Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

Sidney's Picks: Dollar Store Implosion, Strike Wave Brewing, and Remembering Ed Vargas (1948-2021)

Photo credit: 

Thomas Hawk, Creative Commons 2.0

Sidney’s Picks:

  • Pandemic crashes the Dollar Store business model. (NYT)
     
  • Drivers could earn less than $5/hr under Massachusetts’ proposed gig worker law. (Yahoo)
     
  • Tens of thousands of U.S. workers could be on strike within weeks. (Guardian) 
     
  • Climate change will cost insurers trillions, why are they still investing in fossil fuels? (Prospect)
     
  • It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Ed Vargas. Ed joined the ILGWU as a worker in a shop in Local 99. From there he spent 55 years in various positions with the union and touched everyone who knew him. Most recently he worked as a Labor Liaison in the Governor’s office for the State of New York. Ed has been instrumental in keeping alive the legacy of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and is largely responsible for the annual commemoration and the permanent memorial in-progress. We will miss him tremendously.

Sidney's Picks: Hillman Foundation Welcomes New Judge, Jamelle Bouie

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • A warm welcome to Jamelle Bouie, the newest member of the Hillman Foundation’s distinguished panel of judges!
     
  • NY City Council quietly passes sweeping package to protect delivery workers. (Verge)
     
  • Nabisco workers back on the job after 5-week strike, with hard-won gains and lessons learned. (ITT, HuffPost, Willamette Week)
     
  • Prop 22 supporters appeal judge’s ruling that anti-worker law is unconstitutional. (Bloomberg Law)
     
  • Specious AZ  “audit” limps over the finish line, conceding that Biden won Arizona by more than the official margin. (AZ Central)

Sidney's Picks: Nabisco Strike & Taxing the Rich

Photo credit: 

A Nabisco picket line. Wikimedia Commons

The Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: Hidden Police Brutality; Organizing Gains

Photo credit: 

Esmir Milavic, Creative Commons 2.0

The Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: The Death of Roe & The Nabisco Strike

Photo credit: 

Creative Commons.

Best of the Week’s News:

  • The Supreme Court kills Roe v. Wade quietly, on the shadow docket, by refusing to pause a Texas law that sics legal vigilantes on anyone who facilitates an abortion. (Rewire, NYTNY Mag)
     
  • Anti-vaxxers bearing zip ties confront high school principle, threatening to kidnap her. (WaPo)
     
  • Organizing Starbucks workers in Buffalo call on CEO to uphold eight fair election principles, as they look ahead to organizing one store at a time. (NYT, In These Times)
     
  • The national Nabisco strike heated up, with the company sending scabs to the Portland plant and workers halting rail deliveries. (NW Labor Press, Willamette Week)
     
  • Unprecedented rains kill at least 13 people in Brooklyn and Queens, drowning most in their basement apartments. (The City)

Sidney's Picks: Nabisco Strike & Ivermectin Wars

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • “We want our pension back”: Nabisco strike goes national, and strikers call for Oreo boycott. (NYT, WBUR)
     
  • Starbucks workers in Buffalo to form the chain’s first union, and Collectivo becomes the largest unionized chain of coffee shops in the country. (Eater, ITT
     
  • Vaccination as Solidarity: Building trades union imposes a vaccination mandate on itself. (Prospect)
     
  • Meet the right wing grifters behind the phony Covid cure that has humans overdosing on horse dewormer and sheep dip. (NBC

Sidney's Picks: Nabisco Strike & A Sketchy Police Algorithm

Photo credit: 

An Oreo, Nabisco’s signature product, Mihoda, Creative Commons 2.0.​

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Workers at all US Nabisco bakeries are now on strike. Workers are fighting for middle class jobs and fair working hours. (Today, Vice, Stranger)
     
  • Scattershot: How a secret police algorithm based on sketchy science and tweaked by human bias landed a man in jail for murder. (AP)
     
  • Extremist GOP rep Lauren Boebert introduced legislation to help oil drillers, without disclosing that her husband made $1 million in energy consulting. (WaPo) 
     
  • Liar’s Remorse: She spread AZ election conspiracy theories, and it ruined her life. (AZ Audit) 
     
  • South Carolina politicians blow off millions in ethics fines. (Post & Courier)

Sidney's Picks: Extreme Heat & Secret Strategy

Photo credit: 

“Heatwave,” by Shane Gorski, Creative Commons 2.0

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Extreme heat compounds the miseries and dangers of migrant farm work. (Nation)
     
  • New York Times lawyers accidentally send secret strategy memo to union. (Daily Beast)
     
  • Caregivers deserve better. (NYT)
     
  • Thanks to a wonky secret algorithm, sick people can be denied pain medication because they filled scripts for their sick dogs. (Wired)
     
  • Labor takes aim at proposed  Amazon-MGM merger. (Deadline)

Sidney's Picks Remembering AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (1949-2021)

Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: Infrastructure & Remembering Robert Moses

Photo credit: 

Robert P. Moses, courtesy of the Algebra Project, Creative Commons. 

The Best of the Week’s News:

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