bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sustaining Bargaining Unit Strength
Authors: Vosko Leah F.
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores challenges to maintaining strong bargaining units posed by threats of attrition, either through formal decertification or by other means producing similar outcomes. It first documents trends in numerical attrition at Sidhu & Sons, in the context of Canada's introduction of other more highly deregulated temporary migrant work programs (TMWPs) operating in agriculture and those programs' subsequent growth. The size of the bargaining unit at Sidhu, comprised of SAWP employees exclusively, shrank after certain employees' attempt to decertify it, despite the fact that the Labour Relations Board (LRB) had refused to cancel its certification. Given the absence of an active attempt to decertify the bargaining unit, it is nevertheless difficult to determine how attrition continued at Sidhu. To demonstrate the how of this often subtle modality of deportability, the chapter then chronicles strategies fostering attrition in the bargaining unit encompassing SAWP employees at Floralia Plant Growers Ltd., which the union originally tried to draw into the foregoing complaint of unfair labor practices and coercion and intimidation directed at Sidhu.
Conclusion
Authors: Vosko Leah F.
Published: May 2020

This concluding chapter reflects on the significance of the legal case of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) employeess at Sidhu & Sons for expanding understandings of the meaning of deportability and its applicability to temporary migrant work program (TMWP) participants laboring not only in Canada but also in other relatively high-income host states embracing migration management and the measures it prescribes. Obstacles to limiting deportability writ large will persist so long as migration management dominates paradigmatically. Nevertheless, in combination with the forward-looking organizing efforts already being undertaken by unions and worker centers, in areas where unionization is difficult to achieve partly because of the still-dominant Wagnerian-styled model of unionization, certain modest interventions in policy and practice hold promise in forging change and curbing deportability among temporary migrant workers. Because the foregoing case study focused on the SAWP, the alternatives outlined in this chapter primarily address this TMWP. Given, however, that the SAWP is often touted as a model of migration management, they seek to provide meaningful avenues toward incremental change in other TMWPs in Canada and elsewhere.
Suspect Saints
Authors: Peterson Janine Larmon
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines “suspect saints,” who emerged when either the pope or papal agents publicly suspected a local holy person of heresy. The individual was the focus of a cult that popes undoubtedly preferred to discontinue, but a lack of evidence meant inquisitors could not condemn their veneration. Just as communities questioned the efficacy of using the inquisitio to judge the worth of candidates to sainthood, so too did they challenge its usefulness to determine heretics. Examples such as Peter Crisci of Foligno, Tommasuccio of Nocera, Meco del Sacco (d. circa 1346), and Armanno Pungilupo demonstrate how the construction of sanctity became contested after inquisitors took on the role of papal disciplinarians, due in part to diverging standards regarding how and by whom heresy, no less than holiness, should be judged. The result was competing ideas regarding the spiritual worth of these saints. Inquisitors questioned Peter Crisci, incarcerated Tommasuccio, and condemned Meco and Armanno, both of whom went through an appeal process. Inquisitors failed to secure lasting condemnations for all of these saints, except Armanno Pungilupo. The problems inherent in the system of discerning heresy allowed the continued existence of their cults.
Conclusion
Authors: Peterson Janine Larmon
Published: May 2020

This concluding chapter argues that a variety of factors contributed to the phenomenon of disputed saints in northern and central Italy. As the members of nascent signorial governments gradually defined themselves as communities, partly through conflict and their complicated relationship with the papacy, new local saints emerged as symbols of communal identity. Many of these saints became the focus of a cult precisely because they were believed to have assisted the city in an important battle, assuming the role of protectors in the midst of strife alongside saints connected to their foundation myths. A significant aspect of late medieval sanctity that emerges from this study is that both popes and communities used saints as political weapons. The disputed saint was not just a manifestation of a gap between local and papal interests, nor simply a disjunction between popular and official concepts of the holy. Emerging out of the hubs of political unrest in northern and central Italy, disputed saints became central to communities' efforts to achieve religious and political autonomy. Communities used the creation of cults and the canonization process, among other tools available, in a grassroots effort to get things done and cement an independent identity.
Introduction
Authors: Palmer James A.
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the political history of Rome. Rome's communal traditions and their emphasis on the city's autonomy were long-standing and vital. Yet, by the turn of the fifteenth century, the autonomous Roman commune was gone, replaced by papal dominion. Its institutions remained as mechanisms of papal governance, but the absence of autonomy or meaningful ideological commitment makes any appearance of communal vitality illusory. This transformation is notable in its own right, but its aftermath endows it with critical importance. Despite sometimes rocky relations with the city and its inhabitants, it was by and large from Rome that the popes would consolidate their power over the ever more robust Papal States, which have come to serve as an important case study for the emergence of early modern European states in general; for the evolution of sovereign power; and for the process and limits of secularization. This consolidation of papal power began in the fourteenth century and continued in the mid-fifteenth century, accelerating with the end of the Western Schism and the papacy of Martin V. Though the papacy is commonly credited with Rome's transformation, the book demonstrates that such an understanding of Italian, papal, and Roman history misses a fundamental, homegrown transformation of Rome's political culture, which preceded and enabled the consolidation of papal power.
Good Governance and the Economy of Violence
Authors: Palmer James A.
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes the economy of violence. Through a theatrical form of ritualized peacemaking, Roman elites managed private violence, claimed justice and peace as characteristic of Roman political society, and claimed for themselves a unique capacity to sustain this rightly ordered social world. Such peacemaking was the domain of the political elite but under their guidance was participated in not only by prominent male citizens but by women, noncitizens, and even Jews. Performed on the city's streets, these rituals make clear the importance of the circuit between the Roman political elite and the city's diverse political society. They also reveal the gradual decentering of communal institutions. Nowhere is the legitimization of power in a political society that transcends the civic realm clearer. It is in these rituals that the transformative potential of Rome's new political culture becomes most apparent, as they gradually produced a distinct new Roman elite with a new kind of claim to the virtues of good governance.
Five Aspects of the Modern Temporal Regime
Authors: Assmann Aleida
Published: May 2020

This chapter reconstructs and critically examines the history of the modern time regime. The worldview associated with modernity's time regime rests on various presuppositions, five of which are examined in this chapter. These issues are closely related and directly build on one another: temporal rupture, the fiction of beginning, creative destruction, the invention of the historical, and finally, acceleration. In doing so, the chapter attempts to find out how the modern time regime came into being and the values associated with it that started Western civilization on its particular trajectory. It also considers how that regime has been translated into action and collective self-awareness, historically and politically. Where the values of Western culture come from, how they inform its sense of the rest of the world, and which of these values are worth safeguarding or are considered problematic are also explored.
The Unfulfilled Promise of Democracy: Lesbian and Gay Activism in Indonesia
Authors: Wijaya Hendri , Davies Sharyn Graham
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the transformation of activism for lesbian and gay rights from an understated, but relatively secure, position in the heterosexist context of the New Order to a much more visible, but also vulnerable, movement. Lesbian and gay activists believed that democracy would improve their capacity to move beyond demands for inclusion and equal treatment to demands for acceptance, which initially proved to be the case. But democracy also created space for homophobic forces intent on eradicating public expressions of homosexual or queer identity. One reaction to this hostility—which reached the highest levels of government in 2016—was to retreat to the “safer” forms of activism characteristic of the New Order. As this chapter demonstrates, however, activists have also responded by using digital media platforms to establish formal and informal networks and by reaching out to international organizations and to other Indonesian social movements with intersecting concerns.
African Farms and Farmers
Authors: Conway Gordon , Badiane Ousmane , Glatzel Katrin
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes how African farmers manage to overcome the constraints impeding them, both natural and those caused by cultural and economic diversity and by political boundaries. It reveals that over 80 percent of African farmers are smallholders, and in many respects they are highly efficient. At the same time, medium-scale farms, those between five and one hundred hectares, account for a rising share of total farmland. Nevertheless, African populations are growing extremely fast, and in many countries smallholder farm sizes are shrinking and land is becoming more intensively and extensively cultivated, leading to further degradation. The chapter indicates that the way forward lies in farmers developing resilient livelihoods that encompass sources of income off farm. Diversity in the livelihood includes rural women, young people, and other disadvantaged people, all of whom need to integrate with agricultural and agribusiness value chains.
The Threats to Food Security
Authors: Conway Gordon , Badiane Ousmane , Glatzel Katrin
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores threats to food security. It reveals many challenges arising from a range of threats external to the farm household, including severe biological threats from pests, disease, and weeds. Moreover, healthy, fertile soils are the cornerstone of food security and rural livelihoods, but African soils are degrading. Water is just as important for the productivity of plants, and lack of water leads to chronic and acute stress. Indeed, Africa is already battling the impacts of climate change. Rising temperatures and variable rainfall are increasing the exposure of smallholders to drought, famine, and disease. Agriculture is an important emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs), not only carbon dioxide but also such powerful gases as methane and nitrous oxide. In addition, there are often severe socioeconomic challenges, including unstable and high prices of basic commodities. Finally, conflicts cause disruption to food security.
Sustainable Agriculture
Authors: Conway Gordon , Badiane Ousmane , Glatzel Katrin
Published: May 2020

This chapter proposes that the way forward will be a prosperous and sustainable agriculture sector deeply rooted in the concept of sustainable intensification (SI): producing more with less, using inputs like seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides more prudently, adapting to climate change, reducing GHG emissions, improving natural capital such as soil moisture capacity and the diversity of pests' enemies, and building resilience. One approach to SI is to employ precision agriculture, ensuring that inputs—whether nutrients, pesticides, seeds, or water—are used in a precise, sparing, effective, and strategic way in order to minimize their environmental impact. Thus microdosing permits the prudent, targeted use of inputs such as fertilizers, thereby improving soil quality and moisture while reducing the environmental impact that excessive use can cause. It also reduces costs and helps improve nutrient use efficiency and protection against drought. Precision farming focuses on just one aspect of SI. More generally, it is a concept that includes three mutually reinforcing pillars: ecological intensification, genetic intensification, and socioeconomic intensification.
Agriculture and Ecology
Authors: Conway Gordon , Badiane Ousmane , Glatzel Katrin
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses ecological intensification, which involves the use of ecological processes more intensively and in a sustainable manner. The aim is to use land, water, biodiversity, and nutrients ecologically efficiently and in ways that minimize negative environmental impacts. Such systems can conserve and utilize natural capital, thus improving the quality and quantity of food production. Conservation agriculture is one such integrated system of soil, water, and biological resource management, combined with carefully selected external inputs. This and similar systems can reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Biodiversity is a key factor in maintaining stable, resilient agroecosystems. Included in conservation agriculture are various forms of intercropping that utilize the mutually beneficial ecological relationships arising when two or more crops are grown in association, either as mixtures or rotations. Organic farming also aims to mimic nature by making use of natural ecological processes and resources. The potential increase in yields and farmers' incomes sustainably is considerable in developing countries, especially in those areas faced with degraded soils, lack of capital, and low product prices. But care needs to be taken in determining where organic agriculture can contribute to sustainability and productivity and where it might have the reverse effect.
The Greatest Living Man of Letters
Authors: Boes Tobias
Published: May 2020

This chapter argues that the process by which Thomas Mann was canonized as the “greatest living man of letters” in the New World certainly had many similarities to his staging as a representative writer in the Old. But there were enormous differences as well, and these would turn out to be consequential for literary history, including literary history back in Germany. The chapter explains how Mann's rise to literary prominence in the United States took place within the larger context of a newly emerging and distinctively American cultural formation, the “middlebrow.” At first, this seems antithetical to Mann's associations with “serious” modern literature. However, the chapter reveals that modernism and the middlebrow have never truly stood in opposition to one another.
The First Citizen of the International Republic of Letters
Authors: Boes Tobias
Published: May 2020

This chapter reveals the increasing tensions between Thomas Mann and the Nazi regime. Since the 1920s, he had become one of the most prominent defenders of the democratic constitution of the Weimar Republic, and an increasingly vocal critic of Adolf Hitler and his followers. In addition, over the course of the late 1930s, Mann's reputation as a “great man of letters” was adapted for a new and more belligerent age that found its culmination with the outbreak of the Second World War. By turning Mann into an anti-Nazi icon, Americans were simultaneously taking a stand themselves. One of the most important factors driving this process was Mann's physical presence in the country, which opened up entirely new avenues of reception.
Sovereignty and Blood
Authors: Copeman Jacob , Banerjee Dwaipayan
Published: May 2020

This chapter enters a neglected corner of Gandhi's political thought—his preoccupation with blood. Here, blood indexed a past and present colonial violence, as well as the future possibility for an ascetic transcendence of both politics and the body. The chapter then goes on to discuss how past, present, and future bloodsheds are evoked simultaneously in the iconography of fallen freedom-fighter martyrs. In this genre, heroes of India's independence struggle who shed their blood for the nation are depicted in portraits composed of human blood in the present. This aimed to inspire others to willingness to shed their blood, and that of others, in the future for the nation.
Substantial Activisms
Authors: Copeman Jacob , Banerjee Dwaipayan
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on scenes of hematological activism. These scenes constitute a historically significant genre of political performance, in relation to the ebbs and flows of other modes of activist signification. Specifically, the chapter suggests that blood donation spectacles act as rituals of verification, in contrast to other modes of political protest such as the fast that are increasingly open to accusations of insincerity and dissembling. Blood extracted on political occasions holds an elusive promise of political transparency: it is promissory matter. Yet as this chapter shows, blood also exposes itself to accusations of dissembling and deception: when used by politicians perceived as corrupt, the communicative medium is drained of its material intimacy with sincerity.
Reform or Collapse: Economic Challenges During Vietnamization
Authors: Ngọc Phạm Kim
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the challenges of implementing reforms for the Republic of Vietnam during its “Vietnamization,” or U.S. troop withdrawal. At the time, there were many underlying difficulties to the task of enforcing fiscal discipline, fighting inflation, and economic restructuring. In the face of this economic conundrum, the Republic of Vietnam and the United States saw things through their own perspectives. American advisors moralized that “it was time for Vietnam to stand on its own feet.” Foreign observers saw conspicuous wealth in a country at war: motorbikes, televisions, and every kind of luxury. Economists criticized what they saw as a country that “consumes much, but produces little.” Meanwhile, local politicians kept approving more expensive budgets but shied away from unpopular revenue-collecting measures, instead blaming the situation on incompetent ministers. For too long, Vietnam avoided the political taboos of currency devaluation and taxation whenever confronted with the structural imbalances of its economy.
Public Security and the National Police
Authors: Công Trần Minh
Published: May 2020

This chapter concerns the National Police (NP, Cảnh Sát Quốc Gia), which was responsible for the public security of the Republic of Vietnam. Besides maintaining national security and law enforcement, the NP had to deal with an insurgency orchestrated by Hanoi. It became more multifaceted and complex as a paramilitary force. To highlight the significance of the NP, this chapter first briefly outlines the history of the National Police. Next, it discusses police training to meet the two main objectives of protecting the people and providing domestic security. Afterward, the chapter focuses on outstanding security initiatives and programs in which the NP played an important role. Finally, the chapter recounts the general security situation in South Vietnam and two particular events in 1966 and 1968 in which the chapter's author was personally involved.
The Vietnam War in the Eyes of a Vietnamese War Correspondent
Authors: Thủy Vũ Thanh
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses the Vietnam War from the perspective of a South Vietnamese war correspondent. It first shares the author's personal experience as a war correspondent and a journalist employed in both government and private media in South Vietnam. Next, the chapter turns to the biases of the American media that affected the outcome of the war. Many foreign correspondents have spoken and written about the Vietnam War. But no matter how long they covered the war, nor how much they came to know the country, the war could never penetrate their soul in the same way as it did a son or daughter of Vietnam. The chapter thus attempts to offer a different view of the war than what was portrayed in the mainstream international media.
Sóng Thần’s Campaign for Press Freedom
Authors: Dương Trùng
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the events leading to the protests of the press community, culminating in the trial of the daily newspaper, Sóng Thền. It aims to provide a primary source for future studies of the Republic of Vietnam, with a focus on the press. Secondly, the chapter attempts to show that despite governmental efforts in controlling the media, South Vietnamese journalists did not just submit but fought back, without communist influences as many people believed, to defend freedom of expression recognized by the 1967 constitution. They did their job as journalists to inform the public of state affairs and the progress of the war against communism. This is thus a personal account of the trial of Sóng Thền.
Writers of the Republic of Vietnam
Authors: Ca Nhã
Published: May 2020

This chapter is about literary and artistic achievements under the Republic of Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. It first discusses the persecution of writers, scholars, and journalists during the Vietnam War. The chapter then turns to the generations of writers moved by the socio-political climate in South Vietnam after the end of the First Indochina War. From 1955 to 1960, during the first five years of the First Republic when the whole South still enjoyed peace and stability, Southern writers embarked on an auspicious journey. However, as the chapter shows, their most spectacular achievements appeared only during the troubled Second Republic period.
The Cinema Industry
Authors: Chinh Kiều
Published: May 2020

This chapter embarks on a history of Vietnamese cinema as it developed during the Republic of Vietnam period. Due to historical circumstances, Vietnam was deeply influenced by French culture. After the French left, the Republic of Vietnam was assisted by the United States, and American films and English-language films entered the country. In the South, with nearly a million recent migrants from the North, ethnic cultural heritage still remained its unified identity. Talents came from all regions of the country. With these proper first steps, South Vietnam in the First Republic period properly inked the very first page in the history of the national film industry. In addition, the Southern government provided support to help the private cinema industry to recover. International studios were invited into Vietnam to cooperate and help develop the private cinema industry.
The Neglect of the Republic of Vietnam in the American Historical Memory
Authors: Tran Nu-Anh
Published: May 2020

This chapter explains the neglect of the Republic of Vietnam in the American historical memory. It makes a personal appeal to the diasporic community for help in addressing this problem. Echoing the volume's view about the importance of memories, the chapter urges everyone who lived under the Republic of Vietnam to write memoirs, to grant interviews, and to share their memories. The most important kind of help from the community, the chapter argues, is to provide primary sources for historians. In addition, the chapter contends that the community should support Vietnamese studies, value the humanities and the social sciences as possible careers for their children, and support intellectual freedom.
Political, Military, and Cultural Memoirs in Vietnamese
Authors: Hoang Tuan
Published: May 2020

This chapter discusses how historians view the values and limitations of personal memoirs. It also reviews some of the most important memoirs written in the Vietnamese language by former government and civil society leaders of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). These memoirs have been published in the United States for many years, but scholars have hardly used them. This chapter's review helps not only to provide a broader context for the testimonies in this volume but also to draw out the major themes in those memoirs that parallel the discussion on the challenges facing nation-building efforts in the republic. These themes include communist violence that explains the harsh anticommunist policies in the early years of Ngô Đình Diệm, contested views of the First Republic, and a generally more positive assessment of the Second Republic. The bourgeois values embraced by the RVN, the chapter points out, drew support from many Vietnamese at the time and are a source of nostalgia for many in Vietnam today.
Moral and Political Consequences
Authors: Young Ken , Schilling Warner R.
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines the controversy's real or assumed moral and political aspects. Moral repugnance inflected the scientific judgments of Oppenheimer's General Advisory Committee, triggering discussion of the relative moral significance of thermonuclear bombing, the use of the atomic bomb, and the mass urban bombing campaigns of 1942–1945. More immediate concerns centered on the impact a decision to develop thermonuclear weapons might have on the pattern of international relations. Given a paucity of intelligence, the effects on the Soviet Union's own weapons program, and thereby on the United States' vulnerability, could only be guessed at. The chapter thus considers if the development of the Super would restore the status quo ante-1949 or lead to a thermonuclear arms race and ultimate stalemate—or even the end of the world.
Tactical Diversions
Authors: Young Ken , Schilling Warner R.
Published: May 2020

This chapter shows how the struggle for influence over thermonuclear weapons moved onto new territory, where many of those who had opposed the decision to develop the Super expressed their continuing dissent through the politics of national security policy. The same figures emerged as critics of the air force doctrine of strategic bombardment, and of Strategic Air Command, in which its application was vested. In pointing up the prospects for employing nuclear weapons more effectively in the land battle, the dissenters attracted some support from army officers, while their arguments were anathema to air force generals. As Oppenheimer and another member of his General Advisory Committee took control of a study of tactical weaponry, the air force began to move against what was seen as dangerous, possibly subversive, amateurism. The offense was compounded by the promotion of an approach to air defense that was seen as another direct challenge to Strategic Air Command (SAC) through a disavowal of the deterrent force of strategic bombardment. The first steps were thus taken on a path that would lead to Oppenheimer's “trial” before the Atomic Energy Commission's Personnel Security Board.
Thanatopography
Authors: Tierney Matt
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes thanatopography as the drawing of a map of death, not the writing of a death. When new technologies respatialize the world, thanatopography teaches that they do so not because they construct a communicative network but instead because they build and distribute sites of machinic killing. In discussing Norbert Wiener's insistence on seeing the planet as a world of Belsen and Hiroshima, thanatopography pares back the presumed connection between technology and humanity, exposing something quite frightening underneath the network. A vision of the world that presumes no common similarities among people and peoples is a vertiginous vision that must see shared connections among extant technologies, not only telecommunication and computation but also war, racism, and dehumanizing labor. Communal responsibility and mutual obligation survive amid such technologies as ethical codes that negotiate difference rather than attempting to transcend it. But they also require a reckoning with very real legacies of twentieth-century machines. In place of the smooth-functioning global network, thanatopography offers a spatio-temporal figuration of mass death.
Warlords, States, And Political Orders
Authors: Malejacq Romain
Published: May 2020

This chapter argues that warlords are not mere challengers to the state. They represent alternative forms of authority that are well suited to certain circumstances (at times better suited than states). They will not disappear under the increasing pressure of state centralization. Hence, this chapter unpacks the complex relationships between warlords and states and explains that warlords operate in realms of authority that go beyond the grasp of the formal state to ensure their survival. It then builds a typology of political orders in areas of weak and failed statehood to identify the different types of structural environments in which warlords exert their agency.
Ismail Khan, the Armed Notable of Western Afghanistan
Authors: Malejacq Romain
Published: May 2020

This chapter demonstrates that the self-proclaimed amir of western Afghanistan, Ismail Khan, is a typical warlord. When the conditions do not allow him to concentrate all sources of power simultaneously, he uses his authority to mediate between different levels of politics and make himself indispensable. Indeed, Ismail Khan can no longer be considered an active warlord in the current international environment and has held no official position in Herat for over a decade. Yet, he still holds significant political authority in the region, as he successfully reinvented himself to become the epitome of the armed notable—a powerful individual who mediates between the local level and the outside world. He provides security and opportunities to his followers, but is also able to coerce opponents and recalcitrant populations.
Massoud And Fahim
Authors: Malejacq Romain
Published: May 2020

This chapter deals with two atypical warlords, Ahmad Shah Massoud and his successor, Mohammad Qasim Fahim. The former was a “mix” between a patrimonial leader and an ideological one, a “militant” whose objective was to capture the central state, a particularity that is reflected in the way he accumulated and converted his power. Fahim is also atypical. While Ismail Khan, Dostum, and Massoud at times managed to accumulate all sources of power and exert a fonction totale in the territories they controlled, he rose to power only after Massoud's death and the beginning of the U.S.-led intervention. His ensuing lack of legitimacy deeply affected the way he exerted and converted power, putting a greater emphasis on the accumulation of economic resources.
Whose Class Is It Anyway? The “White Working Class” and the Myth of Trump
Authors: Jaffe Sarah
Published: May 2020

This chapter unpacks myths about the white working class and its support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Popular media wrongly suggest that millions of white, economically disadvantaged, uneducated blue-collar workers were responsible for Trump's victory. The chapter examines the evidence, showing that two-thirds of Trump voters made more than the median income but more than half of those without college degrees were in the top half of the income distribution. The chapter suggests that these voters were not motivated by enthusiasm about Trump's priorities but rather were protesting a system that had left them behind. The myth of the struggling white working-class voter, clamoring for Trump to make America great again, ignores the millions of working-class workers who are people of color and misunderstands racism. This chapter shows how important it is to listen to Trump voters, to understand why working-class people are angry, and to question the media's narrative of the white working class.
From Co-optation to Radical Resistance: An Examination of Organized Labor’s Response(s) to Immigrant Rights in the Era of Trump
Authors: Gleeson Shannon
Published: May 2020

This chapter tackles one of the most controversial issues of the Trump regime: immigration. Trump aggressively and unapologetically embraces an anti-immigrant agenda—focusing on Mexicans crossing the border, “chain migration” of families, and those arriving from Muslim-majority countries. The chapter examines how various union bodies have responded to the “immigration question.” It describes the labor movement's complicated history on this issue, including complex and sometimes inconsistent positions on undocumented workers, guest workers, and paths to citizenship. The chapter also finds that unions in locations that receive large numbers of immigrants have been forging sanctuary unions, advocating for inclusive policies, and negotiating fair contract language. Unions have worked against the Muslim ban and Islamophobia, and in support of refugees, often through involvement with interfaith coalitions. Despite the challenges and despite working people's complicated views, this chapter demonstrates that unions must adopt an intersectional lens and collaborate with community-based and advocacy organizations to build a progressive agenda in the age of Trump.
Going South: How Southern Organizing Will Determine the Future of the Labor Movement
Authors: McMillan MaryBe
Published: May 2020

This chapter reflects on the challenges and opportunities of building workers' power in North Carolina. To change the political balance of the nation, this chapter argues, we must change the South, which is gaining in jobs, population, and political influence. Home to more than a third of the U.S. population, the region is larger than the Northeast and Midwest combined. Political representatives from the South disproportionately contribute to right-wing agendas, including right-to-work, low wages, and voter suppression. The chapter outlines essential strategies for organizing in the South, or in any right-to-work states with hostile political climates. First, start small and dream big; second, issues of race and gender equality must be addressed; third, unions must build strong locals and unite with community allies. Finally, the labor movement, including central labor councils and state federations, must build political power.
Between Home and State: Care Workers and Labor Strategy for the New Open-Shop Era of Trumplandia
Authors: Klein Jennifer
Published: May 2020

This chapter also tackles how to build power under challenging conditions. It analyzes the case of home health care, which stands outside New Deal labor laws and is one of the largest and fastest-growing low-wage occupations. Building on decades of organizing, persistent political action, and mobilization with clients, home-care workers' unions won legislative battles enabling states to take on the role of employer and winning the right to engage in collective bargaining. But anti-union groups are now aggressively encouraging union disaffiliation through door-to-door campaigns, though home-care unions are fighting back. A critical component is deep member training and education, including “leadership academies” to cultivate workers' political education and skills. This chapter is a reminder that members make the union—with or without state recognition.
Introduction
Authors: Keels Micere
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter shows how many of the identity challenges that Latinx and Black students experience result from how race-ethnicity increases the likelihood that they are also first-generation college students; that they attended high schools that did not offer a rigorous college preparatory curriculum; that they have to work for pay to afford college; that they cannot be carefree students and must help support the families they left behind; and that they must contend with many other nontraditional college student challenges. It discusses research and news media portrayals of minority student persistence. To that end, the chapter briefly introduces a cohort of approximately five hundred Black and Latinx college freshmen who enrolled in fall 2013. It reveals that these students were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that simultaneously validate and critique one's interconnected self and group identity—that would enable radical growth. Radical growth can be understood as the development of ideas and narratives that challenge dominant representations of and notions about their marginalized identities.
The Impossibility of a Color-Blind Identity
Authors: Keels Micere
Published: May 2020

This chapter lays out the argument for shifting social identities from the margin to the center of how universities engage with students from historically marginalized groups. It does this by showing that even when minority students intentionally attempt to “move beyond” their social identities and embody a humanist identity, they are regularly tripped up by how they are identified by others, and by the psychic energy they must expend to deny, to themselves, their experiences of prejudice. To some extent, simple demographics predestine particular American racial-ethnic groups to be minorities on college campuses, but the marginalization that Black and Latinx students experience is an institutionally constructed phenomenon. To be minoritized is to be a member of a group that is both less in number and has less power and more stigma than other groups. And it is the combination of being both in the demographic minority and negatively stereotyped—having to interact with peers and professors who hold racialized stereotypes about academic potential—that leads Black and Latinx students in historically White colleges and universities to experience marginalization in ways that implicate both their racial-ethnic and academic identities.
An Ambivalent Embrace
Authors: Gugwor Resney
Published: May 2020

This chapter delves into how financial distress is associated with how students make sense of the “opportunity” to attend college. Many of the financially distressed students believed they had to attend college to secure their economic futures but doubted that obtaining their degree would ensure financial stability. Their experiences illustrate the large role that one's relative financial position plays in identity and sense of belonging on campus. The chapter asserts that counterspaces for economically marginalized students can help to alleviate this identity challenge. Counterspaces that bring students together around financial issues can reduce the negative identity effects of financial distress by changing their narrative from an individual to a structural framing.
Importance of a Critical Mass
Authors: Offidani-Bertrand Carly
Published: May 2020

This chapter turns to the role of racial-ethnic identity-based campus organizations in helping or hindering students to manage feelings of being othered. Upon arrival on campus, racial-ethnic minority students find themselves dramatically outnumbered by White students, taught by largely White professors, and learning about White historical figures and artifacts. Because of the segregated nature of American K–12 schooling, this shift into suddenly being racially-ethnically outnumbered can be a significant challenge to campus integration. Mounting feelings of social isolation add an additional layer of stress atop an already difficult transition. Away from home for the first time, many minority students feel culturally lost as they begin their new life as college students. Students' perspectives on being othered ranged from feeling that their peers appreciated their differences to feeling stereotyped as the sole representative of their group. The extent to which they had counterspaces helped them process those feelings and celebrate their differences as diversity.
A Guiding Hand
Authors: Mandviwala Tasneem
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines how the intersection of students' race-ethnicity and gender is associated with their motivational orientation toward college. Students' motivational orientations were evident in their reasons for going to college and in their adjustment struggles during the first year. This chapter focuses on how Latinx men's motivational orientations can either align them with or place them at odds with their institutions' dominant cultural orientation. In comparison to Black men, Latinx men were more likely to come from very low-educated and immigrant families. This means that their home life did not include access to a knowledgeable adult who could guide them through the college process, from its very beginning in dealing with applications, school choice, and financial aid, to advice for managing the stress of finals week or support in persistence decisions.
Japanese Occupation
Authors: Ralph Saw , Sheera Naw , Olinga-Shannon Stephanie
Published: May 2020

This chapter details Saw Ralph's experiences during the Japanese invasion. It chronicles his mother's early death and Saw Ralph's encounters with new people. Alongside these personal events are Saw Ralph's personal encounters with death and violence, beginning with the death of his mother and moving toward the casualties of Japanese occupation and British reoccupation. In those days, Saw Ralph recalls being afraid. The Japanese occupation was both a good time and a bad time in his life, because he and his fellow children liked the Japanese occupation. The occupying forces taught them the Japanese language and Japanese songs and engaged with them. The chapter concludes with Saw Ralph's experiences after the occupation.
Life as a Soldier
Authors: Ralph Saw , Sheera Naw , Olinga-Shannon Stephanie
Published: May 2020

This chapter details Saw Ralph's life as a soldier rising through the ranks of the Karen army. It discusses training and logistics as well as Saw Ralph's journey to becoming a lieutenant colonel. The chapter also compares and contrasts the Karen and Burmese soldiers, describing their respective motivations and the tactics they generally employed. “We didn't have any rest time away from army life,” Saw Ralph writes, depicting the soldier's life as one of constant movement. And as he continued to go on the move, hostilities escalated between the Karen and Burmese with the assassination of the Karen National Union (KNU) president Saw Ba U Gyi in 1950.
Revolution Headquarters
Authors: Ralph Saw , Sheera Naw , Olinga-Shannon Stephanie
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes Saw Ralph's experiences working at the intelligence branch of the general headquarters in Manerplaw. After being promoted to general staff officer number one (G1), Saw Ralph became a member of the general officer in command's War Council. His role as a G1, however, entailed looking for intelligence about the Burmese, the communists, and everyone else. It was Saw Ralph's job to collect and process information with the help of his staff. They also had to examine information in case it turned out to be false information sent by the Burmese. In addition to his work, Saw Ralph also recounts his meeting with his family, as well as political developments in Burma.
Burman Harassment
Authors: Ralph Saw , Sheera Naw , Olinga-Shannon Stephanie
Published: May 2020

This chapter covers Naw Sheera's experiences after the occupation and Burma's eventual independence. During this time, tensions between the Karen and the Burmese were escalating, and Burmese independence only exacerbated these tensions with the start of the Karen Revolution in 1949. Naw Sheera, however, was unaware of most of these developments, as she still lived in relative isolation. Moreover, her village was not politically inclined—a fact which the Burmese used to their advantage when confronting the Karens. These difficulties led to the arrest of Naw Sheera's father and his long years of imprisonment by the Burmese. Eventually, Naw Sheera and her family moved away to the village of Klaw Khwa, where she was later reunited with her father.
Connecting the Dots
Authors: Kraus Joe
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter presents the author’s personal journey to study the history of Jewish organized crime. Its story begins with family lore before ballooning into a history of West Side Jewish gangsters, who sometimes allied and sometimes fought within a backdrop of organized crime largely dominated by the Italian and the Irish. From there, the West Side criminal world slowly coalesced from a series of gangs competing with each other into a final independent Jewish organization headed by Benjamin “Zukie the Bookie” Zuckerman. Then, during the early 1990s, Lenny Patrick became a household name, at least for a few months. Patrick was a gangster in his late seventies, described in many places as the head of the Jewish wing of the Syndicate. In a city notorious for Italian American gangsters, Patrick stood out as an anomaly. He was a Jew who had remained important in organized crime long after the crumbling of the West Side Jewish world.
The Sunset of 1974: Lenny Patrick’s Changing World
Authors: Kraus Joe
Published: May 2020

This chapter documents Lenny Patrick’s growing paranoia by 1974. This was a pivotal year—the twenty-fifth since the death of Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick’s own rise to power. Everyone knew that and, for practical purposes, such knowledge mattered. It meant people made way for him; that they understood he had influence to help in shady business; and that they acceded to his suggestions, requests, or threats. In a legal sense, though, the difference between knowledge and proof was everything. Until law enforcement had hard evidence against him, he was a free man. And by 1974 the FBI and Chicago Police Department had been trying to collect such evidence for at least fifteen years through sustained campaigns of surveillance, wiretapping, and harassment. Wherever Patrick went, someone was trying to track him. He had had a long run as boss of Chicago Jewish organized crime, but the net was tightening around him.
Rising in the Ranks
Authors: Kraus Joe
Published: May 2020

This chapter shows how the political machine’s links to gangsters became increasingly liabilities in the case of Benjamin Zuckerman. The nature of Chicago’s machine politics was changing as the coalition that founded it matured and its members grew comfortable in their established offices. With senators and governors to elect, it did not help to be seen as attached to professional gamblers and thugs. At the same time, the confederation model of crime was giving way to the corporate one. As such, starting in the late 1930s, Zuckerman’s clubs began to be raided with more regularity, and there was evidence of his losing some of his standing. By the time Anixter died in 1943, Zuckerman was negotiating a new equation for securing his own standing.
Sizing up the Outfit
Authors: Kraus Joe
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the state of Jewish Chicagoan crime during the 1940s, when the Syndicate was occasionally known as the “Outfit.” This was a period when the relationship between organized crime and Chicago politics was reshaped for the rest of the twentieth century. It marked a détente in Chicago politics that eventually resulted in the change from the confederated system of organized crime to the more corporate structure. Here, a machine was assembled with deep enough roots in labor and ethnic coalitions that it did not need the day-to-day violence of previous gangsters. That meant politicians did not have to depend upon gangsters so directly, and it marked, for the most part, the end of the gangster/politician hybrid. Similarly, the Syndicate’s departure from that relationship allowed it to assume a lower profile, to become a quiet corporation supplanting the necessarily noisier confederation model. It meant a transformation from the world in which Zuckerman had thrived into the one that fostered Patrick.