Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

Texas "Death Star" Law Threatens Big Blue Cities

Photo credit: 

Death Star, Seth MillerCreative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

Union-Busting Firm Exposed, Migrant Kids Exploited

Photo credit: 

CJT71081Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Inside the nation’s nerve center of union-busting. (HuffPo)
     
  • Feds denounce surge in exploitation of migrant children. (NYT)
     
  • McDonalds cited 388 times for child labor since May. (TCH)
     
  • US Rep. Greg Caesar goes on “thirst strike” to push for water breaks for workers. (Texas Tribune) 
     
  • UPS and the Teamsters agree on a tentative 5-year contract, averting Aug 1 strike. (WaPo)
     
  • Tesla lied about the range of its electric vehicles and cancelled the service appointments of buyers seeking to fix the problem. (Reuters) 
     
  • Right-wing news powers scammy “buy gold” industry. (WaPo)

Sidney's Picks: Starbucks Fights Dirty War Against Baristas

Photo credit: 

Magnus DCreative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Starbucks is waging a dirty war on baristas. (NYT)
     
  • Hillman judge Ta-Nehisi Coates travels to South Carolina to support a teacher under fire for using his book on racism. (Essence)
     
  • How Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters made Las Vegas into an international gambling Mecca. (Baffler)
     
  • Accident at Mississippi poultry plant kills 16-year-old middle school schooler. (Guardian) 
     
  • Tesla directors vastly overpaid themselves and now they have to give $735 million back to the shareholders. (Reuters)

Sidney's Picks: Can UPS and the Teamsters Reach a Deal In Time?

Photo credit: 

Justin HenryCreative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Down to the wire: Can UPS and the Teamsters strike a deal in time? (ITT
     
  • Farmer workers’ union sees major organizing gains in New York State, thanks to pro-worker law. (Guardian)
     
  • Why tech billionaires love RFK, Jr. (NYT)
     
  • California childcare workers win raises in new contract. (Sac Bee)
     
  • REI’s unionized workers accuse management of playing hardball. (NPR)

Sidney's Picks: Summer Strike Wave

Photo credit: 

Thomas Hawk, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

Labor Stands Up to AI

Photo credit: 

Jose Pablo CerezoCreative Commons

Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: A Father, A Son, and a WGA Picket Line; Corporate Surveillance

Photo credit: 

The All-Seeing Eye, by Charles DawleyCreative Commons. 

The Best of the Week’s News:

Sidney's Picks: McDonald's Made 10-Year-Olds Work Unpaid 'Til 2am

Photo credit: 

Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News:

Meatpackers See Organizing Opportunity at Tyson

Photo credit: 

Tom Benson, Creative Commons.

Best of the Week’s News:

  • Iowa meatpackers set their sights on organizing the notorious Tyson Foods. (In These Times)
     
  • Dirty Dozen: From Amazon and Tesla to the Twin Peaks “breastaurant” how America’s worst employers are endangering their workers. (National COSH)
     
  • National Labor Relations board accuses Starbucks of failing to negotiate fairly with baristas. (Bloomberg)
     
  • Why Biden’s pick for Secretary of Labor triggers the right wing. (NYMag)
     
  • Hollywood is gearing up for a likely writers’ strike. (NYT)
     
  • Ron DeSantis accused of torturing detainees at Guantanamo in the early 2000s. (Guardian)

2023 Hillman Prize winners announced!

NEW YORK – The Sidney Hillman Foundation announces today the winners of the 73rd annual Hillman Prizes for journalism, recognizing the New York Times’ extraordinary investigation into Haiti’s colonial debt; ProPublica/New Yorker’s feature on the privatization of hospice; and More Perfect Union’s agenda-setting videos explicating corporate greed.

“Investigative journalism is a pillar of our democracy that exposes injustice and calls for greater accountability from our institutions,” said Sidney Hillman Foundation President Bruce Raynor. “This year’s Hillman honorees have done exemplary work demonstrating the importance of investigative reporting in spurring public discourse and holding those in positions of authority to account.”

AL.com wins a Hillman Prize for reporting that shut down the predatory Brookside Police Department, and the first-ever Hillman for a podcast goes to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, a gripping and deeply researched podcast about a dramatic chapter of American history, nearly a century old, but with themes that echo loudly today.

For Books, the jury selected Margaret A. Burnham’s By Hands Now Known, a paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow–era violence.

This year’s prizes were judged by Jamelle Bouie, columnist, The New York Times; Maria Carrillo, former enterprise editor Tampa Bay Times/Houston Chronicle; Ta-Nehisi Coates, bestselling author and former national correspondent, The Atlantic; Alix Freedman, global editor, Ethics and Standards, Reuters; Harold Meyerson, editor at large, The American Prospect; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation.

The 2023 winners of the Hillman Prizes are:

Book – By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, W.W Norton & Co.

Broadcast – Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra, MSNBC

Newspaper – The Ransom: The Root of Haiti’s Misery, The New York Times

Magazine – Endgame, ProPublica and The New Yorker

Web – The Rise and Fall of a Predatory Police Force, AL.com

Opinion & Analysis – The Class Room, More Perfect Union

Reporting by this year’s prize winners has had significant positive impact, including:

●  AL.com’s exposé of predatory policing for profit which prompted the Alabama legislature to pass a measure restricting towns across the state from using revenues from fines and fees to supply more than 10% of their budgets

●  ProPublica/New Yorker’s reporting which resulted in trade groups and government watchdog agencies joining forces to push regulators to address alarming business practices in hospice care

●  The New York Times’ groundbreaking reporting, spanning centuries and continents that revealed the massive corporate and colonial heist perpetrated against Haiti, which to this day has impeded its efforts to develop its economy

●  More Perfect Union’s series of educational videos that drew public attention to big pharma’s price-gouging on insulin,Ticketmaster’s monopoly, and other everyday economic injustices

The foundation also announces today that David Cole, National Legal Director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is the recipient of the 2023 George Barrett Award for Public Interest Law. David’s commitment to protecting the civil rights and civil liberties that George Barrett championed spans four decades. The Sidney Hillman Foundation grants this lifetime achievement award to an attorney who fights for justice in our court system on behalf of people who don’t have money or power.

The Sidney Hillman Foundation will host an in-person event with limited capacity on May 9, 2023, at 6:00 p.m.

About the Hillman Prizes

This year’s honorees follow in the trailblazing tradition of past Hillman Prize winners ranging from Murray Kempton in 1950 for his articles on labor in the South and Edward R. Murrow in 1954 for his critical reports on civil liberties and Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare, to Julie K. Brown in 2019 for reporting on the sex crimes and sweetheart deals of Jeffrey Epstein and Ari Berman’s 2022 reporting on voter suppression. 

The Hillman Prizes are open to journalists and subjects globally for any published reporting widely accessible to a U.S. audience. Winners are awarded a $5,000 prize and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Sorel.

In 2011, the Sidney Hillman Foundation inaugurated the Canadian Hillman Prize. This year, TorStar reporters Rachel Mendleson and Steve Buist won for “Unchartered,” which uncovered how often police violate people’s rights accorded under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and what’s being done about it.

 
The Hillman Prizes for journalism honor the legacy of Sidney Hillman, an immigrant who dedicated his life to building a “better America.” Hillman, the founder and president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), believed that a free press was essential to a fair and equal society.The Sidney Hillman Foundation has sought to carry on his legacy by honoring journalists who illuminate the great issues of our times — from the search for a basis for lasting peace, to the need for better housing, medical care and employment for all people, and to the promotion of civil liberties, democracy and the battle against discrimination of all kinds.

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