October 24, 2016 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Three weeks into their strike, Harvard University dining hall workers are in a difficult position. Their union’s demands for better wages, benefits, and working conditions are falling on deaf ears in the Harvard administration. They cannot continue picketing indefinitely on $200 weekly strike pay—which itself won’t last for […]
FIGHT WHERE YOU STAND: ORGANIZING FOR DEMOCRACY ON THE JOB CAN SPARK A MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY NATIONWIDE
IWW Demonstration. New York (1914) October 13, 2016 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS In a month featuring a couple of significant labor actions in the Boston area—the Harvard University dining hall workers strike for better pay and benefits, and the Boston Carmen’s Union’s recent civil disobedience action against privatization at the MBTA—it’s worth reflecting on the […]
GO BIG OR GO HOME: TOWARDS A MASS CLIMATE JUSTICE MOVEMENT
Image by Kent Buckley December 16, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS On Saturday, one important global process ended and another began. The process that ended manifested in the form of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The process that began—or more correctly, accelerated—manifested in cities all over the world. Here in Boston, it took […]
GROUNDED MONKEYS: MILLIONAIRES UNLIKELY TO FLEE COMMONWEALTH IF RAISE UP MASS WINS TAX ON 1 PERCENT
Image by Kent Buckley December 8, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Boston Business Journal’s Craig Douglas made an interesting criticism of Raise Up Massachusetts last week (“Excited about the proposed millionaires tax? Cut off your nose while you’re at it,” Dec. 4). For those who missed it, RUM is a progressive labor-community coalition that just […]
REMEMBRANCE AND PROTEST: THANKSGIVING THEN & NOW
November 23, 2015 BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS The following passage is excerpted from a piece I wrote in 2005. It recounts the story of King Philip’s War—which was fought across southern New England 340 years ago, and started not far from where I attended a Thanksgiving dinner that year at my cousin’s place in North […]