Author Archives: Pat Simpson

Third Act Comes to C-U and is Creating “Good Trouble”

Posted on 02/11/2024 by Pat Simpson

It’s March 21,, 2023, a cool, just barely spring day, and the sidewalks surrounding JPMorgan Chase Bank’s downtown Chicago headquarters are filled with hundreds of chanting, white-haired elders. The cops flanking the bank’s entrance seem more bemused than wary as … Continue reading →

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Pre-Roe Reproductive Rights Underground: The Story of the Janes

Posted on 11/18/2023 by Pat Simpson

We are back in pre-Roe Chicago. A doctor speaks about sepsis, the emergency rooms overflowing daily with feverish women dying from botched efforts to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies. Another woman recalls her phone interactions with a mob operative. Yes, … Continue reading →

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For Whom the Bell Tolls

Posted on 08/27/2023 by Pat Simpson

For whom does the bell toll? These days it tolls for our children, gunned down in our streets and schools because of gun violence. And as if this were not enough, there are the child laborers among us and the … Continue reading →

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Posted in children, labor, Labor/Economics, Section, union soldarity, Worker Health and Safety | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on For Whom the Bell Tolls

Graduate Employees Go Wild—For Unionization

Posted on 02/10/2023 by Pat Simpson

Workers are on the move across America. Strikes rose by an astounding 50 percent between 2021 and 2022, and the pace of organization was equally impressive, with new fields of organizing opening in the service sector, the art world, and … Continue reading →

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Posted in Education, Education, labor, Labor militancy, Labor/Economics, Public Universities, Section, union soldarity | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Graduate Employees Go Wild—For Unionization

It Can Happen Here: Medicare Advantage Disadvantages Retirees Nationally and in C-U

Posted on 12/31/2022 by Pat Simpson

The New York Times recently published a story about how Medicare Advantage (MA) plans rip off consumers and taxpayers through a range of dubious practices up to and including fraud. These practices contribute to higher profit levels which, in turn, … Continue reading →

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The Anti-Democratic Movement Against Public Schools

Posted on 06/25/2022 by Pat Simpson

“The path to saving the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.” – Steve Bannon The workingmen’s parties of the nineteenth century pushed hard, very hard for public schools and were key to their creation. Yes, … Continue reading →

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Union Women on the Move

Posted on 03/31/2022 by Pat Simpson

Hopeful signs of a labor resurgence are everywhere. Despite another decline in the unionized percentage of the labor force and the stalemate in efforts at labor law reform, new frontiers in union organizing have emerged, strikes are on the upswing, … Continue reading →

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It’s Not a Labor Shortage, It’s a Workers’ Rights Shortage

Posted on 11/15/2021 by Pat Simpson

The Great Uprising, the Great Resignation, even the unofficial General Strike: analysts and pundits—left, right and center—speak of mounting worker unrest in the US in awestruck terms. What these labels certainly do capture is the expansive scale of this unrest … Continue reading →

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On the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis: Our Farmworkers Face Heat’s Deadly Dangers

Posted on 09/23/2021 by Pat Simpson

Heat kills, and it kills farmworkers with distressing regularity. The list of the dead includes migrants like 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez in the grape fields of California; 38-year-old Francisco Perez working in a tree nursery outside Portland; Miguel Angel … Continue reading →

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The Haters Among Them

Posted on 04/03/2021 by Pat Simpson

The number is thirty so far, thirty police officers charged with the act of participating in the Capitol insurrection last January. Many, many Americans felt shock, and media analysts expressed particular outrage, to find men in blue—perhaps even waving blue-line, … Continue reading →

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Turn Off the Spigot: Money vs. Med4All

Posted on 02/08/2021 by Pat Simpson

The COVID pandemic has exposed the flaws in the US health care system as never before, reinforcing longstanding arguments for creating an expanded Medicare for All system in the country. The Public i has previously published articles (see June, November … Continue reading →

Posted in health care, IL, Politics, Politics | Comments Off on Turn Off the Spigot: Money vs. Med4All