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Monday, April 10, 2023

Social Issues, Networks, and Factions

For Thursday:  Garcia chapter.

The important of factions, threats, and networks.

Factions:  Assimilation v. Liberation, Conciliation v. Confrontation 

Who was on the program and why?  A CMC connection!





  • Trayvon Martin
  • Alicia Garza, a love letter, Facebook and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
  • Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO
  • Eric Garner in Staten Island:  "I can't breathe"
  • A "horizontal" movement rather than a traditional organization
  • The largest movement in history: 15-26 million people took part in George Floyd protests


Race and the Environment
  • What is intersectionality?
  • Organizational tributaries
    • Progressive movement
    • Feminist organizations
    • Digital groups
    • Sanders coalition
    • Loose grassroots groups (e.g., OWS)
    • Legal and civic advocacy organizations
  • Templates
    • Million Man March
    • MLK March on Washington
  • Arguments and critiques

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Monday, March 27, 2023

Labor I

For Wednesday, Cigler, ch. 6.

Oral presentations next week.  Don't worry:  they are very brief (5-7 minutes maximum).  Let me know if you prefer to go Mon or Wed:  otherwise, I shall assign slots at random at random.

Papers due 2 weeks from Friday.

LAUSD STRIKES

Story:  Michigan repeals right to work law.

After Janus, private sector unions continue their slide -- membership is just 6% of employed persons -- but public sector unions hold their own


DiSalvo:

The reality is that many public workers like their union, especially their local affiliate. Distaste for union politics increases, surveys suggest, as one moves up from the local to the national federation. It is also important to recall that public unions in the 22 states affected by Janus are starting from a position of strength — their membership is large and has been stable for decades. Their task now is to preserve membership, which is easier than trying to build it up. To remain important political players, the unions need only to hold on to as many of their current members as possible and do a respectable job in recruiting new hires.

Union members as a percentage of employees

..................................................2018......2022
  • Federal government.............26.4......24.1
  • State government.................28.6......29.9
  • Local government................40.3......38.8
Sources of power and coalition-building. Eitan Hersh writes at FiveThirtyEight:

Most states — 44 out of 50 — hold some state and local elections off the federal cycle.
...
Why do Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups prefer off-cycle elections? When school boards and other municipal offices are up for election at odd times, few run-of-the-mill voters show up at the polls, but voters with a particular interest in these elections — like city workers themselves — show up in full force. The low-turnout election allows their policy goals to dominate


 













Backing the Badge
  • A 1967 survey of major Northern cities found stark differences between African Americans and whites as to the causes of riots. African Americans tended to blame riots of lack of opportunities, unemployment, and bad living conditions By contrast, the purported causes that whites mentioned most often were outsiders stirring up trouble or hearing news of riots in other cities.
  •  In 1968, 63 percent told Gallup that “courts in this area” did not deal harshly enough with criminals. One year later, that figure was up to 75 percent. In a 1968 CBS poll, 70 percent of whites thought that police should be “tougher than they have been” in handling riots, compared with just 17 percent of African Americans. (azel Erskine, “The Polls: Causes of Crime,” Public Opinion Quarterly 38 (Winter 1974-75): 288-298.
  • After Chicago police attacked anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention, survey respondents sympathized with the police. In a Gallup poll, 56 percent approved of the police and 31 percent did not. In a Harris survey, 66 percent agreed that Mayor Richard J. Daley was right in the way he used police against the demonstrators, while just 20 percent disagreed


RAPID RESPONSE BY POLS \TRUMP FOR POLICE 

AND  POLICE FOR TRUMP 



Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Some Writing Advice


  • Learn how to use apostrophes.
  • Except in essays on eschatology, you seldom need the word ultimately.
  • Except in legal documents, you never need the word aforementioned.
  • In US English, periods and commas go inside quotation marks.
  • Superscripts follow punctuation.
  • In US English, an organization or institution is an "it," not a "they."

From a Guide to Grammar and Writing:

Avoid announcing the thesis statement as if it were a thesis statement. In other words, avoid using phrases such as "The purpose of this paper is . . . . " or "In this paper, I will attempt to . . . ." Such phrases betray this paper to be the work of an amateur. If necessary, write the thesis statement that way the first time; it might help you determine, in fact, that this is your thesis statement. But when you rewrite your paper, eliminate the bald assertion that this is your thesis statement and write the statement itself without that annoying, unnecessary preface.



Foreign Influence, Continued

Today, we adjourn at 12:05.  Student hour is 1:15-2:15.  (One student already has dibs on 1:30.)

SEND ME YOUR PAPER TOPICS BY FRIDAY

For next Monday, watch the LA school strike and read:






Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin
Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik became an integral part of
Manafort's operations in Ukraine and Russia, serving as Manafort's primary liaison to Deripaska and eventually managing Manafort's office in Kyiv. Kilimnik and Manafort formed a close and lasting relationship that endured to the 2016 U.S. elections. and beyond.
...
The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's high level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the  Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.





Other Strategies and tactics


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