By Jamala Rogers for the St. Louis American 

May 14 is the 40th anniversary of Green vs. McDonnell Douglas. The case was the culmination of venerable activist Percy Green’s racial discrimination fight against McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing Corporation).

Under the leadership of Percy Green, the organization ACTION busted loose jobs for black folks during the 1960s, especially for black men. Utility companies like Laclede Gas and corporations like Southwestern Bell (now AT&T) often went into siege mode when ACTION put them on “the list.”

Many people directly credit these efforts for how they received their own job. Sylvester Brown is one such person who rarely misses the opportunity to publicly acknowledge who was responsible for getting his job at Laclede Gas Company.

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Getting the picture: Corporate crime scene in West, Texas

By Anne Lewis / The Rag Blog / April 30, 2013

AUSTIN — This is about the fertilizer explosion in West, Texas, on the night of April 17, 2013. It’s also about Patrick Bresnan who found himself in West on the night of the explosion and his photographs in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Governor Perry called it a crime scene; the progressive community says, yes, corporate crime. Neither the paranoid fantasy of Governor Perry who is stuck in an ideology that says that companies can do no wrong, nor the abstract politics of progressives blaming the state’s lack of regulation — “We shouldn’t produce fertilizer anyway because it’s not good for the planet,” I overheard in a coffee shop — seem to get at any real truth.

I ask myself the question: how one can be kind and dignified in the face of such sorrow and loss? I try to collect myself and cannot help but think about the Central Appalachian coalfields. Read more