No group in America, aside from Latino activists, is a more steadfast champion of generous immigration reform than organized labor. That stance, declares the AFL-CIO, is “based on the simple idea that working people are strongest when we work together and the labor movement is strongest when we are open to all workers, regardless of where they come from.” READ MORE >>
In 1970, as many as twenty million Americans took part in the first Earth Day. A cluster of young activists, inspired by liberal Senator Gaylord Nelson, put together what is still the largest demonstration in the nation’s history. Protestors listened to Pete Seeger down by the Washington Monument, rode horses down a busy highway, and dumped oil into an elegant pool outside the headquarters of Standard Oil—among thousands of other gatherings and antics. READ MORE >>
Before Stonewall
In celebrating the most famous gay-rights skirmish, we slight the battles that came before
With all the attention gay rights is receiving, you would think smart journalists for major newspapers would be able to provide an accurate account of how this now potent movement got going. Alas, you would be wrong. READ MORE >>
Sheryl Sandberg is No Betty Friedan
What a new movement doesn't get about the origins of feminism
Betty Friedan certainly deserves all the post-mortem attention she is receiving on the golden anniversary of the publication of The Feminine Mystique. No woman did more to spur the feminist awakening of the 1960s and 70s. If she were still alive, Friedan, who never tired of being famous, would be reveling in the new surge of acclaim for her book’s passionate, yet erudite, analysis of “the problem that has no name.” READ MORE >>
Who Are You Calling a Liberal?
If Obama is liberalism's standard bearer, liberalism's in bad shape
Contrary to what everyone who loved—or hated—his inaugural address seems to think, President Obama has yet to demonstrate that he is determined to launch a new liberal era. READ MORE >>
Here's a bit of advice when considering Barack Obama second inaugural address on January 21: Don't take anything he says very seriously. For all the hype they receive, inaugural addresses rarely foretell what a president will accomplish in office. In fact, the men who utter grand principles and make big promises every four years often contradict them, willingly or not, soon after they begin their terms. Take a few of the more celebrated quotations: READ MORE >>
We'll All Miss Unions When They're Gone
Hallelujah! The Conservative Catholic Hierarchy Taps an American Anarchist for Sainthood
One week after the presidential election, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously endorsed a female anarchist for sainthood. That news is not quite as shocking as it seems. Dorothy Day’s anarchism was of a decidedly pious kind. In 1927, at the age of thirty, she turned away from the secular leftism of her youth and was baptized in the Church, a moment she later confessed she had been waiting for all her life. READ MORE >>
