Volume 24, Issue 1

Table of Contents

From the Editorial Team

Under the Radar
By Sarah Jaffe
Unreported and under-reported news and views that matter.

On the Contrary

Why Labor Should Support Class-Based Affirmative Action
By Richard D. Kahlenberg

Race Still Matters: The Continued Need for Race-Conscious Admissions Policies
By Julie J. Park

Schools for Sale
The Charter School Challenge
By Leo Casey
How charter schools and public schools privatize education and imperil our democracy.

Education with a Debt Sentence: For-Profit Colleges as American Dream Crushers and Factories of Debt 
By Hannah Appel and Astra Taylor
How for-profit colleges turn dreams into nightmares.

Surveying the Political Landscape
After the Fall: An Autopsy of the Midterms
By Michael Hirsch
Analyzing the political incoherence of the Democratic Party.

Does De Blasio’s Win Represent the Birth of a New Urban Populism?
By J. Phillip Thompson
Is populism in one city possible?

The Marxist Moment

Marxism and Morals Today
By Steven Lukes
Dissecting Marx’s ambivalent approach to morality.

The Civil Rights Act: A Retrospective
“The Sanctity of Private Property”: The Civil Rights Act and the Limitations of American Liberalism 
By William P. Jones
Did the Civil Rights Act skirt the issue of economic deprivation?

Powerless at Home, Dangerous Abroad: The Civil Rights Act According to Malcolm X
By Stephen Tuck
Why Malcolm X considered the Civil Rights Act a Trojan Horse.

Immigration Reform vs. Economic Stagnation
Comprehensive Immigration Reform and U.S. Labor Markets: Dilemmas for Progressive Labor 
By David Stoll
The immigration reform bill serves business, but would it make things harder for workers?

Dreamers Unbound: Immigrant Youth Mobilizing
By Walter J. Nicholls and Tara Fiorito
Should the Dreamers movement have to prove its middle-class respectability?

Tale from Malawi
By Paula Finn

Malpractice by the Labor Movement: Relinquishing the Fight for Occupational Health and Safety in California
By Garrett Brown
Why a once-robust struggle to safeguard the workplace has grown so anemic.

Economic Prospects
A Progressive Economic Agenda
By Mike Konczal

Organized Money: What Is Corporate America Thinking?

The Bad Math behind Corporate America’s Education Agenda
By Max Fraser

Books and the Arts

The Politics of Piketty
Capital in the Twenty-first Century By Thomas Piketty
Reviewed by Peter Frase

Teachers Unions at a Fork in the Road
Strike for America: Chicago Teachers against Austerity By Micah Uetricht
How to Jump-Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers A Labor Notes Book
Reviewed by Robert Bruno

Social Justice in Agriculture: Perspectives from France and the United States
Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic By Margaret Gray
Food, Farms, & Solidarity: French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops By Chaia Heller
Reviewed by Christy Getz

Out of the Mainstream: Books and Films You May Have Missed
By Matt Witt

Poetry

Letter to the Editors