“For Italian American families like the one I grew up in, recalling our past is a shared obsession. Over endless family dinners, we tell stories about our parents and grandparents and the obstacles they overcame in their early years in the U.S. — arriving here with nothing, speaking a foreign language, working long hours as farmers, garment workers and tradesmen. Like all immigrant communities, pride in our history is the cornerstone of our culture.

That’s why it isn’t surprising that the decapitation of the Christopher Columbus statue in Boston’s North End last week caused a strong reaction from old-guard Italian Americans. Among the ritual condemnations of the destruction of private property, an old argument re-emerged — the Columbus statue is a symbol, not of genocide, but of our heritage.”

NewspaperGuest UserJuly 2, 2020Anti-racism, Colonialism, Gillian Mason

"Why Labor Unions are Increasing Influence"

“As negotiations entered their second month, Mike Pietros felt his optimism fade and his anger build. Pietros, fifty-three, had worked for Stop and Shop since 1998, when he was hired as a part-time meat cutter who floated from store to store. In twenty-one years, the North Providence resident had worked his way up to a meat manager’s position at the Cumberland store, and he now sat on the bargaining team for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union hammering out the terms of the next contract.

The grocery chain’s corporate parent, Ahold Delhaize, had posted a $2 billion profit in 2018, but its offers were paltry. The Netherlands-based company had proposed a small wage increase, but also a rise in workers’ health care premiums, and reductions to holiday pay and to pension benefits for new full-timers. The UFCW saw this fundamentally as a pay cut, and an attempt to create a two-tiered employee system. By the time the old contract expired on February 23, their respective positions had hardened.

‘We were just treading water, and I started to get upset,’ Pietros says. ‘The company was not taking us too seriously, but without us, they don’t have a company. We are the ones who take care of the people. The customers come in to see us, not the people in corporate. We had to send the company a message.’”

NewspaperGuest UserAugust 13, 2019Gillian Mason, Labor Unions

"Activists protest Santander bank’s role in Puerto Rico debt crisis"

“Local activists gathered outside Santander’s State Street bank branch in downtown Boston last week to decry the company’s role in Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. During the demonstration, organized by Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, protestors charged that executives from Santander — a Boston-based bank with a significant dealings in Puerto Rico —not only profiteered off the island’s financial turmoil, but also used government positions to push policies that exacerbated it. Worst of all, two of its executives are among the handful of powerful board members granted authority over fixing the crisis.

As Puerto Rico’s finances soured and loans began to look difficult to repay, the government issued more bonds to pay off interest on their debts and maintain their credit rating, and then issued bonds to pay off interest on those bonds. Meanwhile, banks like Santander earned high profits for their underwriting services on such bonds, pulling more cash from the depleting public coffers. Demonstrators say it was unethical to pursue such profit at the expense of a distressed government and that a conflict of interest was inherent due to members of government’s previous bank executive roles.”

NewspaperGuest UserDecember 22, 2016Puerto Rico, Gillian Mason, Santander

"One of the Biggest Problems on College Campuses Is One We Never Talk About"

“The time for quietly enduring discrimination on college campuses is over.

From the University of Missouri to Yale University to Claremont McKenna College in California and beyond, students of minority groups which were only relatively recently permitted access to higher education are protesting the unacceptable ways they're treated in their ‘elite’ communities.

But while protests against racism on campus are perhaps the loudest — or at least the most visible — there's another damaging force against which students are pushing back: classism.

Low-income students' concerns often intersect with issues of race: Almost two-thirds of African-American undergraduate students and 51% of Latino undergraduate students receive Pell Grants, or federal funds allocated to low-income students, according to the Washington Post. But confrontations over class-based issues on campus often emerge in ways that are different than debates over race. While many low-income students certainly encounter blatantly classist attitudes, their socio-economic backgrounds frequently disadvantage them in more subtle — though equally detrimental — ways.

Is higher education really an equalizing force? For centuries, ‘college was reserved for elite, mostly white men,’ Anne Phillips, executive director of Class Action, an organization that seeks to end classism, told Mic.“

NewspaperGuest UserNovember 23, 2015Classism, Gillian Mason

"Congressional report recognizes difficulties faced by adjunct professors"

“As adjunct professors at many institutions of higher education fight for adequate employment benefits, a report recently issued by Congress recognizes the challenges part-time professors face.

Issued by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the report highlights the struggles faced by adjunct professors in the United States trying to earn a living from their adjunct salary. It is a response to a government-created forum that asked adjunct professors to express their career concerns.

The report marks the first time the government has recognized adjunct faculty mistreatment at universities as a growing issue, said Malini Cadambi Daniel, a spokesperson for an organization that aims to garner better benefits for adjunct professors called Adjunct Action.”

NewspaperGuest UserJanuary 31, 2014Gillian Mason, Academia