Colorlines Videos

During the Great Depression, the labor movement was a major player pushing a progressive agenda and helping to put people back to work. While we've heard plenty of comparisons between the current recession and the Depression, we haven't seen a return of the kind of militancy that came from labor in the 20s and 30s. With all the anger swirling around right now, where's the organizing?Paula Finn, Editor of the New Labor Forum, Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew and Wall Street Journal columnist, Tom Geoghegan, labor lawyer, recent Congressional candidate, and author of Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back joined Laura to talk about labor's problems and suggest some solutions to help all of us, whether we're union members or not.While labor issues are lately ignored by both parties--Democrats paying lip service and Republicans using populist anger to push through tax cuts for big business--most people can agree that we don't want to be ingesting dangerous chemicals. Yet many plastics used to package food contain Bisphenol A, a synthetic estrogen with harmful effects on the endocrine system.

Green jobs have been touted over and over as the solution to the crisis in manufacturing in the US, able to solve climate problems and employment issues at the same time. But they won't be any kind of solution at all if they aren't available to those who need them the most. The Applied Research Center has put together a toolkit for ensuring that federal funds for green jobs are used to create well-paid, union-represented jobs that are available to women and people of color and that help to rebuild communities that have been hardest hit by the economic collapse.

With the astounding vote on the health care reform bill in the House this weekend, progressives were forced to consider what kind of compromises were worth making for health care. When certain people are excluded from health care simply because of who they are, how "public" would even a public option be? Tammy Johnson of ColorLines asks these questions and more in this commentary.

Veterans Day is this week, and the shootings at Fort Hood this week brought to the forefront many questions about soldiers and military personnel: how are soldiers surviving the wars, and readjusting to life at home? What are we doing to help them, and is it enough?

From ColorLines, the the national magazine on race and politics, we have a story of the unintended consequences of deportation. The U.S. citizen children of immigrant parents are often left stranded when those parents are deported, often for misdemeanor offenses. A 1996 law made deportation mandatory for those convicted of any number of offenses--after they've already served their terms. "Double punishment" is bad enough, but what about the children who are left without their primary means of support?

Recently the war in Afghanistan has taken over the front pages from Iraq, with recent polls showing a majority of Americans think the war is no longer worth fighting.