Daniel Aaron Lazar » USH: Immigration, Industrialization and Urbanization

Lessons for Occupy Wall Street

Dan Lazar — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:53:05 +0000

Take a cue from the only social movement that has ever made a real dent in the nation’s extremes of wealth and poverty.

As they sort out what to do next, the Occupiers might take a page from the history of American labor, the only social movement that has ever made a real dent in the nation’s extremes of wealth and poverty. For more than half a century, between the 1870s and the 1930s, labor organizers and strikers regularly faced levels of violence all but unimaginable to modern-day activists. They nonetheless managed to create a movement that changed the nation’s economic institutions and reshaped ideas about wealth, inequality, and Wall Street power. Along the way, they also helped to launch the modern civil liberties ethos, insisting that the fight to tame capitalism went hand in hand with the right to free speech.

Read the whole article at Slate

Putting Wisconsin’s Union Battle In Historical Context

Dan Lazar — Fri, 20 May 2011 09:59:59 +0000

Republicans in state legislatures of Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are trying to cut collective bargaining rights for workers in the public sector. A recent New York Times article described these bills as “the largest assault on collective bargaining in recent memory, striking at the heart of an American labor movement that is already atrophied.”

On today’s Fresh Air, journalist Philip Dray puts the union protests in the Midwest in a historical context. Dray is the author of There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, which follows the labor movement as it grew out of 19th century uprisings in textile mills. The movement rallied workers around common causes before suffering a series of blows after the failed 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike, when more than 12,000 air traffic controllers walked off their jobs. In response, President Reagan said that the striking workers were in violation of the law and would lose their jobs if they did not return to work within 48 hours. When they failed to show up, Reagan fired the workers.

Lectures: The Politics of the Gilded Age

Dan Lazar — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:54:10 +0000

After the calamity of the Civil War, the United States was a nation in transition– from a rural to an urban society, from the fourth among the industrial nations of the world to the first. While many Americans welcomed the changes as progress to a new era, others worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week to earn a salary that was insufficient to feed, clothe, and house their families. The term “The Gilded Age” comes from a novel of the same name published in 1873 by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, which, though fictional, is a critical examination of politics and corruption in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Perhaps we shall call it the “Era of Good Stealings”

Lecture The Gilded Age and Politics of Corruption

Inventions, RxR and Business Methods in the Gilded Age

The Revenge of Karl Marx

Dan Lazar — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:18:57 +0000

Marx is so embedded in our Western cast of thought that few people are even aware of their debt to him. Everybody I know now believes that their attitudes are to an extent a creation of their material circumstances … “that, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness”, as Marx wrote—and that changes in the way things are produced profoundly affect the affairs of humanity even outside the workshop or factory.

Read Hitchens’ piece (from The Nation, 2009)

Why is the modern view of progress so impoverished?

Dan Lazar — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:47:59 +0000

In the rich world the idea of progress has become impoverished. Through complacency and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed. The popular view is that, although technology and GDP advance, morals and society are treading water or, depending on your choice of newspaper, sinking back into decadence and barbarism. On the left of politics these days, “progress” comes with a pair of ironic quotation marks attached; on the right, “progressive” is a term of abuse.

The Economist’s nuanced view of modern progress

The Economist on Immigration to the US

Dan Lazar — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 15:37:12 +0000

Because America is so big and diverse, immigrants have an incredible array of choices. The proportion of Americans who are foreign-born, at 13%, is higher than the rich-country average of 8.4%. In absolute terms, the gulf is much wider. America’s foreign-born population of 38m is nearly four times larger than those of Russia or Germany, the nearest contenders. It dwarfs the number of migrants in Japan (below 2m) or China (under 1m). The recession has dramatically slowed the influx of immigrants and prompted quite a few to move back to Mexico. But the economy will eventually recover and the influx will resume.

The Economist on immigration to the US. Very interesting.

The End of White America?

Dan Lazar — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:22:30 +0000

Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities-blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians-will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

A superb editorial from Harper’s

Labor Union Bill Raises Broader Capitalism Issues

Dan Lazar — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:22:55 +0000

The Employee Free Choice Act seemed destined to be a relatively narrow clash between unions and employers. But amid the economic downturn, it is turning into a debate over fundamental questions of American capitalism.

After years of girding for this fight, labor supporters and business groups are scrambling after the bill’s reintroduction last week to adapt their long-established arguments to suit the crisis. For those opposed to the bill, which would make it easier to form unions, the new message was that it would be a disaster for businesses reeling from the recession.

“In a time when we have an economy that’s already struggling, we can’t put more burdensome regulations on employers,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “This is a job killer for our economy when we really don’t need it.”

Read on from the Washington Post from March 2009

Zinn Speaks

Dan Lazar — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 09:46:04 +0000

In this 30 minute interview, Howard Zinn summarizes The Other Civil War and why it matters today. Definately worth a listen.

Two Views of Immigration

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:30:47 +0000

There are two sides to American immigration: the first is a story of economic benefit and promise; the other is a report of economic harm and despair.

The two “stories” stand in stark contrast with each other. Nevertheless, they define the two prisms by which immigrants are viewed. What is interesting is that the tension between the views is a constant component of our nation’s history. Whether the immigrants came in by a sailing ship in 1790 or 1840, a steamer in 1900, or an airplane in 2004; whether they were German, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, east European Jews, Cubans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Russians, or Hispanics; the same two perspectives inform the immigration debate.

Read on from two Ball State professors

Immigration Hypotheticals

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:27:25 +0000

What a dilemma! Who should be let in?

Grapple with these hypotheticals

Now imagine the difficulties in developing and implemeting a blanket Immigration and Naturalization Policy!

DBQ: Immigration and Political Machines

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:22:56 +0000

The Prompt: The symbiotic relationship between the growing immigrant population and big city party machines during the Gilded Age was mutually beneficial. Assess the validity of this statement.

Feel free to refer to your DBQ Tips Sheet

Immigration and Political Machines DBQ

Lecture on Urbanization and the Rise of Political Machines

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:14:38 +0000

In case you missed class, here are my lecture notes

Socratic Dialogue Questions: The Mixed Blessing of Industrialization

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:12:39 +0000

Here are the class discussion questions

Zinn on The Other Civil War

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:07:46 +0000

Zinn was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now points to in shaping his opposition to war. In 1956, he became a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, which he participated in as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When he was fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War.

He is perhaps best known for A People’s History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment.

Here is an autobiographical clip from YouTube

Chapter 10: The Other Civil War with Response Questions

Sadly, Zinn died on 28 January 2010. Of the many obituaries written, this one stands out to me.

In his autobiography, You Can’t Stay Neutral on a Moving Train, Zinn said, “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.” RIP.

Film: The Corporation

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:02:27 +0000

Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation is transforming audiences and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis. Taking its status as a legal “person” to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist’s couch to ask “What kind of person is it?” The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics – including Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and Michael Moore – plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Here are some film notes and questions

My Lectures on Industrialization and the Workers’ Responses

Dan Lazar — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 07:57:38 +0000

The Basics: The Rise of Industrial Capitalism

Crash Course on Marxism

Notes from Bruce Laurie’s book, Artisans into Workers: Labor in 19^th Century America. University of Illinois Press, 1989: