Workers at Guitar Center’s flagship Chicago store voted last week to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union ( RWDSU ). Earlier this summer workers at the Manhattan Guitar Center voted overwhelmingly to join the RWDSU. RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum said the Chicago vote "proves that retail workers are ready and willing to stand up and demand change."

It’s darn hard to find an area where we and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan agree. But there is at least one. Ryan says he is a big fan of the band Rage Against the Machine. Who knew Ryan—the Ayn Rand disciple and worshipper of unfettered corporate power—could find common ground with Rage, which has made a career out of singing and fighting for progressive causes and against corporate greed?

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Hannah MFaull from the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition  sends us this . Tom Morello of “Rage Against the Machine,” singer-songwriter Jackson Browne, Tim McIlrath of the punk rock band “Rise Against,” international touring hip-hop artist Brother Ali and Mike McColgan, the original lead singer of “Dropkick Murphys” and the lead singer of the “Street Dogs,” are all hitting the stage in Madison to turn out the vote in a Wisconsin recall election that’s too close to call.

Tomorrow in Chicago, nurses from across the United States and U.S. and global activists will rally and call on world leaders to adopt a Robin Hood tax on financial speculation by banks and financial institution to create jobs and rebuild the economy that Wall Street broke. The Day of Action is sponsored by National Nurses United ( NNU ).

Tom Morello, aka the Nightwatchman , is on tour through early September, including a Sept. 2 stop at the legendary Birchmere Music Hall in Alexandria, Va., outside of Washington, D.C. Click here for other “Justice 11 Tour” dates.

Tom Morello’s gone from a rabble-rousing underground high school journalist to a rabble-rousing guitar hero  and guerilla folk singer. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist—and more recently as the Nightwatchman —has long been active in progressive politics, from fighting against racism, torture, war and sweatshops to fighting for immigrant and workers’ rights.

Singer Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has always been a strong supporter of working people. Morello was so inspired after taking part in a demonstration and headlining  a concert in February for the protesters at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., that he wrote what he calls “fighting songs.”

Tom Morello was among top-name musicians who trekked to Wisconsin in recent days to perform  for the thousands of citizens protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to take away from public employees their freedom to bargain for good middle-class jobs. In an article out today in Rolling Stone , Morello describes the experience–and what made him pack up and travel through winter storms to Wisconsin even though he was taking a break to be home with his newborn. In short, Morello says he knew he had to go because:

The battle to preserve workers’ rights in Wisconsin is a watershed moment in US history. Wisconsin is Class War Ground Zero for the new millennium and a crucible for people’s rights in the United States.