Archive: Apr 2018

“Once upon a time in America, unions were a force to be reckoned with. In 1954, labor union membership in the United States hit a peak of 34.8 percent…” So begins a Pacific Standard introduction to a series on the status of labor unions in the Unites States. “Today,” the introduction continues, “the footprint of unions has shrunk dramatically due to both the general decline of traditionally unionized private-sector industries in this country, and more concerted efforts to weaken unions. In 2017, only 10.7 percent of U.S. workers belonged to a union.” Check out the site for several additional articles, such as “What caused the decline of unions in America?”

In collaboration with The Marshall Project, the Pacific Standard has published a powerful story about recently retired U.S. District Court judge Thelton Henderson, who is credited with transforming California’s criminal justice system. Sadly, his legacy is in danger of being undone.

“There has never been a time when so much data existed about human behavior,” begins a Chronicle of Higher Education article about the academic use of Facebook’s data. “What many of us buy, sell, like, dislike, read, and tell our friends is recorded on the internet thanks to sites like Facebook. To social scientists, the company is sitting on a gold mine… [A] commission, would be trained on the company’s policies and would theoretically know why some information can be shared and some can’t, presumably because of legal proceedings or certain privacy laws. The scholars on the commission would not be able to do their own research or share the company’s secrets, but they would solicit proposals from others and serve as a filter for the data, meting it out to the researchers as deemed appropriate.”

The Pacific Standard also has an article about Facebook releasing its data to social scientists. This is a very interesting and potentially powerful development!

Today (April 4, 2018) is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At 4:01 PM PST Bay Area community members will join San José State University in a ceremony to commemorate the moment that stunned the world. The west coast time symbolizes the moment Dr. King was struck in the neck by an assassin’s bullet on the third floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. Local K-12 students will join community elders and the SJSU campus community in ringing 50 chimes in Dr. King’s honor at the MLK Library on campus.

The Atlantic magazine has published a special issue about Dr. King. I’m a subscriber but haven’t received my issue yet, but read one article online: William Barber II’s argument that the nation’s problem isn’t that we don’t have enough money to face what ails society, we lack the moral capacity to do so.