FEATURED ITEM:
	Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions

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BOOKS

Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions As have workers everywhere, union activists in Iraq for more than a century have fought for better lives for their families and a democratic society that respects their rights. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), the British counterpart to the AFL-CIO, has published a tribute to a martyr of the Iraqi union movement, Hadi Never Died: Hadi Saleh and the Iraqi Trade Unions, by Abdullah Muhsin and Alan Johnson. Saleh, the international secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and a printer by trade, was arrested and tortured repeatedly under the Saddam Hussein regime; and during the U.S. occupation, the Baathists broke into his home, tortured him and strangled him with an electric cord. In telling his story, the authors also offer a fascinating, haunting history of the Iraqi union movement. Available from the TUC.

Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace Fifty years ago, most of America's society took for granted that the majority of its members—people of color and women—always would be employed in jobs that paid low wages with little chance to move ahead. In Freedom Is Not Enough, historian Nancy MacLean recounts the struggle for equal job rights in the civil rights movement, the feminist movement and Latinos' struggle for full citizenship. In the process, she unearths stories of the real heroes of the struggle: the women and men at the grassroots—many of them union activists—who gathered in workplace caucuses, argued over dinner tables, filed thousands of discrimination complaints with government agencies and more. She also pays special attention to the southern segregationists who fought unsuccessfully against the civil rights laws in the 1960s but laid the groundwork for the later conservative upsurge. Available from powells.com.

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress One of the nation’s most important historians, Howard Zinn, says he writes "to illustrate the creative power of people struggling for a better world.” Zinn’s masterpiece, A People's History of the United States, has sold more than 1 million copies. Now, Zinn has collected nearly three dozen of his essays spanning eight years in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. While several topics are as current as the morning news (the Iraq war, globalization, Afghanistan), he also takes a fresh look at the Revolutionary War, the Holocaust, Mississippi Freedom Summer and favorite troublemakers ranging from Henry David Thoreau to Eugene Debs. Zinn fans will be delighted by the clarity and occasional beauty of his essays and the deep political passion that informs them. Available from City Lights Publishers.

MUSIC

Rise as One: A Live Solidarity Concert Two years ago, Joe Jencks recorded a concert of labor music at the Folklore Society in Washington, D.C., but didn't listen to it for months because he thought the concert had been a bust. Jencks's union brother in the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada Local 1000, Charlie Pilzer, finally convinced Jencks to listen, and when he did, Jencks recognized it as a "raw, live, real, and magical" performance. He sings old standards in the labor music songbook like "John Henry" and Woody Guthrie's "Deportees," as well as some of his own songs, including the "Rise as One." Jencks keeps alive a beautiful tradition that stretches from Guthrie to Pete Seeger and Joe Glazer, his tenor one of the best voices singing labor music in this generation. Available from the Labor Heritage Foundation.

RESOURCES

Work, Money and Power: Unions in the 21st Century The next time you're chatting with someone who's curious about unions, give them a copy of Work, Money and Power. The price is only $1.25 per copy and even longtime union members will learn a lot from this 24-page booklet, written by Fred Glass of the California Federation of Teachers (AFT) and commissioned by the California Assembly Speaker's Commission on Labor Education. Glass’ readable prose describes the role of unions, how workers join them, the history of the union movement and the advantages of union membership for workers. Despite its California focus, there is no better introduction to the union movement. Available from the University of California-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.