Interview
Ready to Strike at Rutgers! Interview with Rutgers University union leaders
Faculty at Rutgers University in New Jersey, one of the oldest public universities in the United States, are preparing to strike. Last week two faculty bargaining units, one comprised of full-time faculty and one of part-time, both voted by overwhelming majority in favor of a strike to create a living wage across campus for all teachers; to bring all faculty into the same bargaining unit; to undermine racism and sexism in the University labor hierarchy; and to push back against the University’s corporate, neoliberal agenda: https://rutgersaaup.org/our-members-h…
The two Rutgers Unions, AAUP-AFT, and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, are also practicing what the Union calls “fighting for the common good.” Their demands against the University include a call for a freeze on housing rates on all Rutgers-owned properties, a call for student debt forgiveness, and attention to creation of a “beloved community” in and around Rutgers campuses in the multiracial, working-class cities of New Brunswick, Camden and Newark: https://rutgersaaup.org/take-the-pled…
Serious about Systemic Change: an interview with Marco Amaral
Marco Amaral is a progressive candidate running as an Independent for the position of California Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2022. He is Chicano educator and long-time activist who teaches high school Special Education in a low-income area. Amaral lives and works in a community near the US-Mexico border in San Diego, a largely working-class Mexican community and is currently a Board of Trustees member at the South Bay Union School District. He spoke to Puntorojo about activism, education, politics and his campaign.
When we strike, we win!
On December 24, 2020, Lilly Thorne led a strike at Hops Burger Bar in Greensboro, North
Carolina. The strike represented one of many sporadic restaurant and fast-food workers’ strikes
during this pandemic. Lilly recounts the strike with Puntorojo and connects workplace struggles
with queer identity and anti-racist union building in the United States and beyond.
Honoring the past to forge a new future: the Chicano Moratorium 50 years on
This past weekend in Los Angeles, thousands took to the streets to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium, the largest Chicano-led mass protest in U.S. history. On August 29th, 1970, over 20,000 Mexican and Chicano youth poured throughout the streets of Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam war, police brutality, and ongoing inequality that the Mexican and Chicano community faced in California and throughout the southwest.
