Category: Solidarity Economics

Could America Have A General Strike Like France? | More Perfect Union

The Class Room featuring Alice Cappelle
When millions of French protesters shut down their country over the president’s decision to raise the retirement age, U.S. commentators said it could never happen here. But why?

To find out why, we went back through decades of U.S. and French history. We took a look at the different narratives we tell ourselves about strikes and the different laws protecting the right to collective action in the United States and Europe.

The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy

“The Education Myth” challenges the prevailing notion that education is the primary avenue to economic opportunity in America. Author Jon Shelton, associate professor and chair of Democracy & Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, explores the historical shift in the perception of education’s role in society, revealing that its connection to economic well-being was not always inevitable.

While early public education aimed to foster democratic participation, the mid-20th century saw the rise of the education myth, stifling social democratic alternatives and sidelining notions of economic security and social dignity for all.

Shelton tracks the transformation from the 1960s onward, as both Democrats and Republicans, including figures like Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, perpetuated this myth, leading to an unequal economy and a deeply divided political landscape over the past four decades.
Link to the book at Cornell University Press

For a spot on book review, point your browser to:

Public Education Is Vital for Democracy. But It’s Not the Solution to Poverty or Inequality
By Jennifer C. Berkshire | Jacobin

3D Printed vs Aluminum Injection Molds | JohnSL

There has been a lot of interest recently in 3d printed vs aluminum injection molds. I know I thought about that. At first glance, it seems that using 3d printed mold inserts would be faster and easier than making aluminum molds. That turns out not to be the case, and there are other downsides to using 3d printed mold inserts.

When Social Control Masquerades as Social Justice | WHAT IS POLITICS?

When ideas and movements that threaten to overturn established hierarchies of power are absorbed into elite institutions like Ivy League universities and for-profit corporations, they get transformed into ideas that support the status quo, while remaining cloaked in the language and symbols of radicalism and egalitarianism.

The replacement of the word “equality” by the word “equity” in the worlds of academia, NGOs, activism, and corporate HR departments, is an example of the attempts by elite people and institutions to transform historical movements for racial and gender equality, into ideas that promote the interest of elites – in particular, economic inequality and the division of the working classes.

In this episode we explore how forms of oppression based on cultural factors like skin colour or gender or religion, etc, can only be understood and effectively combatted by understanding them in the context of economic exploitation and economic competition which is what the human propensity to discriminate evolved for in the first place.

Philanthropy Is Ruining America | Leeja Miller, JD

Billionaires and multi-millionaires love to pat themselves on the back for their charitable giving. But what if we just taxed the rich and regulated their business practices instead of letting them get away with theft and atrocity while still getting to pad their reputation by giving away the millions of dollars they stole from their laborers?

I am Muirén, and M3ıT means Multi-Modal MIDI Information Technology, and is mostly an umbrella for a range of different hardware and software explorations, most of it MIDI-based with application in the performing arts, far beyond electronic music instrument controllers.

My specific focus is on leveraging the untapped potential of the MIDI 2.0 now that real-world development tools are finally making their way into the hands of grassroots hackers and makers.

It is an extension of my🧙🏾‍♀️TınyMaker.Space™ Project, an organizing, evangelizing force, and funding source with the goal of establishing a more permanent home and makerspace that is self-supporting through it own efforts, primarily through sales of uniquely crafted, tangible fusions of art and tech, performing arts, and collaborative contributions of time, talent, and treasure by its patron cooperative.