Reading Around

There is a long report in The Detroit Free Press here on the political-economic vicissitudes of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. More generally, The Free Press also ran this extended, eye-opening report on the course of Detroit's political and economic disaster.

Benjamin Sachs (Harvard Law) sketched a new model for union organizing here in The New York Times last week.

In this OpEd at The Los Angeles Times Rebecca Solnit urges us to take the long view on Occupy and its legacy. (A longer version of the essay is here.) And at The Nation Allison Kilkenny offers this lament on where the dissipated movement currently stands.

Economist Dani Rodrik here on the troubles religion poses to Turkish democracy.

Political Scientist Ian Lustick in The New York Times here yesterday on the impossibility of a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Added a bit later:  I meant to include a link to this report from The Brooking Institution - "The Algebra Imperative" - that underscores the work of Bob Moses and his Algebra Project in preparing students for math literacy and, thereby full political and economic citizenship.

Talking to Labor Unions

You can find transcripts of these remarks by economist Joseph Stiglitz here and Senator Elizabeth Warren here.

Unions and Socialists: The Folks who Brought you ... the 1963 March On Washington

Where did all those people come from? As part of my ongoing effort here to resist sanitized depictions of American political history, let's recall that the March on Washington, yeah the event where MLK gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, was brought to you by trade unions and socialists.