Stories by Liza Featherstone
Liza Featherstone is a New York City-based journalist. She is the author, most recently, of "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart" (Basic).
SEIU President Andy Stern heads one of the strongest unions in the country, yet he's stood on stage to campaign with anti-union CEOs like Wal-Mart's Lee Scott. Why is he so cozy with corporations?
Posted on Jul 2, 2007
When you pay $4 for a cup of coffee-flavored foamy milk at Starbucks, part of what you're buying is an illusion of environmental responsibility. How they treat their workers is a different story.
Posted on May 21, 2007
Wal-Mart wants to bring organic food to the masses, but the retail giant's aggressive ways could end up doing more harm than good.
Posted on Sep 1, 2006
The mega-retailer has announced a slew of environmentally friendly policies. Is this an honest attempt at change or just more greenwashing from the Biggest Box of Them All?
Posted on Nov 30, 2005
An investigation into the Walton family's charitable donations shows a pattern of giving that appears intended to support the best interest of Wal-Mart.
Posted on Nov 6, 2005
After Katrina, Wal-Mart sent truckloads of water and emergency supplies. A business capable of operating so humanely should do so every day -- not just in a disaster.
Posted on Sep 16, 2005
Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be poultry processors -- or any of the other dangerous, difficult, smelly, low-paying jobs on this list.
Posted on Sep 13, 2005
Katrina has exposed decades of benign neglect, racism, and environmental injustice that can't be prettified with crawfish étouffé.
Posted on Sep 12, 2005
The Bush administration's new environmental justice plan ignores the fact that racial minorities are more affected by environmental problems -- like pollution-related asthma -- than others.
Posted on Aug 2, 2005
Wal-Mart continues to keep Plan B, the "morning-after pill," off its shelves. The megastore's policy, catering to its rural base, complicates its pursuit of new markets.
Posted on Jun 30, 2005
If Wal-Mart doesn't want to provide decent health insurance for its workers, maybe the company should lobby for national health insurance.
Posted on May 26, 2005
Padding opponents' bank accounts and exploiting racial tensions are among Wal-Mart's new and improved tactics; but they wouldn't work if communities didn't have tensions to exploit.
Posted on Mar 16, 2005
To effectively battle corporate criminals like Wal-Mart, the public must be engaged as citizens, not merely as shoppers.
Posted on Dec 22, 2004
Wal-Mart has profoundly altered labor politics, deploying ever more creative and ruthless tactics to suppress the right to organize while driving down wages and benefits in the retail industry and beyond.
Posted on Jun 17, 2004
Despite police blockades, New York City on Saturday was one enormous, intoxicating, unpredictable protest march drawing well over one million people to the streets.
Posted on Feb 16, 2003
Code Pink is riding a clever new wave of creative and memorable feminist antiwar activism.
Posted on Feb 14, 2003
Wal-Mart's business practices may be leading to a new kind of globally sanctioned gender discrimination.
Posted on Dec 3, 2002
The UFCW's Day of Action against Wal-Mart shone a spotlight on the company's unfair labor practices and union-busting ways.
Posted on Nov 22, 2002
A nascent U.S. peace movement has been gathering momentum, as activists make an effort to transcend their divisions and reach mainstream Americans.
Posted on Oct 11, 2002
2,000 welfare recipients and supporters gathered in the nation's capital on Tuesday, for a rally sponsored by the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support.
Posted on Mar 11, 2002
How can women's magazines run scrupulously reported and fact-checked articles on such subjects as breast cancer and women in Afghanistan, but tell complete lies in articles about sex?
Posted on Mar 4, 2002
Demonstrators gathered at points across the globe to protest the bombing of Afghanistan. 20,000 in London, 15,000 in Berlin, 10,000 in San Francisco...
Posted on Oct 19, 2001
Many students are used to being repeatedly shut down in their efforts. But many are finding, after years of effort to organize, that they are finally being listened to on a national scale. In this article, Liza Featherstone points to the recent Sodexho Marriott boycotts, the Students Against Sweatshops, the newly formed Worker Rights Consortium, and other significant steps in student-led fights for equality. Featherstone also suggests a need for more activism that links global concerns with class and race issues here at home.
Posted on Oct 24, 2000
Liza Featherstone, a journalist tuned it to youth issues, shows how "college students are increasingly engaged in well-organized, thoughtful and morally outraged resistance to corporate power." In this essay, she traces the evolution of these student groups and exposes the corporatization of U.S. colleges.
Posted on Oct 17, 2000
In an effort to push corporations out of universities and to fight for workers' rights, students from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin have come together to create a nationwide movement.
Posted on May 8, 2000
Trying to seduce as many underage girls as possible, corporate publishing has adopted the buzzword "real" as its come-on of the moment. Rightly sensing that there is a vacuum in the teen magazine market -- the fastest-growing segment of the population has, like, nothing to read -- publishers have dreamed up Jump, Teen People, Twist and Glossy. But how much "realer" is this new crop?
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
Author Norman Solomon takes a serious look at "Dilbert," arguing that the cartoon is really on the side of big corporations, and is relentlessly contemptuous of workers, if not resigned to the status quo. Does Solomon miss the joke, or is Dilbert bad news for the rank-and-file?
A Q&A with Solomon accompanies the article.
Posted on Apr 26, 2000
