I wrote previously about labor-management neutrality agreements which have been the subject of intense debate among union activists and labor scholars. Under these confidential agreements, union leaders and employers make deals which facilitate union organizing.

“Neutrality Agreements”-- more or less secret deals -- between a union and management involve give and take on both sides. The unions agree to limit their organizing efforts to specific locales, to not campaign against management, and to not strike (under most circumstances). At some sites, Management agrees not to oppose the union’s organizing efforts and to recognize the union where a majority of workers have signed cards asking for union representation. Management gets some stability, some immunity from workplace disruption. Unions get the freedom to organize. Some have charged that such agreements lock out other unions, allow parent unions to dominate locals, and erode workers rights. It’s a difficult balance. At what point does an agreement go too far and align the union with the boss?

To be fair, for a change, I called up SEIU, Unite-Here and a few observer-activists to get their views:

Andy McDonald, an SEIU voice, pointed out that – of the private-sector work-force, 92½% are without union representation. “SEIU is obsessed with addressing the needs of the 921/2 %.” Psychologically obsessed?” Obsessed, he affirmed.

The union song , above, by Florence Reese, underscores the complete divide many of us grew up with between workers and their labor unions and the bosses. Like many things I learned on my parents’ knees, this model of class struggle may be subject to revision. Some of you may know that, as total labor union membership and share of the workforce has dropped dramatically over the last many years, unions have developed competing labor federations: the AFL-CIO rooted in a long complex history and a newer federation Change to Win (CTW) .

Initially the differences between the AFL-CIO and CTW seemed to be about how to organize new workers. CTW unions, like the Teamsters, the Service Employees and Unite-Here wanted to devote more money and resources to organizing new members than the AFL was prepared to. As time has gone by however, it appears that Change to Win has changed in another way. They’ve abandoned the old paradigm of workers vs. bosses and changed. Will they win?

The Service Employees International Union (Andy Stern Pres.) and Unite-Here (Bruce Raynor & John Wilhelm, Co-Presidents) have embarked on a new era of labor-management relations. While their reasons for doing so are clear and understandable (to me at least) not everyone is clapping and there appear to be some very unpalatable outcomes.

In brief, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, (subscription required, sorry)

Two of the nation's largest labor unions have struck confidential agreements with large employers that give the companies the right to designate which of their locations, and how many workers, the unions can seek to organize.
The agreements are raising questions about union transparency and workers' rights. A summary document put together by the unions says it is critical to the success of the partnership "that we honor the confidentiality and not publicly disclose the existence of these agreements." That includes not disclosing them to union members. [emphasis added by me]

It’s May and not only Bike Month but the time of the annual fundraiser for the Drum Major Institute , my favorite action-oriented think-tank.*

This year the Drum Major For Justice Awards will be held Tuesday May 20th 2008 6:30-8:30 PM at Cipriani 23rd Street. (at 5th Ave.). More Here

I went last year. It was fun: good food, good booze, -- most important-- good schmooze. I plan to go this time, too. You should consider it. If you do, come say “hi!”

Honorees, this year are

David Simon creator of HBO show “The Wire.”

Melissa Mark-Viverito, East Harlem NYC Council Member (people tell me she’s as smart and focused as my Council Member Rosie Mendez; she’s certainly as progressive) and

Steve Phillips California civil rights lawyer, donor and chair of PowerPAC.org.

Tickets are very expensive, but there are special lower rates for activists and bloggers. If you cannot bargain yourself into a price acceptable to you, you should go back to organizing school for retraining.

*Actually it would be a tie, in my book, between DMI and Demos but DMI wins because it has a great blog.

Last Sunday 5:30 AM found me biking to the Battery where, with a few hundred others, I helped put on BikeNY’s Five Borough Bike Tour. My main job was to ride very slowly, fix flats, gears & chains, hand out water, snacks and encouragement to 30,000 riders. In a previous post I suggested low-key NYC rides you can still go on. Below, I suggest somewhat more adventuresome multi-day rides in order of their physical demands.

When I was a very young teen, I rode on multi-day bike trips organized by the 92nd Street Y and American Youth Hostels. We carried our gear and food; rode 30 or so miles a day on fairly unforgiving 3-speed English touring bikes. I loved it. Heavy duty exercise, lots of unsupervised time on the road for making out, group meals. My dream – never achieved – was to lead those trips.

Fifty years later, in the course of courting, I’ve been getting my wish. On a dare, a couple of years ago I signed up to help put on a multi-day bike ride in the Adirondack Mountains. I practiced and practiced until I could get up the steepest hill in Central Park without collapsing. (Of course, in the Adirondacks, most every hill was steeper and longer than those in Central Park.). Since then, I’ve been on a number of multi-day rides and I want to invite you along.

The following three rides – sponsored by non-profits --, in order of increasing difficulty,

Suze Rotolo, the girl depicted with him on the cover of Bob Dylan’s first album, has, 45 years later written her memories of their life together and of the early 60’s NYC folk scene. Although it has a publication date of May 13, it has been widely circulated (See for example, this post and this LA Times review and this Gawker Gawk .) The New York Times review is here with an excerpt here ; National Public Radio here. For Dylan fans or those with an unceasing yen for nostalgia, try these Dylan-Rotolo photos. It’s a good book about that time & place. I was there some (see last graph, below) and think her report catches well much of the flavor of the time. (Unlike, for example, “Positively 4th Street,” a book I found way too snarky.)

One of the great harms to Ms. Rotolo, I guess, of having been close to Dylan, is that he sucks the oxygen out of the room.

I am moved, perhaps too much, by the deaths and lives of people who were more or less of my parents' generation. Grace Paley, Ralph DiGia [I went to Ralph's send-off Saturday: Hundreds of friends, family, photos, food, booze, schmooze, (true?) stories. See some on his website.], blacklisted film-maker Jules Dassin (More about Dassin's remarkable life and work here), Spanish Civil War Veteran Abe Osheroff . (More about Osheroff here.)

In addition to feeling of loss, reports of the deaths of people in my own cohort bring also the sound of "time's winged chariot hurrying near." Hanon Reznikov,57, who died a few days ago, following a stroke in April, was a long-time co-director of TheLiving Theatre. A long-time lover of Judith Malina, he married her on the 1985 death her husband, Living Theatre co-founder Julian Beck. The May 9, NY Times obit is here (See also this obit , This story from the Villager about The Living Theatre's new home on Clinton Street, this interview with Reznikov and Judith Malina and this YouTube of the two of them.

In a city in which it is not a crime to shoot Sean Bell fifty times or Amadou Diallo 41 times, where black and Hispanic young men are stopped and frisked vastly in excess of their proportion of the population, it should not be a surprise that blacks & Hispanics are arrested for marijuana possession vastly more than whites (even though marijuana use is equal across ethnic groups). The surprise, as I see it, is that decent people don’t spit at Mayor Bloomberg and his police Commissioner. How often will NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Misinformation, Paul Browne, say things like the NYPD doesn’t engage in racial profiling without his nose growing from Police Plaza to City Hall? (I hate it when Mayor Bloomberg’s race policies make me write as though I were Al Sharpton.)

Rocco Parascandola of Newsday reports on a study released by the New York Civil Liberties Union:

The NYPD arrested more than 350,000 people for misdemeanor marijuana possession over the past decade -- a tenfold increase achieved by systematically targeting young black and Hispanic men and stopping them without cause, a report released Tuesday charges NYCLU,

The NYCLU press release, is here

Through dreary rain, late Monday afternoon, I dodged jammed Madison Avenue traffic to the Municipal Art Society office in exquisite remains of the Villard Mansion. There NYC’s Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan explained her strategic plan for “Sustainable Streets.” The wine flowed, the sushi, ginger & wasabi were fresh (even without soy sauce), the tabuli tangy, the tapinade, salty.

People packed shoulder to shoulder, making dancing to the swing trio impractical. Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler was there, as was NYPC Commissioner Ray Kelly (Kelly was so freshly dressed, so creased, so unwrinkled, so calm, he glowed. I’ll bet he didn’t cycle over.) The overwhelmingly white, suited crowd had a few cycling advocates mixed in: Transportation Alternatives’ Paul Steely White in his signature vest, Straphanger Gene Russianoff in cacki chinos, Karen Overton, formerly of Recycle-A Bicycle. But, for me the big news was who was missing: I saw no elected officials at all.

In the last short while, articles & news reports of outstanding brilliance have been published and disappeared from view. It’s happened to all of us – but don’t let it happen to these. Indeed, if you know of great stories sinking beneath the waves of sex and teen-age starlets, let's try to save them.

KGIA & Almontaser If you haven’t already, stop right now and read Pulitzer-winner Andrea Elliott’s brilliantly researched and written reportage on the Kahlil Gibran International Academy and its founding principal Debbie Almontaser It’s long, thoughtful, a must read. I have a ton of things to say about it but – in summary – wow! (Past Daily Gotham items on point here and here )

Pentagon Manipulated Iraq Coverage Of course, I believe that everything that Mr. Bush and his servants say about Iraq is a lie. They’ve lied about causes, they’ve lied about costs. But how about journalists and analysts? As it turns out, Mr. Bush has been turning them into Pentagon parrots.

At Council Member Gail Brewer's great UWS brownstone, there will be a give-what-you-can (but they need a lot) fund raiser for an organization I like: Students for a New American Politics. Consider coming. The text of your invitation is after the jump. Remember to RSVP.

I am, I think, naturally attracted to this benefit. As a former student activist myself, as the parent of one former college campaigner and one possible future one, I like the idea of helping to field students to staff progressive political congressional campaigns. Further, I think that, whoever is elected President, we will need a much more progressive Congress to move our agenda.

Student’s for a New American Politics raises money and dispatches activists to key campaigns.

In 2006, campaigns which got SNAP activist help included the following: Ben Cardin (D-MD), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) , Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Diane Farrell (D-CT) , Joe Courtney (D-CT) , Julia Carson (D-IN), Lois Murphy, (D-PA), Ned Lamont (D-CT), Nick Lampson (D-TX), Patricia Madrid (D-NM), Paul Hodes (D-NH), Scott Kleeb (D-NE), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

For 2008, they plan to place activists in the following campaigns: Tom Allen (D-ME), Darcy Burner (WA-08), Jim Himes (CT-04), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15), Tom Perriello (VA-05), Dan Seals (IL-10)