We have two hands, one to reach forward and one to reach back"
Mar 25, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Since I see we're back to the stupid discourse about "the workers" vs trans people again, here's a story I reported a while back about working while trans (spoiler alert: it sucks) colorlines.com/articles/speci…
Workers I spoke to for this piece included: postal worker, skilled electrician, restaurant server, retail workers.
Mar 24, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
demand everything reopen, see uptick in cases, have to close again, do this damn circle over and over again, somehow never question your push to reopen everything
'"There are people in the younger age groups, I think, who perhaps are being less cautious.... there’s just a sense that COVID is over,” Arwady said.' OR MAYBE THEY READ ALL THE ARTICLES DECLARING 3 FEET SAFE AND INDOOR DINING COOL?
Mar 23, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Oh of bloody course Andrew Yang is blaming teachers unions
I just bashed out, er, 5000 words on this particular round of teacher-blaming and other facets of the terrible discourse around caring work and Covid so naturally...
Feb 8, 2021 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
It's actually astonishing to me how many articles can be written about schools reopening that don't describe any other policy choices that led to this place
It's just "teachers unions vs local officials" "one side says it's safe the other says it's not!" "Hands in the air, no way to know anything!"
Dec 20, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
OK trying not to Media Tweet on a sunday but I read this whooooollleee thread and you should too.
Related to my (much pettier) media tweets the other day: part of being a good beat reporter is *knowing what you don't know* and having a rolodex of who to call when you don't know.
Aug 6, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
every time I hear someone imply that "right to work state" means that workers have no rights I cringe. right to work means open shop, means that workers who are covered by a collective bargaining contract can opt out of paying anything to the union. THAT'S IT.
it's been so effectively propagandized that even people who know better use this shorthand and it's really unhelpful to imply that people have fewer rights than they actually have!
Jun 7, 2020 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
There's this double move people who oppose abolition of police/prisons like to do. First they'll say "abolitionists clearly haven't thought it through"
Then if you point them to people like Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis, they'll switch to "most working-class black people don't want this it's just academics"
Jun 2, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
So I see a lot of people blaming Trump for what's happening in the streets right now and look, he sure isn't helping and is likely inciting police to react faster.
But everything I have seen so far is similar to things I saw the police do during the Obama administration. And there's a long history to this kind of militarized police violence.
the irony that everyone wants to vilify Momentum when what Momentum did--get volunteers out of London and talking to people in the Midlands, the North, the South about what they care about--is exactly the response Labour needs to this crisis.
this interview with Becky Bond on one of the responses post-Trump victory is what I mean: thebaffler.com/interviews-for…
Dec 9, 2019 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I'm shocked, shocked that the people who pretend to care so much about Jewish people when it's time to accuse Corbyn of antisemitism don't give a damn about it when it's published in their own paper.
it's actually frightening to think of how comfortable people are with this stuff unless it happens to benefit them politically to squawk about it and blame the Left.
Nov 10, 2019 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
So about this: seattletimes.com/seattle-news/p…
Sawant's done this before, come from behind in her first race where, as people told me at the time, her winning was literally unthinkable. People outside Washington miss the way mail-in ballots get counted.
I'm in an airport so naturally I'm reading about the downfall of WeWork still nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Sep 13, 2019 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
I am awake (barely) in an auditorium but @_RajPatel is talking about the New Deal and agriculture and colonialism and you can watch it here: vimeo.com/359778899?mc_c…@_RajPatel OK he's also talking about the Great Cowboy Strike of 1883 and how they valued reproductive labor and I am fully awake and here for this
Aug 28, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am so tired of the amount of space given to the *feelings* of literally the most powerful people in the world thehill.com/homenews/senat…
like, Bret Stephens has a sad and the Internet erupts. Susan Collins has a sad and articles get written. their feelings > the actual harm they do in the world. people were supposed to have a sad for Theresa May when she cried as she stepped down.
