Majority Agenda Project

The One Nation Working Together team announced today that over 60 organizations have endorsed the mobilization. In an e-mail to steering committee members the team reflects the growing and gathering energy: "We are growing stronger every day. On October 2, we will send a message that there is a movement in this country for good jobs, equal justice and quality education for all."

A full list of groups is available from the OneNationWorkingTogether.org website. Here's a list current as of 8/29:

August 30, 2010–One Nation Working Together released a powerful and lyrical vision statement today: For Jobs, Justice and Education for All! Speaking to "peace abroad and jobs at home" and the need for a green economy, it quickly drew many "likes" on Facebook but also prompted one supportive but cautionary comment: "You know, we really need many nations working together." Here's the full text:

What with Glenn Beck and the Tea Potheads, you'd think that Americans are revolting against a "Big Government" that has smothered their lives. Turns out, however, that a less biased reading of the polls finds that people want a more responsive government and not the one they believe they have: a state captured by "Big Interests." Political psychologist, Stephen Kull, Director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, recently appraised the data carefully and recognized much more nuance in public opinion than the media suggests. Below we run his piece, "Big Government is Not the Issue" from WorldPublicOpinion.org.

The noted peace movement thinker, Phyllis Bennis explains why she's supporting the One Nation Working Together mobilization:  "I think Oct 2nd is a great example of what it means for us as a peace movement to take on the dual challenges of both bringing our anti-war, anti-military budget messages to a much broader mobilization than our own, making the links about how the costs of war directly impact all the key issues around jobs, health care, the environment, housing, the economic crisis/recovery, etc., AND demonstrating our willingness/capacity to mobilize in support of the broad call around jobs etc. because it's important in its own right... 

Amid the disheartening economic news, folks taking a longer-term view of the economy point to ominous trends but they also findi signs of hope in new forms of organizing from abroad and even from some home-grown examples, like the freelancers union. This article by Peter Hall-Jones from last November's New Unionism introduces us to the "precariat":

As organizers and activists around the country gear up for the October 2, 2010 jobs march in D.C. there are startling signs that--absent a major new stimulus package--the economy is headed for a double dip. Last week's new unemployment claims numbers are out and they top 500,000. This prompted Nouriel Roubini, among the few mainstream economists to predict the current collapse, to tweet: "Unemployment claims up to 500K after optimists predicted all year they would fall below 400K. Labor market dismal & double dip risks rising..."

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency warns that a warmer-than-usual North Atlantic means that the state's relatively high latitudes may not protect it this hurricane season. Taken together with the flooding in Pakistan and China, it is certainly not too early to ask, "What global warming looks like?" This month, James Hansen looks at the physical evidence from across the globe in a peer-reviewed paper by that title (published in Reviews of Geophysics). Below we reproduce his summary. Hansen and his co-authors note that their scientific task is made difficult by the prevalent denialism and suggest that repeated clear scientific analysis is needed to overcome this climate.

$7.13 trillion! Trillion! New York Times Magazine columnist Peter Maass cites new studies for the non-war costs of US carrier groups along major oil routes: over three decades, the cost of patrolling the Persian Gulf, in purely economic terms, amounted to $7.13 trillion. Of course, these costs are not figured into the price you pay at the pump, but you can be sure that's where your tax dollars go. Here's Maass' full essay from Foreign Policy magazine.

Like state governments increasing unemployment through budget cutbacks at a time of dire joblessness, the US Senate declined to take up even the severely compromised climate bill before it. This is not for lack of political opportunity, indeed the last few months have been the hottest on record and, of course, there is the Gulf... As Bill McKibben observes in the Huffington Post, the sweltering heat is not an isolated happening; these hotter summer months follow the hottest decade.

What are the real effects of long-term unemployment? The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article "Recession Strikes Deep Into Work Force."

"The nation's 9.7% unemployment rate tells only part of the recession's story, according to a new study that found more than half of adults in the U.S. labor force have suffered a spell of unemployment, a pay cut or reduction in work hours. Middle-age workers—50 to 64 years old—are most likely to have taken a hit in the last 30 months of the downturn, a group normally at the peak of its earning potential ...

"Those without jobs are enduring the longest spells of unemployment recorded in modern history. The typical unemployed worker today has been out of work for nearly six months, almost double the previous post-World War II peak—12.3 weeks in 1982-83...

"Long-term unemployment is associated with severe breaks in career paths and erosion in income, health and other aspects of well-being."