In a gripping feature, Harold Meyerson chronicles UNITE HERE's internal struggle:
Today, UNITE HERE is splitting apart in a bitter civil war that pits the UNITE side against the HERE side in a vicious, ugly fight. Some of the savviest and most dedicated union leaders and staffers ever to work in American labor are savaging each other as the UNITE side of the union endeavors to break away from the larger HERE side and a custody battle rages over the union's financial assets. For people who believe in the American labor movement, and who've seen the positive changes that these unions have made in the lives of their members, watching this battle unfold is like watching two good friends caught up in a vicious divorce. Sometimes one is right and sometimes the other is, but after a while, the battle takes on a life of its own, and the merits of each side's case become a secondary issue.
Jessica Hopper defends Susan Sontag against those who would judge her for her "ambition":
[C]an we judge the pursuits of a teen mom who went on to be one of the great American thinkers as vainglorious? She simply wanted to achieve her self. It is easy to say she did, though we can't presume she would agree. Sontag was not someone we think of as a mother; she was a private and seemingly singular entity, an upright truth-seeking device, the great public intellectual. And here we are, arriving unbidden, into her most private thoughts, wondering what we are to think of a mother who does not seem to want to be a mother, who is immersed in a self-interested pursuit.
And Terence Samuel writes that labor and environmental activists may have finally found common ground:
The current economic crisis and the unprecedented federal response may solidify the sometimes uneasy relationship between the labor and environmental movements, potentially creating a new political force with intersecting interests. Years in the political wilderness, along with the crush of the collapsing economy, have created a conciliatory mood on the left that is making coalition-building easier.
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--The Editors
