How the Supreme Court Blowtorched Democracy and What You Can Do About It

The McCutcheon campaign finance ruling is only the latest in a series of bad decisions that have sparked growing grassroots resistance.

The Editors

Mozillagate, Brendan Eich and Right-Wing Hypocrisy

Conservatives are suddenly very unhappy to see moral judgments about sex and families invading the corporate realm.

Michelle Goldberg

Noted

In 2011, the Renaissance Providence Downtown Hotel gained some unwanted notoriety when Joey DeFrancesco quit his service job with the help of his bandmates in the What Cheer? Brigade. A video of Joey’s raucous exit has 4.3 million views on YouTube. “They were stealing our tip money, paying us poverty wages, making us work double or triple shifts,” DeFrancesco told The Nation. “When I quit, I didn’t want to go quietly.” On December 4, the workers declared a boycott. The Unitarian Universalist Association, which had intended to hold its annual business meeting at the Renaissance, canceled 847 reservations. Local politicians voiced their support. On March 19, thanks to the combined efforts of students and hotel workers, the Brown University Community Council (BUCC) voted to discourage the Brown community from patronizing the Renaissance. Since the fall, members of Brown’s Student Labor Alliance had been marching with Renaissance workers on the picket lines. When the boycott started, students invited the hotel workers to attend a BUCC meeting and share their stories with administrators. “We have certain leverage at Brown,” says Mariela Martinez, a Brown senior and SLA member, “We have to use it.” Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! When the university president cut off hotel worker Santa Brito in the midst of her testimony, the SLA went outside official channels, handing out hundreds of leaflets at Brown’s extravagant 250th anniversary events. At the next BUCC meeting, SLA members packed the room. The council voted almost unanimously to support the resolution, which “encourages the Brown community to take all appropriate measures to avoid holding any events at the Renaissance Hotel in Providence during the current labor dispute.” Martinez, who comes from a working-class family in South-Central Los Angeles, says of the Renaissance workers, “They are facing real intimidation on a daily basis…. We’re just going to class and going to meetings.” Says hotel worker Marino Cruz, “They are fighters, just like us.” Read Next: StudentNation, The Nation blog by and for student activists and journalists Read More

The Editors

This Modern World

Tom Tomorrow

Snapshot: The End of Mexican Oil

A statue of Lázaro Cárdenas, the Mexican president who nationalized the country’s oil reserves in 1938. In December, a constitutional “reform” measure was passed to open the country to foreign oil companies. Last month the denationalization process began with Pemex, Mexico’s national oil company, naming fields it would like to retain. Read More

Brian Tlamintzi

Israel Celebrates a Return to the Status Quo in the Middle East

Many Israelis, Netanyahu included, were never serious about seeking a two-state solution in the peace negotiations.

Eric Alterman

Prison Culture: How Biases Trump Evidence and Land People in Jail

The imprisonment of an American couple in Qatar reveals biases in criminal justice, at home and abroad.

Patricia J. Williams

I Dream of Sheldon With the Bright Orange Hair

Calvin Trillin

Letters

This is your brain on poison… "monetizing" scholars… doubting Thomas… mishegoss II…

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