Seven weeks before Jill Stein declared her candidacy for president, the Lexington, Mass., physician outlined her priorities in a plan she called the "Green New Deal" – jobs, climate change, universal health care and peace. When she announced her bid for the Green Party nomination on Oct. 24, 2011, the Chicago native presented herself as an alternative to the two "Wall Street parties.”

“They’re privatizing education, rolling back civil liberties and racial justice, plundering the environment and driving us towards the calamity of climate change,” she said in a news release accompanying her announcement. "… We need people in Washington who refuse to be bought by lobbyist money and for whom change is not just a slogan.”

News Release
Millworkers Local 8093

OOLITIC - Millworkers’ Local Union 8093, which is currently on strike at Indiana Limestone Company, will be holding a community protest/rally this Saturday at the Lawrence County Courthouse. The protests purpose is to call upon County Prosecutor Michelle Woodward to do her job and investigate the violent “Assault with a Motor Vehicle” on Union members who were peacefully protesting at the Indiana Limestone Company.

News Release
Indiana State AFL-CIO

INDIANAPOLIS - A new poll released Dec. 7 shows that Hoosiers - including Republicans - reject partisan "right to work" legislation and believe their elected officials should focus on jobs and the economy instead of divisive attacks on working family's collective bargaining rights.

The poll, commissioned by the AFL-CIO, found that support among Hoosier voters for the controversial union-busting bill is weak, with just 38 percent favoring its passage, while 47 percent stand in opposition. The survey also finds that 67 percent of Hoosiers disagree with Statehouse Republicans' decision to make "right to work" their top priority and wish they would move on to other issues.

News Release
Indiana State AFL-CIO

INDIANAPOLIS - In reaction to the announcement by Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate Pro Tem David Long that they would make passing the called "right to work" bill their top legislative priority in the 2012 legislative session, Indiana State AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott issued following statement this morning:

"It's laughable that Republican leaders in the Statehouse actually have the gall to cite 'freedom' in their renewed push for the so-called 'right-to-work' law given that it's already the law of the land that no one can be forced to join a union. In reality, this legislation isn't about giving Hoosier workers and employers more freedom, it is about taking away existing freedoms and choices."

About 75 protesters gathered at IU's Sample Gates on Nov. 17 for a solidarity march on the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A mix of students and local residents, the demonstrators condemned corporate influence and the social ills it perpetuates.

As they marched down Kirkwood to the Monroe County Courthouse, the protesters chanted, "The people, united, we will never be defeated" and sang, "Everybody pays their tax, everyone but Goldman Sachs!"

The Bloomington rally and march were coordinated with similar events from New York to Berkeley, during which almost 300 protesters were arrested nationwide.

Peter Seybold might have been born and educated in the Northeast, but the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) sociology professor found the Hoosier state's labor movement intriguing from the dawn of his political awakening back in New Jersey.

"When I became interested in politics I didn't know much about Indiana," he said during an interview in late October 2011. "But I thought, 'Wow, this must be an interesting place. Vance Hartke and Birch Bayh as senators – this must be a pretty interesting place.'"

Peter Seybold traces the pernicious influence corporatization has had on the American campus to almost a decade before the Reagan Revolution of 1980, to a memo written by Richmond, Va., attorney Lewis F. Powell Jr. to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in late summer 1971.

Powell, who would be nominated for Supreme Court justice by President Richard Nixon just two months later, said American business had to take the offensive to counter the social movements of the 1960s and early '70s, said Seybold, a sociology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI). Among the institutions Powell said the business world had to recapture was the American campus.

"Part of this was a cultural and political attack on the university," Seybold said.

CWA Local 4730

As President Michael McRobbie gives his annual State of the University address, it is time once again to consider the plight of support staff on the IUB and IUN campuses. Things have not improved over the last year few years, and there is little sign of improvement in the near future.

1) Staff levels continue to drop in all but a few areas, as student enrollment continues to climb.

2) Job losses continue as more services are privatized or consolidated, and another planned benchmarking study is bound to be used to justify more job losses.

The Midwest Rising Convergence 2011, on Aug. 12–15 at the University of Missouri–St. Louis conference center, wasn’t an ordinary conference. It featured no experts or celebrities. The 200 or so participants co-operatively ran it, cooking and serving meals, working at the registration desk and holding workshops.

Billed as an anticorporate gathering of activists with a focus on environmental and economic justice and on the interconnectedness of social justice issues, the convergence was highlighted by several instances of direct action.

CWA Local 4730

As the state of Indiana continues to reel from economic recession, IU President Michael McRobbie's raise to $533,120 for the 2011-12 academic year sparks controversy and anger from University employees whose pay increase will not match standard of living inflation for 2012.

After the Board of Trustees approved to increase McRobbie's salary by 21.8 percent, Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 4730 immediately called on the university president to forgo all but 1.5% of a wage increase – the exact amount the majority of the campus' employees and staff was given for the next fiscal year. CWA 4730 members are extremely frustrated by the enormous discrepancy in wage increases – especially given the high projected numbers for inflation for 2012.