Jacobin Magazine: The Dynamics of Retreat

Following the labor upsurge and radicalization that came in the wake of World War I, workers’ militancy tailed off, and the 1920s saw the American capitalist class at the peak of its power, confidence, and productiveness, in total command of industry and politics. Manufacturing productivity rose more rapidly during this decade than ever before or since, the open shop (which banned union contracts) prevailed everywhere, the Republican Party of big business reigned supreme, and the stock market broke all records. [...]

What transformed the political landscape beyond recognition was the outbreak of what Rosa Luxemburg would have called a “mass strike upsurge,” a phenomenon she had witnessed and analyzed at the time of the 1905 revolution in Russia and the accompanying wave of mass strikes. Out of the blue, starting in Detroit auto plants in spring 1933, you got a series of ever larger and more encompassing strikes, mobilizing ever broader groups of workers on the shop floor and the streets — organized and unorganized, employed and unemployed, in an ascending wave. Programmatic demands and ideas that seemed pie in the sky were now, with the increase in workers power, plausible and actionable. [...]

Equally important, the smashing victories in the 1934 strikes endowed the nascent radical-led labor movement with the confidence and capacity to organize the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the CIO over the next three years. Roosevelt was transformed from a standard politician into a reformer, the carrot and stick of the new labor movement inducing the administration to advocate a series of historic sociopolitical reforms that included the Social Security Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act (which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most workers), and the Wagner Act (which extended union recognition and set up routinized collective bargaining). [...]

To put the point in a more general way, an electoral strategy of voting for a third party could never be sustained, as the right-wing party would typically win greater electoral majorities as the third party increased its vote share. Only if the third party could achieve a majority all at once, perhaps on the back of a titanic mass movement that brought about a sudden lurch to the left among a large section of the citizenry, would it have a chance of succeeding. Otherwise, dull electoral calculation ensures the hegemony of the two-party monopoly.

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BBC4 Thinking Allowed: The sensory landscape of the city

The sensory landscape of the city. Laurie Taylor explores the scenes, sounds, smells and tastes of urban life. He's joined by Daniel Silver, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Alex Rhys-Taylor, Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London and Monica Degen, Reader in Sociology at Brunel University London.

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CityLab: Britain's Next Megaproject: A Coast-to-Coast Forest

The goal of a thick green ribbon is still a long way off, of course. So far, the government has pledged just an initial £5.7 million of the £500 million needed to fully realize the project. But what’s significant about the plan is that it amps up a transformation that is in fact already underway—it is actually the second major attempt in recent years to re-green the English landscape. [...]

This sounds wonderful—but first, a reality check. If Britain is planning new forests, it’s because the island badly needs them. Overall, the U.K.’s landscape contains one of Europe’s lowest proportions of woodland: just 13 percent. No one expects a populous, heavily developed country like the U.K. to reach the levels of, say Finland, which, at over 73 percent woodland, is Europe’s leafiest country by far. The U.K. trails far behind its more comparable neighbors Belgium (22.6 percent woodland) and France (31 percent), making it look decidedly bare and patchy by comparison. [...]

So far, over 80 percent of this forest area is accessible to the public, making it easy to enjoy for nearby city-dwellers. Indeed, it’s the intimate link with major cities that connects the National and Northern Forests, as both plans create new havens of peace in some of England’s more densely inhabited, city-filled areas.

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Al Jazeera: Forced at 15

Many parents here justify their decisions to marry off their children at a young age in such a manner. Premarital relationships are taboo in their community and becoming pregnant before marriage brings disgrace on the whole family.

Extreme poverty is another major factor in the prevalence of child marriage in Niger. Half of the country’s population lives on less than two dollars a day. Niger is second from the bottom on the current UN Human Development Index.

There is also a rapidly growing and extremly yound population. Sixty nice percent of Nigeriens are under 24 yeas old. On average, each women bears seven or eight children. [...]

An increasing number of girls are fighting back. The local aid organisation SOS is one of the first places they go to seek help when they flee child marriage. Thriteen-year-old Chafa-Atou arrived here from here village Filingue four days ago. She tells SOS emplpyee Hannatou her story. [...]

Aid organisations are critical of the government for doing too little to protect girls. Niger has no laws determining a minimum age for marriage. The consequence is that it is tradition rather than the law that decides when girls are old enough to marry - this means their fates lie in the hands of fathers, male relatives, village elders and religious leaders.

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The Atlantic: Trump Is A 19th-Century President Facing 21st-Century Problems

Nineteenth-century presidents are the ones that, with a few exceptions like Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson, most people can’t remember or recognize. In terms of political outlook and accomplishments, they are a somewhat diverse lot, but several factors tie these men, and the way they approached the presidency, together. The presidency changed dramatically in the 20th century; the modern presidency is big, designed to deal with the challenges of an expansive federal government and an interconnected world. But in the 19th century, the presidency was a smaller office, with less of a policy role. Presidents’ staffs were nothing like the thousands of employees who now make up what some call the “presidential branch.” The U.S. played a smaller role in global politics than it does now, and the president played a smaller role in American political life. [...]

Policy-making was much more Congress-centered in the 19th century. The clearest examples of this are probably from the 1850s, when presidents Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce left the difficult task of dealing with the growing crisis of slavery to Congress. (Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas urged Pierce to support the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which he eventually did – rather than the other way around.) After the Civil War, presidents grew less passive, but members of Congress still asserted their own agendas on issues like tariffs and currency — the big economic questions of the time. Presidents were more likely to be led by their parties than to lead them. [...]

This is one of the big differences between modern presidents and those from earlier eras. While 18th- and 19th-century presidents commented on the major issues of their day, sometimes drawing on moral and religious appeals, this usually took place in speeches that had already been scheduled for other purposes — like an inaugural or farewell address. Presidents, and their particular values, weren’t omnipresent in Americans’ lives in the way they are now. Even Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which described the moral purpose of the Civil War, was simply an invitation to “say a few words” at a cemetery dedication ceremony. In contrast, televised national addresses and in-person remarks have become a standard way for modern presidents to respond to a tragedy or crisis.

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