[[link removed]]

TIDBITS-OCT 30 -READER COMMENTS: HOW TO TREAT YOUR NEIGHBOR; AFTER NO
KINGS-CAN NONVIOLENT STRUGGLES DEFEAT DICTATORS; MIGRANTS HAVE ALWAYS
BEEN WELCOME; STUDY SHOWS WORKFORCE NEEDS MIGRANTS; NUCLEAR WEAPONS
TESTING AGAIN; BLACK LABOR ACTIVISM  
[[link removed]]


 

October 30, 2025
xxxxxx

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Reader Comments: How to Treat Your Neighbor; After No Kings-Can
Nonviolent Struggles Defeat Dictators; Migrants Have Always Been
Welcome; Study Shows Workforce Needs Migrants; Nuclear Weapons Testing
Happening Again; 100 Years of Black Labor Activism _

Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements AND cartoons -
Oct 30, 2025, xxxxxx

 

* NEIGHBORS AND CANADA TARIFFS - THE VIEW FROM OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBOR
 --  CARTOON BY MICHAEL DE ADDER
* RE: CAN NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE DEFEAT A DICTATOR? THIS DATABASE
EMPHATICALLY SAYS YES  (JESSICA BENJAMIN)
* RE: AFTER NO KINGS, IT’S TIME TO ESCALATE  (ROBERT LAITE)
* RE: GAZA ‘SCHOLASTICIDE’: WE MOURN OUR UNIVERSITIES AS ONE
MOURNS AN OLD FRIEND  (DAVE LOTT)
* FIRST THEY CAME...  --  CARTOON BY PAT BAGLEY
* FEDERAL WORKER  --  CARTOON AND COMMENTARY BY ROB ROGERS
* MIGRANTS  --  A POEM BY SEYMOUR JOSEPH
* RE: WE CAN’T REBUILD THE LABOR MOVEMENT WITHOUT TAKING ON BIG
TARGETS  (ALLAN BALUYOT)
* LET THEM EAT CAKE...  --  CARTOON AND COMMENTARY BY BENJAMIN
SLYNGSTAD
* A TRACK RECORD  --  CARTOON BY NICK ANDERSON
* I NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN -- AGAIN -- NUCLEAR TESTS  (JAY
SCHAFFNER)

.RESOURCES:

* WHAT WE NEED IS A POPULAR FRONT AGAINST FASCISM  (J. PATRICK
PATTERSON / IN THESE TIMES)
* THE U.S.-BORN LABOR FORCE WILL SHRINK OVER THE NEXT DECADE  (JOSH
BIVENS / ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE)
.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

* FORUM - LESSONS FROM 100 YEARS OF BLACK LABOR ACTIVISM: FIGHTING
RACIAL AUTHORITARIANISM AND BUILDING CROSS-MOVEMENT SOLIDARITY - NEW
YORK - NOVEMBER 7  (CUNY SCHOOL OF LABOR & URBAN STUDIES) 
* BOOK TALK - AARON LEONARD'S MENACE OF OUR TIME ON AMERICAN
COMMUNISM - NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 13  (TAMIMENT LIBRARY & ROBERT F.
WAGNER LABOR ARCHIVES)

..

NEIGHBORS AND CANADA TARIFFS - THE VIEW FROM OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBOR
 --  CARTOON BY MICHAEL DE ADDER

Michael de AdderOctober 26, 2025Neighbours
[[link removed]] 

 RE: CAN NONVIOLENT STRUGGLE DEFEAT A DICTATOR? THIS DATABASE
EMPHATICALLY SAYS YES

 Correction: The Berlin Wall came down on November 9 1989 anniversary
if Kristallnacht  not 1988.

Jessica Benjamin

 

RE: AFTER NO KINGS, IT’S TIME TO ESCALATE 

General strike is the next logical step. The GOP and their Oligarchy
masters don't really care if you assemble and wave signs. What will
make them notice is workers of all types grinding the economy to a
hault, even for a day. The losses of even one day from EVERYONE not
working would scare them.

Robert LaitePosted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]]

 

RE: GAZA ‘SCHOLASTICIDE’: WE MOURN OUR UNIVERSITIES AS ONE MOURNS
AN OLD FRIEND 

My friend Shahd, who remained in Gaza City before the ceasefire and
the return of displaced people from the south, told me what became of
the university after Israeli forces withdrew.

"The library became a place for cooking over open fires," she said.
"Books and doctoral dissertations were scattered on the ground, used
by the displaced as kindling."

In times of hunger and war, knowledge itself loses its value. Books
and dissertations, once symbols of Gaza's intellect and promise,
became fuel for survival.

Dave Lott

Posted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]] 

 

FIRST THEY CAME...  --  CARTOON BY PAT BAGLEY 

Pat BagleyOctober 29,
2026https://www.sltrib.com/resizer/v2/6HVKOMUNRREFXFKAA7A2FWPAAA.jpg?auth=8…
[[link removed]]

Pat BagleyOctober 29, 2025The Salt Lake Tribute
[[link removed]] 

 

FEDERAL WORKER  --  CARTOON AND COMMENTARY BY ROB ROGERS 

 

 

_Trump is trying to extort $230 million from the government (during a
shutdown) while the people who voted for him are still waiting for him
to lower prices and hoping they can afford health care._

Rob RogersOctober 23, 2025TinyView
[[link removed]] 

 

MIGRANTS  --  A POEM BY SEYMOUR JOSEPH 

October 25, 2025

A world of people,

A world of differences:

Color, language, customs.

But all we call the human race.

They move about,

Here, there and everywhere,

If moving is their decision.

A wonderful mixture enriching all.

Yet now there's a break in the chain,

Ill will by some for others —

Fomented by those who gain by division.

Exclusion replaces inclusion.

Our lamp has been doused,

On the welcome we call emigration.

Seymour Joseph

 

 

RE: WE CAN’T REBUILD THE LABOR MOVEMENT WITHOUT TAKING ON BIG
TARGETS

(posting on xxxxxx Labor
[[link removed]])Absolutely
right. Let's also re- establish our own Party to be the vanguard of
our struggle to transform the outlook of the trade union movement as
well as politics and ideology, from pro-Capitalist to pro-Worker in
thought, in words and in deeds. Long live the genuine union! Long live
the Worker's Party! Long live the Working Masses of USA.

Allan Baluyot

 

LET THEM EAT CAKE...  --  CARTOON AND COMMENTARY BY BENJAMIN
SLYNGSTAD 

 

 

Sure people are about to lose food assistance but Trump Antoinette
wants a ballroom.

Benjamin SlyngstadOctober 28, 2025slyngstad_cartoons
[[link removed]] 

 

A TRACK RECORD  --  CARTOON BY NICK ANDERSON 

Nick AndersonOctober 29, 2025Pen Strokes
[[link removed]] 

 

I NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN -- AGAIN -- NUCLEAR TESTS 

I was ten years old. I would go, with my mother to the weekly vigils
of Women Strike for Peace in downtown Chicago, in protest against
nuclear tests being carried out by the governments of the United
States and the Soviet Union.

We were citizens of the United States we could pressure our
government, and we did. We were able to build a movement that forced
the end of nuclear testing; We were part of an international peace
movement that was able to force all countries and all governments to
halt all above-ground testing of nuclear weapons and later was
powerful enough that led to the signing of treaties that banned their
use.

Now the wannabe fascist dictator of the United States has declared
that he is ordering the soc-called Department of War to resume the
testing of nuclear weapons. It is time to do what my mother and
thousands of other mothers did, to protect our children and
grandchildren, to take to the streets, to defend our immigrant
neighbors, to defend our children and grandchildren, to defend our
babies, to put an end to this monstrous disaster.

Going to those peace marches more than sixty years ago, I returned to
my fourth grade classroom and wrote this poem (which hung outside the
principal’s office, and was published in among other places, _The
International Teamster_ (my father was a milkman), _Liberation
Magazine,_ _The Freheit_, _Jewish Currents_, and _The Worker_.)

The Bomb and Tom

If I had a plane,I'd fly it down a green lane.I'd see the
presidents,At their residence.I'd talk to them about the bombThat
might save the life of Tom.

It would be nice for children        to grow up,Not BLOW
UP!And try to read books, try!And sigh when the tests begin, Just
wonder why?    And save little Tom, just save TomFrom the mighty
atom bomb.

Jay Schaffner

 

WHAT WE NEED IS A POPULAR FRONT AGAINST FASCISM  (J. PATRICK
PATTERSON / IN THESE TIMES) 

As fascism’s grip only grows tighter, the popular fronts of
yesterday can become blueprints for solidarity today.

J. Patrick Patterson

October 28, 2025In These Times
[[link removed]] 

 
Illustration by Kazimir Iskander
 

POP • U • LAR FRONT

_noun_

1. a broad political alliance united against fascism or
authoritarian rule

2. a big, messy group of people affiliated through common cause

HAS THIS EVER WORKED?

Kind of famously
[[link removed]],
yes — at least for a while. In the 1930s, as fascist movements
stomped across Europe, popular fronts emerged to block the spread. In
France
[[link removed]]
and Spain, leftists, centrists and anti-fascist liberals joined forces
to beat back the far right, sometimes literally. 

In the United States, the Communist Party helped bring broad,
anti-fascist politics into public life, forming coalitions among Black
writers, labor organizers and progressive cultural workers. As
historian Bill Mullen writes in Popular Fronts
[[link removed]], the period saw
​“an extraordinary rapprochement” between Black and white
members of the U.S. Left — not just in protest, but in culture,
art and publishing. In Chicago, a ​“companion front” developed
through a radical Black cultural infrastructure with institutions
like the Chicago Defender and the South Side Community Art Center.

To Mullen, this front was ​“mutually constitutive,” meaning the
cultural and political fed each other. You couldn’t separate the
protest from the poetry.

_"We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in
isolation from others simply because their differences make us
uncomfortable." — Audre Lorde_
WHAT’S THIS GOT TO DO WITH NOW?

A lot. Democracy is being hollowed out in real time — through
voter suppression, surveillance, the criminalization of protest, the
scapegoating of migrants, anti-LGBTQ laws, book bans. The far right is
openly organizing to take permanent power, not just win elections.

A popular front today wouldn’t mean everyone is suddenly best
friends. It means movements stop playing defense in isolation and
start fighting together, as if something bigger is at stake. Because
it is.

WHAT WOULD A MODERN POPULAR FRONT LOOK LIKE?

It’s the Movement for Black Lives linking arms with climate
activists and unions, knowing their fights are connected. It’s the
People’s Climate Movement bringing together frontline communities
and labor to take on big polluters. It’s housing coalitions in
Seattle, Chicago and LA organizing with immigrant rights activists and
elected officials for social housing. 

It looks like survival. The other side already has a front, known as
the Heritage Foundation.

ISN’T THIS JUST ​“LESSER EVILISM”?

Not if done right. A popular front isn’t about diluting politics,
but sharpening priorities. We don’t need to agree on everything, but
we do need to agree that authoritarianism, white nationalism and
rule-by-billionaire are worth fighting — and we can’t
fight alone.

_[This is part of ​“The Big Idea,” a series offering brief
introductions to progressive theories, policies, tools and strategies
that can help us envision a world beyond capitalism.]_

_Reprinted from__ In These Times_
[[link removed]]_. _

_xxxxxx is proud to feature content from__ In These Times_
[[link removed]]_,
a publication dedicated to covering progressive politics, labor and
activism. To get more news and provocative analysis from In These
Times,__ sign up_
[[link removed]]_ 
for a free weekly e-newsletter or__ subscribe_
[[link removed]]_
to the magazine at a special low rate._

_Never has independent journalism mattered more. Help hold power to
account:__ Subscribe to In These Times magazine_
[[link removed]]_,
or__ make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting_
[[link removed]]_._ 

THE U.S.-BORN LABOR FORCE WILL SHRINK OVER THE NEXT DECADE  (JOSH
BIVENS / ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE)Achieving historically ‘normal’
GDP growth rates will be impossible, unless immigration flows are
sustained

By Josh Bivens

October 7, 2025Economic Policy Institute 

It is often underrecognized how much population aging is currently
reducing the growth rate of the U.S. labor force and will continue to
pull it down in coming decades. The share of the population that is
over the age of 65 (when labor force participation tends to take a
steep fall on average) is rising rapidly. This share was 12.4% in
2007, 17.9% in 2024, and will hit 21.2% by 2035 (CBO 2025b). A recent
EPI report (Gould et al. 2025) assessed trends in U.S. labor force
participation and reviewed the research literature about their drivers
and the potential effects of policy changes on these trends. One
upshot of this research literature is that even the most ambitious
policies to boost the labor force participation rate of the current
U.S. workforce would not materially change these trends.

Any decline in labor force growth necessarily leads to a decline in
the rate of growth of gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is the product
of the number of hours worked in an economy multiplied by productivity
(the average amount of output generated in an hour of work). If the
number of work hours falls because the labor force shrinks, this
essentially translates one-for-one into slower aggregate growth.
Policymakers who do not want to see the pace of GDP growth shrink
relative to the past history of U.S. growth really only have one
option: allowing larger flows of immigration. Absent this, other
policies to boost the U.S. labor force—while they might be wise
along many margins—will not restore overall GDP growth to anywhere
near its historic pace. In the rest of this policy brief, we lay out
some of the larger trends in U.S. labor force growth and the
implications of population aging for the future path of the labor
force and economic growth.

U.S. LABOR FORCE GROWTH HAS SLOWED A LOT IN RECENT DECADES, AND
U.S.-BORN LABOR FORCE GROWTH HAS SLOWED EVEN MORE

FIGURE A shows the average annual growth rate of the overall labor
force for a number of historical periods. We pick endpoints for these
periods that correspond with business cycle peaks to make sure that
sharp cyclical differences are not driving these trends. For two
recent periods (2007–2019 and 2019–2024), we also show the average
annual growth of just the _U.S.-born_ labor force.

Between 1948 and 1979, labor force growth averaged 1.8% annually. From
1979 to 2007, this pace slowed, but only slightly, averaging 1.4%
annually. However, in the two business cycles since 2007, labor force
growth averaged just 0.5%–0.6% annual growth. For the two most
recent business cycles, we have data on growth in the U.S.-born labor
force, and this growth is just 0.3% on average.

Read the Full Report
[[link removed]]
-- Download
[[link removed]] 

ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE  [link removed]
[[link removed]]1225 EYE ST. NW, SUITE 600WASHINGTON, DC xxxxxx

PHONE: 202-775-8810 • [email protected]

 

FORUM - LESSONS FROM 100 YEARS OF BLACK LABOR ACTIVISM: FIGHTING
RACIAL AUTHORITARIANISM AND BUILDING CROSS-MOVEMENT SOLIDARITY - NEW
YORK - NOVEMBER 7  (CUNY SCHOOL OF LABOR & URBAN STUDIES) 

[[link removed]]

 

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

12:30PM - 2:00PM

Free and open to all.  Lunch will be served.

In-person-only:

CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

25 WEST 43RD STREET18TH FLOORNEW YORK, NY 10036

Click here to register
[[link removed]].[link removed]
[[link removed]]r

Please register to receive event info and reminders.

(slucuny.swoogo.com/7November2025/register
[[link removed]])

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF BLACK UNION ACTIVISTS IN THE U.S. LABOR MOVEMENT
OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS OFFER POWERFUL LESSONS FOR ANYONE SEEKING TO
BUILD A MULTIRACIAL, DEMOCRATIC WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT TODAY. Black
labor leaders consistently challenged both white supremacy within
unions and economic injustice and racial authoritarianism from
employers and the government.  Since the 1920s and the early
organizing of A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters, Black labor activists have insisted that racial justice is
core to class struggle. That Black leadership in the labor movement
was deeply rooted both in working-class communities and other freedom
struggles—most notably the Black Freedom / Civil Rights
movement—played no small part in the gains made by working-class
African Americans and Black-led unions.

 

Join us to learn from a panel discussion with CEDRIC DE LEON,
Professor of Sociology and Labor Studies, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst; author and activist BILL FLETCHER JR.; TAMARA LEE, Associate
Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University;
and moderated by CAMERON BLACK, Assistant Professor, Labor Studies
CUNY SLU.  The speakers will discuss what today’s labor movement
can learn from this history to strengthen its organizing tactics and
build solidarity for a multiracial working-class democracy and how
historically tensions between or within movements have helped to build
a movement’s power and how we might imagine using tensions today to
strengthen our movements.

 

 

BOOK TALK - AARON LEONARD'S MENACE OF OUR TIME ON AMERICAN COMMUNISM -
NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 13  (TAMIMENT LIBRARY & ROBERT F. WAGNER LABOR
ARCHIVES) 

 

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13 · 5:30 - 6:30PM EST

BOBST LIBRARY70 WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH 2ND FLOOR -- ROOM 251NEW
YORK, NY 10012

REGISTER TODAY
[[link removed]]

From Rutgers University Press: "Beginning at the turn of the century,
and ending only with communism’s collapse, the US government and
major elements in the wider society undertook an unrelenting effort to
suppress and criminalize domestic communism. This book tracks those
efforts; from the state laws of the twenties that imprisoned the
fledgling communist leadership, the efforts by police and local
authorities against communists as they fought for unions, racial
equality, and the unemployed, the trials and imprisonment of communist
leaders mid-century, the extra-legal efforts of the
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the sixties, and the
ongoing, relentless attention by the FBI afterward. This is a
long-overdue book about the most extensive, repressive effort ever
undertaken by US authorities against a political organization that,
however problematic, was largely operating within the scope of
constitutionally mandated freedoms."

_[AARON J. LEONARD is an author and historian. Among his books are
Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists, The Folk
Singers & the Bureau, and Meltdown Expected: Crisis, Disorder and
Upheaval at the End of the 1970s (Rutgers University Press, 2024).]_

* Reader Comments
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* nuclear weapons
[[link removed]]
* U.S. nuclear testing
[[link removed]]
* nuclear tests
[[link removed]]
* Canada
[[link removed]]
* Tariffs
[[link removed]]
* Trade Tariffs
[[link removed]]
* Trade
[[link removed]]
* trade wars
[[link removed]]
* No Kings Day
[[link removed]]
* mass protest
[[link removed]]
* Popular Front
[[link removed]]
* No Kings
[[link removed]]
* Enemy Within
[[link removed]]
* Authoritarianism
[[link removed]]
* dictatorship
[[link removed]]
* dictators
[[link removed]]
* Kings
[[link removed]]
* Fascism
[[link removed]]
* Trump 2.0
[[link removed]]
* MAGA
[[link removed]]
* Democratic Rights
[[link removed]]
* Red Scare
[[link removed]]
* McCarthyism
[[link removed]]
* migrants
[[link removed]]
* Immigrants
[[link removed]]
* deportations
[[link removed]]
* workforce
[[link removed]]
* Gaza ceasefire
[[link removed]]
* Ceasefire
[[link removed]]
* Gaza
[[link removed]]
* Israel
[[link removed]]
* Palestine
[[link removed]]
* Israel-Gaza War
[[link removed]]
* Genocide
[[link removed]]
* war crimes
[[link removed]]
* IDF
[[link removed]]
* Benjamin Netanyahu
[[link removed]]
* Black workers
[[link removed]]
* Black Labor
[[link removed]]
* African Americans
[[link removed]]
* Activism
[[link removed]]
* Cartoons
[[link removed]]
* resources
[[link removed]]
* Announcements
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]