A little good news...really

 

(This exploited dog has had enough.)

If, like me, you're looking for good news anywhere you can find it, here's a bit: for the first time in many years, union membership grew in 2025. And yes, this happened in spite of the Trump administration's war on federal workers. Numbers were up by almost half a million (463,000 to be exact). The number of workers covered by a union contract grew from around 16 million to 16.5. Much of that gain is in the public sector, but there were gains in the private one as well.

That's still not enough. We desperately need changes in federal labor laws to make organizing easier and make it harder for employers to retaliate. And we need to roll back state anti-labor legislation, restoring prevailing wages for state and local projects, sending "right-to-work-for-less' laws back to their rightful place in hell, and rolling back legislation that defunds public education.  Such policies are deliberately designed to reduce the bargaining power of workers and prevent organizing.

Still, it's a start. In the meantime, audacity and creativity by worker-organizers can prepare the way.

Two reasons to be in the reptile room tomorrow...

Since 2018 AFSC has been a part of the West Virginia Council of Church’s Compassion Calls Us Day at the legislature.   This year the call will be compassion for immigrants; people incarcerated; families without clean drinking water; and communities that would be impacted by proposed dirty, water guzzling data centers.  We'll add our voices to the din in the upper rotunda. Come on down, you'll be in good company with Reverend Ron English, Bev Sharp, Reverend Cindy Briggs Biondi, Ryan Kirkpatrick and Reverend Caitlin Ware. 

Also tomorrow at noon there will be a rally in the Attorney General's little rotunda when community members from Mingo, Logan, Mason, and Tucker counties will share their stories about how they stand to be impacted by proposed data centers, and why West Virginia cannot make the mistakes of the past.

Eduardo Galleano in Open Veins of Latin America wrote what is a pretty haunting mirror of our own history in Appalachia:  "Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others."   And so as the Zapatistas say: "¡Ya basta!"