theblackbottom

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: October 25, 2012
DETROIT — Tired of battling legislative efforts to roll back union rights in state after state, organized labor is trying a new strategy: going on the offense. The first target is Michigan, the cradle of the United Auto Workers and a bastion of union power.
Michigan’s unions are asking voters to [...]

Emberly Vick, otherwise known as Emberly “The Writer,” admits that she passively ignored relentless urges to write for years. Still, whether explaining a concept or conceptualizing herself, she was clearly ordained to write at an early age.
Excelling in state writing tests in elementary, “TheWriter” never considered writing, not even as a hobby, until college. After [...]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Western Michigan has a new top federal prosecutor.
Patrick Miles Jr. took the oath of office today at the federal courthouse in Grand Rapids. He’s a 44-year-old Grand Rapids lawyer who was nominated by President Barack Obama and recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
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BY:Freep
By Matt Helms and Kathleen Gray
Detroit Free Press Staff Writers
After weeks of meetings, rallies and court battles, the Detroit City Council voted Wednesday to approve a consent agreement with the State of Michigan, warding off, at least in the short term, the threat of the state appointing an emergency manager who could strip city [...]

State Senator Lena C. Taylor A life-long Milwaukee resident, Senator Lena Taylor is serving her second term in the Wisconsin State Senate, representing the 4th Senate District, including northern portions of the City of Milwaukee as well as parts of Wauwatosa and Glendale.
Source: Milwaukee Courier

African Americans have always had [...]

Decades ago I read a book by the French philosopher and anarchist Jacques Ellul titled the Technological Society (in French La Technique: L’enjeu du siècle). It was revealing book for me. Ellul observed how production techniques in the Western world took on its own self-reinforcing rationality.
Stated another way, the techniques we use to create machinery [...]

By: The Huff Post Detroit
It’s been 175 years since 1837, when Michigan and Ohio signed a truce after a brief skirmish over the hotly contested property of the Toledo Strip.
Ohio might have gotten the fair city of Toledo, but in exchange Michigan got the riches of the Upper Peninsula — a much better deal, we [...]

We want all tbb readers to be aware of the NYT magazine story on Benton Harbor. Benton Harbor has been subjected to anti-democratic forces in the name of greed and historical racial animus. Black Detroit this could be your future. There has not been a social history of Benton Harbor as of yet. That is [...]

By:Jennie L Phillips
Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 5:06 PM Updated: Tuesday, November 29, 2011, 5:30 PM
African-Americans continue to be much harder hit than whites by the economic downturn and resulting unemployment.
A story in today’s New York Times points out that In October, the black unemployment rate was 15.1 percent, compared with [...]

Brandon Jessup,Chairman and CEO,Michigan Forward was announced as the 2011 recipient of the “Critical Thinking” Award presented by Freedom Institute during Freedom Weekend at their National Town Hall Meeting.