Out of the Mainstream: Books and Films You May Have Missed

Books

Can They Do That?
By Lewis Maltby
Portfolio, 2009

Unless workers have a union, constitutional rights generally stop at the workplace door. In most cases, it is legal for companies to fire or discipline workers for their political views or their private lifestyle. Increasingly, corporations test applicants for genetic diseases or seek personal psychological profiles before making hiring decisions. Some employers use the Global Positioning System capacity of company-issued cell phones to track workers' activities during off hours. The U.S. frequently criticizes human rights violations in other countries, but maintains a system of employment law that allows corporations to trample on workers' fundamental rights every day.

Cesar Chavez: A Photographic Essay
By Ilan Stavans
Cinco Puntos, 2010

Chavez's role in United Farm Workers organizing is recounted using photos and a small amount of text aimed mainly at young people.

Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan
By David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis
Olive Branch, 2010

In question-and-answer format, analysts from the United Methodist Church and the Institute of Policy Studies provide essential background on the real reasons for the Bush administration's invasion of Afghanistan and the continuation of the war by President Obama. They also address the question of how the U.S. can bring its involvement to an end.

Everything but the Coffee
By Bryant Simon
University of California Press, 2009

This thoughtful, in-depth study of Starbucks and its customers concludes that Americans want what the company claims it offers—community, fair treatment of workers and food producers, and protection of the environment—but the author questions whether consuming the products of big corporations like Starbucks actually yields those outcomes.

Hazard
By Gardiner Harris
Minotaur, 2010

A mystery novel by the public health reporter for the New York Times shines a light on corporate and governmental abuses in the coal industry.

If the Church Were Christian
By Philip Gulley
HarperOne, 2010

A Quaker minister suggests that if churches more closely followed Jesus's values and teachings, they would focus more on inclusion rather than exclusion, reconciliation rather than judgment, meeting needs rather than maintaining institutions, and inviting questions rather than insisting on rigid answers.

If We Can Change the White House, We Can Change the Hog House
By Gene Bruskin
genebruskin@gmail.com, 2010

In a twenty-page, pocket-size booklet, the former director of the successful campaign to win a union contract for mostly Latino and African-American workers at the Smithfield meatpacking plant in North Carolina tells the story in the form of a rap-style poem.

Mothers' Work and Children's Lives
By Rucker C. Johnson, Ariel Kalil, and Rachel E. Dunifon
Upjohn Institute, 2009

Welfare reform under President Clinton was supposed to help children by pushing their mothers into the workforce. More than a decade later, studies show that children generally do benefit when their mothers are provided work with good wages and consistent hours, but suffer increased behavioral problems and poor performance in school if their mothers are pressured to work irregular hours in unstable, low-wage jobs.

Moving Millions
By Jeffrey Kaye
Wiley, 2010

A former reporter for PBS NewsHour shows that the changes in immigration policy that are being discussed by national leaders do not address the underlying reasons that cause people to emigrate in the first place, including poverty and powerlessness and the hunger of multinational corporations for cheap and exploitable labor.

NAFTA and Labor in North America
By Norman Caulfield
University of Illinois Press, 2009

Twenty years after the beginning of the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, workers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada all are worse off. Traditional union strategies based primarily on affecting national trade policies have proven to be inadequate in a global economy in which capital knows no boundaries.

On a Dollar a Day
By Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard
Hyperion, 2009

Two California high school teachers decide to limit their food budget to the...