Clear It with Sidney | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

Clear It with Sidney

Macy's Longest-Serving Employee Retires After 73 Years on the Job

Macy’s longest-serving employee is retiring after 73 years of hard work and activism:

Can you imagine working in the days when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in the White House and the biggest movie at the box-office was The Wizard of Oz?

Rose Syracuse, can do you one better, because she was actually living those moments.  The 92-year old has been working for a whopping 73 years at the Macy’s Herald Square flagship store in New York City.  Rose, also a member of RWDSU Local 1-S, is now announcing her retirement. [UFCW blog]

Rose was a founding member of Local 1-S, and she fought to unionize her workplace:

Speaking with RWDSU, Rose pointed out that “the union fights for you.  They really help you. Otherwise how could you do it all by yourself? Nobody would listen to you.” We couldn’t agree more. Rose’s statement reminds us that the point of a union has not changed from 73 years ago: when sticking together, we have a voice that will be listened to.

[Photo credit: iJammin, Creative Commons.]

Save Homicide Watch

Homicide Watch, one of the most important experiments in improving journalism in the era of the internet, will die in a week, unless we save them,” writes new media expert Clay Shirky.

Homicide Watch is a young journalism startup that reports on every single murder in Washington, DC. No other media outlet comes close. Murder victims in DC are disproportionately black and poor, and their stories are underrepresented in mainstream media coverage. Homicide Watch provides an invaluable service to members of beleaguered communities.

Shirky describes the site’s innovative design:

Homicide Watch matters because they are more than just thorough, they’re innovative. They’ve designed the site like a set of feeds and a wiki rather than like the crime section of a newspaper. The home page shows the most recent updates on all pending cases. Each victim gets their own page, where those updates are aggregated. Every murder is mapped. Every page has the tip line for the detective assigned to the case. Every page hosts a place for remembrance of the victim.

This way of working isn’t just technologically innovative, it’s socially innovative, in a way journalism desperately needs. The home page of Homicide Watch shows photos of the most recent seven victims; as I write this, all seven, are, as usual, African-American. Like a lot of white people, I knew, vaguely, that crime was worse in black neighborhoods than in white ones, but actually seeing the faces, too often of kids not much older than my own, makes it clear how disproportionately this crime is visited on African-Americans.

Homicide Watch has received national recognition for its journalism and its innovative design. The site’s co-founder and sole full-time reporter, Laura Amico, has received a prestiguous Niemann Fellowship at Harvard. Homicide Watch needs to raise enough money to hire a reporter to replace her during her yearlong stint at Harvard.

The most dedicated users of Homicide Watch can’t afford to pay for it. So, Laura and Chris Amico are reaching out to those who care about socially conscious journalism to help keep the site alive.

Please donate, if you can.

As of Wednesday morning, the Homicide Watch Kickstarter had over $20,000 in pledges, putting the campaign a little over halfway towards its goal of $40,000 with 8 days left in the campaign. Remember, they only collect those pledge dollars if they meet the $40,000 threshold. So, keep those pledges coming.

#Sidney's Picks: Labor Day Edition

  • Most of the jobs created during the economic recovery are low-wage positions, whereas most of the jobs lost during the recession paid middle class wages, Catherine Rampell reports for the New York Times. This “hollowing out” of the workforce is linked to government layoffs.
  • A Fair Labor Association audit of Apple’s Chinese manufacturing facilities reveals that the company has pushed its leading manufacturer, Foxconn, to clean up some of the worst abuses without altering its exploitative labor model, Michelle Chen reports for In These Times.
  • 200 members of the AFL-CIO braved the heat in Tampa on Wednesday to protest the Republican Party’s anti-union agenda outside the Republican National Convention.
  • New York City is poised to overhaul its housing authority based on the recommendations contained in a damning report that paints the New York City Housing Authority as inefficient and top-heavy with highly paid appointees. Two of the five members of the restructured board will be residents of NYCHA housing, up from one member out of four today. (via Sidney’s Picks reader Elizabeth W.)

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons]

Taibbi on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital

The cover story we’ve all been waiting for, snarky muckraker Matt Taibbi tells the true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital for Rolling Stone.

Interview with a Farmworker

Javier Mondar-Flores Lopez is an indigenous Mixtec farmworker in Southern California, he started working in the fields at the age of seven. He told his story of hardship, resilience, and activism to David Bacon of New America Media:

“Growing up in a farmworking family – well, it’s everything I ever knew.  Whenever I got out of school, it was straight to the fields to get a little bit of money and help the family out. That’s pretty much the only job I ever knew. In general we would work on the weekends and in the summers. When I was younger it would be right after school, and then during vacations.



My sister Teresa slept in the living room, and one night, when I was doing my homework at the table, I could hear her crying because she had so much pain in her hands. My mother and my other sister complained about how much their backs hurt.  My brother talked about his back pain as well. It’s pretty sad. I always hear my family talk about how much they’re in pain and how’s it’s impossible for me to help them.”

There are three bills working their way through the legislative system in California that would improve the lives of farmworkers like Javier, including one that would require overtime pay after 8 hours of work.

[Photo credit: Lettuce field, by Tom_Focus, Creative Commons.]

 

 

Young Informants are Pawns in the Drug War

2012 Hillman Award-winner Sarah Stillman has an eye-opening story in this week’s New Yorker about how police departments routinely enlist untrained youths as pawns in the drug war. Teens arrested for minor drug offenses are recruited to participate in dangerous sting operations involving weapons and hard drugs. Some, like 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman are murdered on the job. In the wake of multiple fatalities, a movement is afoot to reform the confidential informant system to protect the rights of young people, particularly those whose judgement may be clouded by addiction.

[Photo credit, Bodgan Suditu, Creative Commons.]

Myths About Failing Schools

Kristina Rizga spent 18 months reporting inside a school reputed to be among the most troubled in San Francisco, as measured by standardized test scores. She was surprised to discover that the instution seemed to be doing much better than its test scores suggested:

If you wonder why you haven’t read many accounts of how these questions are playing out in real life, there’s a reason: It’s easier for a journalist to embed with the Army or the Marines than to go behind the scenes at a public school. It took months to find one that would let me play fly on the wall. Once Guthertz opened the door at Mission, it took months more for some teachers, wary of distortion and stereotyping, to warm to me. In the end, I’d spend more than 18 months in Mission’s classrooms, cafeterias, and administrative offices, finally watching the Class of 2012—including a beaming Maria—show off their diplomas.

The surprises began almost right away. Judging from what I’d read about “troubled” schools, I’d expected noisy classrooms, hallway fights, and disgruntled staff. Instead I found a welcoming place that many students and staff called “family.” After a few weeks of talking to students, I failed to find a single one who didn’t like the school, and most of the parents I met were happy too. Mission’s student and parent satisfaction surveys rank among the highest in San Francisco.

Read the rest at Mother Jones.

[Photo credit: MrCharly, Creative Commons.]

May You Be Reunited With Your Socialist Garment Worker Ancestors

“May you be reunited in the world to come with your ancestors, who were all socialist garment workers.” 

From Yiddish curses for Republican Jews. Get more curses.

[Photo credit: ILGWU Local 415 picket in Miami, FL, Kheel Center, Cornell University, Creative Commons.]

#Sidney's Picks: Deadly Tin in Your Smart Phone

Welcome to our weekly recap of the best of the week’s news. Submit your story by tweeting @SidneyHillman, #Sidney.

  • Much of the tin solder that binds the components of the world’s tablets and smart phones originates in open pit mines in Indonesia where it is extracted at enormous human cost, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
  • About a third of women impregnated by their rapists choose to keep their babies and, horrifyingly, some rapists come back to assert their paternal rights. Shauna Prewitt is a lawyer from Chicago who survived rape and her rapist’s attempt to get custody of her daughter, she is campaigning for legal reform to protect women in similar circumstances.
  • Who watches the watchers? Republican-allied groups are training thousands of citizen “poll watchers” to document alleged voting irregularities in November, Brentin Mock reports for Colorlines. Is it civic engagement, or voter suppression?
  • Here’s some good news: 80% of New York voters want the minimum wage raised from $7.25 to $8.50, according to a recent poll by Siena College. That’s an increase of 3 percentage points since June.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

Hostess's Final Offer is Anything But Sweet

Bruce Vail of In These Times reports on the latest developments in the standoff between Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies, and the Teamsters. Rank-and-file members are set to vote next week on a brutal last, best, and final offer from the company:

The vote is the latest development in a seven-month standoff between the Teamsters and Hostess, which filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in January and demanded sweeping concessions from its unionized workforce. Failure by the Teamsters and several other unions to agree to the concessions will mean the final collapse of Hostess and the loss of all 17,000 jobs at the company, Hostess officials have said.

That the cuts will be painful is clear, although the Teamsters are withholding the full details pending the vote. Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn sent out a letter to employees August 20 estimating that–for all workers, including management–wages would be cut by 8 percent next year and givebacks in health care insurance would further reduce overall income. The proposal would also erase millions in pensions owed to workers and relieve the company of any requirement to make pension fund contributions for the next three years.

[Photo credit: Jenn Durfey, Creative Commons.]

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