Newsitem List

Here's a telling example of the terminal disengagement of our cultural identity zone from the larger society around us......

An African American contract worker who first discovered high amounts of radioactive contamination on Treasure Island was subsequently fired, and blew the whistle by reporting this contamination to public officials....

The statewide union for Graduate Student Workers, UAW Local 2865, has voted for a two-day strike to call for an end to UC intimidation of members and refusal to bargain over class size. On day one of the strike, certain campuses (like UCSC) will be striking over unfair labor practices that particularly impact members on their campuses. On day two of the strike, members will join together from all campuses, calling for a statewide strike to protest numerous Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs). UCSC ...

Graduate Student Workers at UC Santa Cruz announced on March 4 that, after two days of discussions, management has given in to all of their demands. The results: No more underpaid undergrad TAs, back pay ($6000 each) for all those who've already been in that position, serious reduction in TA workload for poorly planned Arts department classes, and a committee established to make recommendations for class-sizes with equal voices for labor and management....

On February 25th, 2014, a United Front rally was held in front of the Korean Consulate in San Francisco in defense of the Korean Rail Workers Union (KRWU). This is the third demonstration in the last four months. At the last rally (January 17, 2014), the Korean Consulate, working with the US State Department, attempted to disrupt the rally by organizing right-wing Koreans in a counterdemonstration. The right wingers also attempted to disrupt this rally, but this time they were outnumbered an...

California has more than 47,000 people employed manufacturing and installing pollution-free solar energy, according to a national Solar Jobs Census released on February 11 by The Solar Foundation. According to the analysis, California continues to rank 1st in nation for total solar jobs, with approximately one-third of all solar jobs in the country. Growth in the state’s solar jobs is expected to surge by over 22% by the end of 2014....

The Investor-State Dispute mechanism gives corporations the status of nation states. The Swedish energy corporation Vattenfeld is suing Germany for 1 billion Euros for stopping nuclear power too quickly!...

In his 1940 short story "Inside the Whale," George Orwell satirizes the focus in Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Miller's characters are protected by the fat of the whale and never discuss the burning challenges and tasks of their historical time. Is this an apt characterization of our time where the bailout of speculative banks and the mutation of private losses into public losses are accepted without resistance? In his poem "The Egg," Gunter Grass says we are are born in an egg and our li...

Registered nurses will hold a candlelight vigil tonight outside Watsonville Community Hospital, in Watsonville, CA to protest the firing of a registered nurse whistleblower by the giant corporate hospital chain Community Health System earlier this week....

The gentrification of the Bay Area is unsustainable. Tech workers are being used by their employers as cannon fodder in the class war. People want democracy, not charity. Tech companies have to pay their taxes. They also need to use this thingie called the Internet to spread their operations out to places that need the economic activity, like the Central Valley. Bonus: High-speed rail....