The fight on behalf of household workers for the “3 P’s: pay, protection, and professionalism” continues. Look to Nadasen’s...
Scholar/activist Nadasen (History/Barnard Coll.; Rethinking the Welfare Rights Movement, 2011, etc.) showcases the stories of African-American women who helped organize domestic workers from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Valuable for its recovery of a largely neglected piece of labor history, particularly one in which race, class, immigration, and gender intersect, this work may prove most useful as a how-to guide for those looking to effect change in the landscape of the new economy. Inspired by the civil rights and women’s rights movements, operating largely outside the formal labor movement, postwar household workers by necessity developed guerrilla strategies for demanding respect and fair treatment. The best parts of Nadasen’s book are the firsthand accounts from the women who embodied tactics like remaking the public image of domestics, using public spaces to organize, and employing storytelling to galvanize the need for change. They include Georgia Gilmore, who played a leading role organizing domestic workers in support of the famed Montgomery Bus Boycott; Atlanta's Dorothy Bolden, who helped found the National Domestic Workers Union; Cleveland-based Geraldine Roberts, who formed the Domestic Workers of America; and Detroit’s Mary McClendon, founder of the Household Workers Organization. These women and others strove to dispel the pernicious “mammy stereotype," and their stories are powerful and inspiring. Nadasen’s analysis, however, descends frequently into the wearisome academic jargon that too often accompanies her forthrightly admitted social justice perspective. However, specialists will likely appreciate her treatment of numerous subthemes, including feminists struggling with the ethics of paid household help, the mainstream labor unions mistakenly deeming domestic workers “unorganizable,” the racial tension within the movement arising from shifting demographics, and the peculiar dynamics of the mistress-maid relationship.
The fight on behalf of household workers for the “3 P’s: pay, protection, and professionalism” continues. Look to Nadasen’s history for an understanding of how the struggle began.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1450-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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