The Nation December 17, 2012

At Last We Exhaled…
 Itasca, Ill.
 What a country! United citizens defeat Citizens United. Democracy is alive and well. Let’s all work hard to keep it that way.
 MARY STEFFENS
 _________________________ Colorado Springs 
 Your November 19 issue, received two days after Obama’s victory, fed into my relief and euphoria. I have been rejoicing over how a second term for a “black” man will help dispel prejudice, whereas a loss would have evolved into “I told you so.” I was delighted that big money did not mean victory, and organization and hard work by the Obama team paid off. Dear old Vonnegut again shook the pomposity and wrong thinking out of us. Jon Wiener on the tearing down of the Berlin Wall helped us see how our “truths” are often…

Walmart workers made history on Black Friday. When some 500 workers walked off the job in 100 cities, they pulled off the biggest US strike against the biggest private employer in the
world, as well as the strongest-ever challenge to the dominant player in our economy. Walmart, which directly employs one out of every 100 US workers, has pioneered a business model based on low labor costs—and perfected the unionbusting tactics that keep them that way. The Walmart model has been forced on the company’s contractors and suppliers and embraced by many of its competitors. That makes this year’s work stoppages against the retail giant the most significant US strike wave of the twenty-first century. 
 This rebellion is an indictment not just of Walmart’s business model but of our broken…

In the spring of 2011, students in a sociology class at San Jose State University got together to brainstorm ways to make the world a better place. The course they were taking, Social Action, focused on theory and history while also encouraging students to “apply social change to the local community.” For Marisela Castro, a junior, the promise of action was precisely what she was looking for, and she already knew the issue she’d champion. She was on a mission to raise the minimum wage.
 Like many students at San Jose State, Castro came from a household where low wages weren’t an abstract injustice. Her parents had labored in California’s fields, and Castro was putting in long hours at an after-school program to help pay for college. At work she…

JESSE JACKSON JR.’S LEGACY: Jesse Jackson Jr. resigned from Congress with a poignant note following a personal journey that took a heartbreaking turn. “For seventeen years I have given 100 percent of my time, energy, and life to public service,” he wrote in a letter delivered before Thanksgiving. “However, over the past several months, as my health has deteriorated, my ability to serve the constituents
of my district has continued to diminish.” 
 The congressman, who has been receiving treatment for bipolar disorder, acknowledged not just his health challenges but a deeply embarrassing federal investigation into the misdirection of campaign funds. There is no point in trying to diminish that charge. But neither should it obscure the rest of Jackson’s service. From the moment the son of the Reverend Jesse Jackson was…

The recently announced merger of Penguin and Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann in Germany, sent shock waves throughout Western publishing circles. This new leviathan will publish a quarter of all books appearing in English, with annual sales of close to $4 billion, yet it is being treated by The New York Times and other media as a routine and perhaps even beneficial development. 
 Since the 1980s, when Random House was purchased by Si Newhouse’s Advance Publications, mergers have swallowed up most small and independent US and British firms. Publishing has been so dominated by the major conglomerates that another merger seems natural, the Times suggests. Indeed, others can be expected to follow. Rupert Murdoch has already expressed his disappointment at not having bought Penguin and his desire to…

The Joseph Kennedy portrayed in The Patriarch, David Nasaw’s magisterial new biography, didn’t dislike Jews per se. In fact, he rather admired the way they stuck together, looked out for their corporate interests and ultimately, in his view, trapped (or brainwashed) Franklin Roosevelt into allowing the United States to become embroiled in the fight against Nazi aggression. But he blamed “a number of Jewish writers and publishers” for trying to “precipitate a war with Germany.” While Jewish community leaders were desperately trying (and failing) to convince Roosevelt to intervene on behalf of the victims of Hitler’s repression (soon to be genocide), and to lobby other nations to do so, Kennedy—then ambassador to the Court of St. James’s—did everything in his power to frustrate these aims, believing that Nazi Germany’s treatment…