Posts tagged socialism
Seattle Art Museum Workers Are Unionizing
May 15, 2026 // Unbothered by grey skies, dribbling rain, and that stale-ass statement, SAMWU and its supporters held a rally and press conference outside the museum at 1st Ave and University. Before the press conference started, members chomped on pizza and cupcakes, handing out union t-shirts and buttons with the SAMWU logo—Jonathan Borofsky’s “Hammering Man” sculpture, mid-hammer, natch—and socialized. Representatives from SAM Visitor Service Officers (VSO) union, Tacoma Art Museum Workers United, and the Washington State Labor Council AFL-CIO all commingled.
Op-ed: George F. Will: It’s graduation time for disappointed little Lenins
May 11, 2026 // Disgruntled Starbucks workers embraced the United Auto Workers union, which they soon despised as too tepid about rectifying all injustices everywhere. Scheiber says the UAW now represents “roughly 100,000 higher-education workers” — graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty. Their numbers and grievances are growing faster than those of autoworkers. Many Starbucks workers agitating for unionization were berating the company for an inadequate commitment to LGBTQ rights. Then, on Oct. 7, 2023, they fell in love with Hamas. One organizer wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with a portrait of Karl Marx. An Apple store employee, who blamed her declining mental health on “the job” and “the stress of unionizing,” became, Scheiber writes, so “desperate” she sold her two $150 tickets to a Beyoncé concert. An employee at a Baltimore-area Apple store: “I had to get rid of Hulu” (a subscription-streaming service).
Op-ed: ‘The issue is the revolution’: Who is running your city’s teachers union?
March 4, 2026 // Under the banner of “social justice unionism,” teachers’ unions are increasingly treating classrooms, teachers, and even students as instruments in a wider ideological project — one organized, replicated, and funded across the nation. This shift helps explain why contemporary political controversies are now being filtered into elementary, middle and high schools. As one activist leader put it during the NEA Educators for Palestine webinar, the anti-ICE movement is “the spark that could ignite the fire under Labor.” As the saying goes, “The issue is never the issue — the issue is the revolution.”
A History of Everything Leftist Unionism: The Old Left and the Reds
March 10, 2025 // American labor radicalism has come a long way from Soviet agents in the Congress of Industrial Organizations through the UAW-funded Students for a Democratic Society to today’s SEIU purple-shirted demonstrators and red-shirted UAW anti-anti-Hamasniks. As Big Labor has declined, what independence the labor movement had from the progressive Left has diminished to the point where, with rare divergences, it effectively has ceased to exist. The causes of the Long Decline are many, and the causes of Big Labor’s leftism are also many, ranging from financial incentive structures of union officials to the structure of collective bargaining. Today, organized labor is a full member of the Everything Leftist coalition, not just in economic issues and labor organizing but also in social and foreign policy.
Commentary: How The Teachers Unions Embed Socialism Into Their Contracts
January 28, 2024 // This new, covert strategy, hidden in plain sight, allows state and municipal officials to create sweeping policy changes that evade the scrutiny typically associated with customary legislative procedures, which include publicly available draft legislation, committee hearings, amendments and comprehensive floor debates. In Boston, teachers’ union president Jessica Tang announced they secured “an unprecedented $50 million to commence bolstering the affordable housing that Boston students and families require.” Similarly, Los Angeles teachers incorporated “housing justice provisions” into their contracts.
How a fluffy orange cat named Jorts stole the internet’s heart and became the pro-labor icon 2022 didn’t know it needed
March 30, 2022 // Followers also thanked Jorts for "helping people learn" about labor rights after the account shared a question from a fan about why workers were organizing store by store instead of by sector.