https://znetwork.org/author/steveearly/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:52:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/author/steveearly/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/with-better-alpha-energy-can-a-squad-of-progressive-vets-storm-capitol-hill-in-2026/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/with-better-alpha-energy-can-a-squad-of-progressive-vets-storm-capitol-hill-in-2026/#respond Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:38:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290558 During the mid-term election next year, the Democratic Party hopes to regain lost ground on Capitol Hill by running a new crop of  “service candidates”—men and women whose campaign bios stress their past experience in the military and national security agencies. One booster of this approach is Elissa Slotkin, a business-friendly Democrat who won a U.S. Senate [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/with-better-alpha-energy-can-a-squad-of-progressive-vets-storm-capitol-hill-in-2026/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-false-promises-of-va-privatization/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-false-promises-of-va-privatization/#respond Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:53:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1289041 James Jones is a 54-year-old disabled Army veteran. After four years of active duty—some of it in the Gulf War—and four years in the reserves, Jones says he has a “multitude” of health care problems. Ask him to list his health care needs and he sighs and reels off a long list. “Oh my, I [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-false-promises-of-va-privatization/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fast-food-nation-revisited-vietnamese-immigrant-writes-about-low-wage-work-in-u-s/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fast-food-nation-revisited-vietnamese-immigrant-writes-about-low-wage-work-in-u-s/#respond Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:33:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1286995 De-industrialization in the northeast spawned a service sector that didn’t quite match the employment opportunities of the old, manufacturing-based economy.  The resulting lower wages, limited job benefits, and reduced job security propelled many workers, their families, and communities into a downward spiral. Two great regional story tellers—Russell Banks and Richard Russo—ploughed this field, with great [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fast-food-nation-revisited-vietnamese-immigrant-writes-about-low-wage-work-in-u-s/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-new-memoir-sds-veteran-offers-advice-to-campus-radicals-today/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-new-memoir-sds-veteran-offers-advice-to-campus-radicals-today/#respond Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:18:32 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1285904 Campus opposition to the Israeli military assault on Gaza, since the fall of 2023, has been quite triggering for veterans of student organizing against the Vietnam war in the 1960s.  In progressive media outlets, now old “New Leftists” have mainly weighed in with welcome expressions of support, tempered with cautionary notes about political mistakes, excesses, and “bad [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-new-memoir-sds-veteran-offers-advice-to-campus-radicals-today/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-magna-carta-no-more/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-magna-carta-no-more/#respond Thu, 26 Jun 2025 15:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1285458 Ninety years ago this summer, Congress passed legislation hailed at the time and for many years after as “labor’s Magna Carta” The Wagner Act—or, more formally, the National Labor Relations Act—was the product of Depression-era concern about the social and economic effects of industrial unrest manifest in city wide general strikes, factory take-overs, and many violent [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-magna-carta-no-more/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dc-rally-and-local-events-defend-va-care-on-d-day/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dc-rally-and-local-events-defend-va-care-on-d-day/#respond Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:54:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1284885 The D-Day anniversary on June 6 is a pretty irresistible date for scheduling a protest related to veterans benefits. Eighty-one years ago, American soldiers and their allies stormed ashore in Normandy, establishing a critical beachhead in the military campaign to defeat Adolph Hitler and Nazism. In World War II‘s aftermath, hundreds of thousands of injured [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dc-rally-and-local-events-defend-va-care-on-d-day/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nevada-vets-protest-being-sent-to-a-healthcare-desert/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nevada-vets-protest-being-sent-to-a-healthcare-desert/#respond Fri, 06 Jun 2025 15:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1284622 The new leadership of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in Washington has taken a lot of heat lately from VA patients, their care-givers, and members of Congress opposed to cuts in jobs and services for veterans. VA Secretary Doug Collins, the right-wing Air Force Reserve colonel now running a public health care system serving [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nevada-vets-protest-being-sent-to-a-healthcare-desert/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/teamsters-against-trump-2024/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/teamsters-against-trump-2024/#respond Thu, 22 May 2025 15:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1284074 The following discussion is part of a longer analysis published in Social Policy (Spring 2025), “From L4B to TAT. Challenging Union Political Endorsements Takes Rank-&-File Action,” which includes an account of the Labor for Bernie initiatives in the 2016 and 2020 presidential election campaigns. Steve Early worked for nearly 30 years as an International Union [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/teamsters-against-trump-2024/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-national-security-grounds-most-but-not-all-va-workers-lose-union-bargaining-rights/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-national-security-grounds-most-but-not-all-va-workers-lose-union-bargaining-rights/#respond Tue, 06 May 2025 16:20:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1283405 When President Trump’s cabinet picks trooped up to Capitol Hill earlier this year for Senate confirmation hearings, hardly any boasted about their past union connections. But Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins did. He helped win broad bipartisan approval for his nomination from a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC) that includes Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-national-security-grounds-most-but-not-all-va-workers-lose-union-bargaining-rights/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-l4b-to-tat-challenging-labor-organization-political-endorsements-takes-rank-file-action/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-l4b-to-tat-challenging-labor-organization-political-endorsements-takes-rank-file-action/#respond Sun, 13 Apr 2025 12:47:20 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1282403 Every four years, like clockwork, our two major parties serve up presidential candidates whose commitment to the cause of labor is more rhetorical than real.  This is most obviously true of conservative Republican courting of working-class voters. That venerable bait-and-switch routine reached its 21st century apex in the form of Donald Trump’s successful faux populist [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-l4b-to-tat-challenging-labor-organization-political-endorsements-takes-rank-file-action/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-tenderloin-a-peoples-history-of-sfs-most-notorious-neighborhood/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-tenderloin-a-peoples-history-of-sfs-most-notorious-neighborhood/#respond Tue, 01 Apr 2025 16:00:00 +0000 “Any city that doesn’t have a Tenderloin isn’t a city at all” – Herb Caen, longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Few San Francisco neighborhoods have had more ups and downs than the 33-block area still called “The Tenderloin”—a name which derives from the late 19th century police practice of shaking down local restaurants and butcher [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-tenderloin-a-peoples-history-of-sfs-most-notorious-neighborhood/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/critics-of-va-cuts-say-this-is-life-and-death-stuff/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/critics-of-va-cuts-say-this-is-life-and-death-stuff/#respond Fri, 21 Mar 2025 15:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1281335 Earlier this month, Vietnam War veteran Paul Cox went to a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center in St. Louis to visit a sick friend. When he left the hospital, he encountered a woman handing out flyers in its parking lot. “VA workers are being fired,” her leaflet said. “This can hurt your care. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/critics-of-va-cuts-say-this-is-life-and-death-stuff/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/weve-been-betrayed-whos-fighting-back-and-not-against-trumps-cuts-in-va-jobs-and-services/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/weve-been-betrayed-whos-fighting-back-and-not-against-trumps-cuts-in-va-jobs-and-services/#respond Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:10:47 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1280687 Among the Republican voters experiencing buyer’s remorse are more than a few military veterans who chose Trump over Harris by a margin of 65 to 34%, according to some exit polls. Their shock and dismay surfaced in DC this month during the legislative conference of the reliably conservative and hawkish Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), which [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/weve-been-betrayed-whos-fighting-back-and-not-against-trumps-cuts-in-va-jobs-and-services/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-national-day-of-action-federal-union-rank-and-filers-protest-musk-challenge-their-own-leaders/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-national-day-of-action-federal-union-rank-and-filers-protest-musk-challenge-their-own-leaders/#respond Tue, 25 Feb 2025 17:13:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1280250 In Washington, D.C., there’s now a ritual formula for labor gatherings outside a government office to protest the latest depredations of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) created by President Trump. Paid staffers from national union headquarters and the AFL-CIO arrive with neatly printed signs and approved messages. Worried federal workers mill about on their [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/on-national-day-of-action-federal-union-rank-and-filers-protest-musk-challenge-their-own-leaders/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-worker-to-worker-organizing-help-labor-survive-the-trump-era/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-worker-to-worker-organizing-help-labor-survive-the-trump-era/#respond Thu, 13 Feb 2025 16:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1279676 How many graduates of Buena Vista Elementary and Lowell High School in San Francisco have become labor book authors? Probably not many–other than Eric Blanc, whose mother taught in that city’s public school system (and served as union president) and whose father was long active in its central labor council. Blanc became a teacher himself [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-worker-to-worker-organizing-help-labor-survive-the-trump-era/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-the-union-sf-native-touts-worker-to-worker-organizing-as-key-to-labor-revival/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-the-union-sf-native-touts-worker-to-worker-organizing-as-key-to-labor-revival/#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 16:04:28 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1278953 How many graduates of Buena Vista Elementary and Lowell High School have become labor book authors? Probably not many–other than Eric Blanc, whose mother taught in the San Francisco school system (and served as union president) and whose father was long active in the central labor council. Blanc became a teacher himself and drew on [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/we-are-the-union-sf-native-touts-worker-to-worker-organizing-as-key-to-labor-revival/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-a-labor-backed-candidate-in-nebraska-inspire-more-working-class-independents/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-a-labor-backed-candidate-in-nebraska-inspire-more-working-class-independents/#respond Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1278779 While running for U.S. Senate in Nebraska, working class candidate Dan Osborn characterized the Senate as “a country club of millionaires that work for billionaires.” In November, he almost crashed their party. Osborn, a 49-year old former local union president who helped lead a multi-state strike against Kellogg’s cereal company, was recruited by railroad workers [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/can-a-labor-backed-candidate-in-nebraska-inspire-more-working-class-independents/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-military-to-prison-pipeline/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-military-to-prison-pipeline/#respond Sun, 05 Jan 2025 15:41:24 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1278008 Review of Prisoners After War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Jason Higgins (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024). Like old soldiers around the country, a group of former service members gathered in Crest Hill, Illinois to remember fallen comrades on Memorial Day, 2024. Several months later, The Veteran, a newspaper published by Vietnam Veterans Against the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-military-to-prison-pipeline/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-telecom-customer-service-reps-got-better-connected-via-their-union/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-telecom-customer-service-reps-got-better-connected-via-their-union/#respond Mon, 04 Nov 2024 17:23:25 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1274769 American politicians love to pose as defenders of factory workers threatened by globalization, corporate restructuring, and overseas outsourcing. But their campaign spiels rarely mention other jobs at risk, for the same reasons, in white-collar workplaces that now employ more workers than all domestic manufacturers of steel, autos, airplanes, and other machinery combined. Among them are the nearly [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-telecom-customer-service-reps-got-better-connected-via-their-union/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/richmonds-progressive-alliance-has-won-elections-and-made-city-hall-better-for-twenty-years/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/richmonds-progressive-alliance-has-won-elections-and-made-city-hall-better-for-twenty-years/#respond Tue, 15 Oct 2024 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1273721 On a Saturday evening last spring, Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) co-chair Claudia Jimenez hosted a high-spirited rally and party with 200 supporters of her re-election campaign for the Richmond City Council.  Jimenez is a 46-year-old immigrant from Colombia, who worked as an architect and community organizer before seeking elected office four years ago in her diverse, blue-collar [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/richmonds-progressive-alliance-has-won-elections-and-made-city-hall-better-for-twenty-years/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/making-our-communities-what-they-need-to-be/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/making-our-communities-what-they-need-to-be/#respond Tue, 16 Jul 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1269387 The symbols of public-sector infrastructure are often associated with urban areas: major highways and subway systems, for instance; bridges and tunnels; large ports and airports; billions of gallons of fresh water to deliver and hundreds of tons of solid waste to cart away every day. Yet public works departments are no less important in rural [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/making-our-communities-what-they-need-to-be/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/book-review-power-lines-building-a-labor-climate-justice-movement/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/book-review-power-lines-building-a-labor-climate-justice-movement/#respond Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:54:16 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1267888 A familiar scene played out in the city council chambers of Richmond, California on May 22, 2024. For the last 20 years, since members of the anti-Chevron Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) first got elected to the council, any measure before that body affecting the city’s largest employer and business tax payer has been hotly debated. Local environmental [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/book-review-power-lines-building-a-labor-climate-justice-movement/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/vt-council-delegates-must-keep-votinguntil-results-please-afl-headquarters/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/vt-council-delegates-must-keep-votinguntil-results-please-afl-headquarters/#respond Wed, 05 Jun 2024 16:17:13 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1267419 In some unions, the traditional way of winning approval for a proposed contract with management, that’s not popular with the members, is to hold a series of votes on essentially the same “tentative agreement.”  Rank-and-file militants urging a “No” vote get worn down and demoralized by the prolonged ratification process. By a narrow margin, their [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/vt-council-delegates-must-keep-votinguntil-results-please-afl-headquarters/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zach-shrewsbury-says-his-senate-campaign-in-west-virginia-is-about-the-class-struggle/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zach-shrewsbury-says-his-senate-campaign-in-west-virginia-is-about-the-class-struggle/#respond Tue, 07 May 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1266019 When Barn Raiser first reached Zach Shrewsbury to interview the former Marine about his U.S. Senate campaign in West Virginia, he was trying to navigate the mountain roads of his home state amid a severe weather advisory. There was high water throughout Kanawha River Valley, due to creeks and streams over-flowing. Near Charleston, the state capital, even [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zach-shrewsbury-says-his-senate-campaign-in-west-virginia-is-about-the-class-struggle/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-tale-of-two-labor-candidates/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-tale-of-two-labor-candidates/#respond Fri, 26 Apr 2024 15:54:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1265569 In late October, 2018, East Bay DSA members and other progressives organized a pre-election rally at a Berkeley High School auditorium. A wildly-cheering crowd of several thousand came to hear Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Barbara Lee.  Welcoming everyone to the event was 34-year old Jesse Arreguin, who was backed by Sanders when he ran [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-tale-of-two-labor-candidates/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifty-years-ago-this-spring-millions-of-students-struck-to-end-the-war-in-vietnam/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifty-years-ago-this-spring-millions-of-students-struck-to-end-the-war-in-vietnam/#respond Wed, 24 Apr 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1265473 “Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming, We’re finally on our own. This summer, I hear the drummin’ Four dead in O-hi-o . . .” —“Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970) President Richard Nixon prided himself on the accuracy of his political prognostication. He was never more prescient than in a remark made fifty years ago this month [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fifty-years-ago-this-spring-millions-of-students-struck-to-end-the-war-in-vietnam/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ron-careys-lessons-in-labor-movement-reform/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ron-careys-lessons-in-labor-movement-reform/#respond Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1264196 Books about union presidents are usually penned by professional writers — either academic historians, labor journalists, or paid flacks. Past accounts of the life and work of labor organization chiefs like John L. Lewis, Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, or Cesar Chavez have run the gamut from hagiographic to constructively critical. Few have had a biographer [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ron-careys-lessons-in-labor-movement-reform/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dan-osborn-challenges-nebraskas-political-establishment-with-a-blue-collar-agenda/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dan-osborn-challenges-nebraskas-political-establishment-with-a-blue-collar-agenda/#respond Sat, 16 Mar 2024 11:21:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1263702 Editor’s Note: Recent studies of lawmakers in the United States have found that less than 2% of those serving on Capitol Hill held blue-collar jobs before they were elected. That percentage drops even further among the nearly 7,300 state legislators across all 50 states, according to researchers at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago, who found that [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/dan-osborn-challenges-nebraskas-political-establishment-with-a-blue-collar-agenda/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/book-reviews-fighting-wall-streets-war-on-workers-and-the-corporate-bs-that-protects-it/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/book-reviews-fighting-wall-streets-war-on-workers-and-the-corporate-bs-that-protects-it/#respond Wed, 06 Mar 2024 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1263204 One of the occupational hazards of being a labor activist is over-exposure to “corporate bullshit”—on the job, in the community, and in politics. When workers try to win collective bargaining rights, employers conduct propaganda campaigns to spread every imaginable falsehood about the union. Once forced into negotiations, management shows up at the bargaining table with [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/book-reviews-fighting-wall-streets-war-on-workers-and-the-corporate-bs-that-protects-it/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-afl-cio-can-be-reformed/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-afl-cio-can-be-reformed/#respond Thu, 15 Feb 2024 16:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1262206 Changing the leadership, structure, or functioning of any U.S. labor  organization is no easy task. Activists and experts have long argued about whether dysfunctional unions are best reformed from the top-down, bottom up, or some mix of the two approaches.  For the past 65 years, the main locus of union democracy and reform struggles in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-afl-cio-can-be-reformed/feed/ 0