As a preface to this post, you might want to take a glance over a mostly complete but rather alleatory sampling of the books that I was assigned to read during my high-school English career, which occurred during the heady crest days of the feminist education movement in the 1990s.^[1] (Note to English teachers: I am not complaining about this lineup in the least; the English program at AHS is one of the best parts of the school. This is intended merely as a counterpoint to certain claims made in the article being discussed.)

So, then, what have we here? Yet another heaping helping of Christina Hoff Sommers from Salon. I swear to God there must be some kind of law requiring Salon to publish one sloppy lovefest for media creation antifeminist Christina Hoff Sommers once every year (2/5/2002, 3/9/2001, 6/21/2000).

And it’s the same old thing they’ve been insisting in the last three articles: feminist education efforts in the 1990s have somehow slighted boys’ aspirations to a good education, and now it’s time to start tilting the balance back the other way or somesuch nonsense. At hand is boys’ lower performance in verbal / literary subjects, compared with the narrowing of the advantage they once enjoyed in science and mathematics classes.

In this article, at least, the author allows voices other than Christina Hoff Sommers to speak (not the case in Befner’s regrettable Battle of the Celebrity Gender Theorists, an article allegedly about Jane Fonda and Carol Gilligan, which nevertheless consisted entirely of a sympathetic interview with Christina Hoff Sommers). However, it just so happens that Hoff Sommers and those who agree with her are given the last word in every case; allowed to skewer interpretations of data by Gilligan and other feminists, but given a free pass on truly bizarre statements.

This, for example, is reported without any comment from an opposing voice:

Our English classes are strongly feminized, even in boys schools, says Hoff Sommers. We want literature to make boys more sensitive. But I’m not sure that we need to invest in literature as a form of therapy.

This claim is not just contentious; it’s downright bizarre. Look over my reading list^[1] again and ask yourself how much it’s really feminized. The reading list is packed with literature of boys, by boys, and for boys. It used to be that learning from a reading list not very different from this one was expected to be part of the ritual of a boy growing up into manly adulthood in a civilized society.

She points out that a majority of English teachers still assign fiction in the classroom, while she believes that boys prefer nonfiction. (In the PISA study, girls and boys were asked to self-report on the kind of reading materials they preferred. Boys reported reading more comic books, Web pages and newspapers, while girls read more novels.)

Of course they primarily assign fiction. It’s an English literature class! If you want more nonfiction reading in schools, push to have more primary sources included in History, Science, Mathematics, etc. classes. That’s where it belongs. (And for God’s sake. Comic books? Please.)

Boys love adventure stories with male heroes, says Hoff Sommers. Many would love books by Stephen Ambrose and Tom Clancy. Since they are so far behind in reading, why not give them texts they enjoy? Some teachers are promoting political correctness at the expense of the basic literacy of their male students.

Hoff Sommers mistakenly assumes here that the reason for not including Tom Clancy pulp in the English class is because teachers are craven p.c. slaves. This is false. The reason Tom Clancy pulp is not included in English literature class is because it’s pulp fiction written on a third grade level. And no, encouraging Reading at all costs is not worth it–what in the world is developing an appreciation for Tom Clancy novels going to do for you, other than make you spend more money at the bestseller rack and get you a knowledge of military gadgetry? Similarly, boddice-rippers and Harlequin romance novels do not deserve to be, and are not, included in the English curriculum, either, even though they are intended for, and often written by, women.

My own son had to struggle through Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club when he was in the 10th grade, she adds. It has some attractive features, but it is full of annoying psychobabble about women and their self-esteem struggles. He disliked it. If teachers are going to assign books in popular literature, they should consider the needs and interests of boys.

Hoff Sommer’s vehemence about The Joy Luck Club makes it pretty clear that she just hates the book and is projecting her own feelings of distaste for it onto a generation of boys. If she hates the annoying psychobabble so much, then isn’t her real issue that it’s simply bad literature, not that it’s cutting against boys in particular?

Moreover, for Christ’s sake, in any English curriculum, there are going to be many books which you find absolutely dreadful and which bore you to tears. I, for example, was forced to wade through such dreary wank-a-thons as A Separate Peace and A Farewell to Arms. If the mere presence of some books you find boring is enough to turn you off to all literature, then you need to learn how to stop whining and get through to the next book.

Meanwhile, Tom Mortensen makes the astoundingly bad suggestion that

If I were teaching, says Mortenson, I would get boys out of the classroom. Take them to a swamp, dig through the muck, look for pollywogs. Then maybe take them back and have them look at pond water through slides and write up a lab report. They need hands-on activities. They get bored and distracted if you ask them to sit down and reading a chapter and writing up a paragraph — the kind of work that girls excel at.

Take them to a swamp? Dig through the muck? If I were subjected to this kind of treatment in school, I would have dropped out by fifth grade. You know what I love? Sedentary desk work. Reading a chapter and writing up a paragraph about it. Boring, dry textbooks. Who does he think he is teaching, the Lost Boys from Peter Pan? This is not a way to encourage serious education amongst boys; it’s a way to get a lot of boys goofing off and throwing mud at each other. Christ, man. Pollywogs?

(Furthermore, Mortensen’s proposal about how to change science education neglects the fact that boys are doing just fine in science education relative to girls. What hands-on activities does he propose we use to deal with disparities in literature? Take boys out to the moor to muck around and fetch wittles while they read Great Expectations?)

Meanwhile, Christina Hoff Sommers ridicules the perfectly reasonable hypothesis by Carol Gilligan that In American culture, says Gilligan, children learn to associate math and science with masculinity; knowledge of the human world and emotional lives are associated with femininity. Why should this be so surprising? It’s definitely true that English curricula are perceived as feminized. But this is not a matter of the reading list being somehow weighted heavily towards girl-power-chic titles, because, well, that’s crap. There is no such bias in English curricula. The issue, rather, is that in boy culture, reading literature and poetry is seen as a feminine activity, and it’s a good way to get yourself derided as a sissy, faggot,geek, dweeb, and otherwise un-manly boy. This, I think, is the only explanation that even remotely makes sense: why else would anyone think that, say, reading John Donne in English class is a feminized curriculum? And if this is the case, then jamming Tom Clancy pulp or comic books into the curriculum isn’t the way to solve the problem. The way to solve the problem is to address the boy culture nonsense which sees reading as girly, and sees being perceived as girly as a curse to be avoided.

Finally: let’s drop the crisis rhetoric, and let’s forget this nonsense about feminist educators being responsible for the situation. Why? Because the disparity in literature education has existed as long as the Department of Education has records, since 1969 (when the organized feminist movement barely existed in politics, let alone in education). The gap has not opened out or widened in the past 10 years; there is no new crisis of boys’ verbal / literary education from feminist educators in the 1990s. There’s merely a disparity which was there before and which has not been addressed yet.

But, of course, Salon has a long history of providing an uncritical platform for media-created anti-feminists including Christina Hoff Sommers, Cathy Young (a regular columnist), Camille Paglia, and Warren Farrell. I can’t put it better than Jennifer Pozner of FAIR did, in her letter to the editor of Salon (located at the bottom of the page):

After listing worthy topics from drug law imbalances to welfare policy to educational and workplace biases, Sweeney asks, Where is a feminist when you need one? On a beach somewhere, apparently … With all due respect, it is easy to find feminists working on those issues and a wide range of others if you look beyond what is represented in carping book reviews and academic arguments. But it is unsurprising that Sweeney or Salon readers in general might believe feminists missing in action: Salon provides a regular platform for anti-feminist pit bull Camille Paglia and feminist ankle-biter Cathy Young, but has no feminist columnists addressing the many ways in which women’s rights advocates are tackling violence against women, poverty, health care, child care, reproductive rights, media representation, workplace issues, sweatshops, trafficking in women and a host of other issues on a national and international stage (from a variety of sometimes opposing liberal, progressive and radical perspectives).

I couldn’t agree more with Sweeney’s assertion that neurotic rationalizing and self-conscious crowing is a profound waste of time in the face of the continued biases women (especially women of color and low-income women) face. To that end, I’d encourage Salon to publish fewer hit pieces on feminists, more articles about sexism in Life and in the news sections, and to balance columnists like Paglia, Young and Horowitz with a few progressive feminist writers like Molly Ivins, Laura Flanders, Katha Pollitt, Farai Chideya, Barbara Ehrenreich or Julianne Malveaux. Salon, which is often a valuable resource for perspectives not found elsewhere (Greg Palast’s election pieces were a great example), could benefit from broadening its approach to gender politics.

— Jennifer L. Pozner, Women’s Desk Director, FAIR

P.S.: While women are excelling boys at verbal and literary subjects, and now make up the majority of college students (college students being, in the majority, liberal arts students), engineering and science departments are still about 80-90% male, and men still make more money than women for equal work (the gap has widened in at least some fields, despite Salon’s claims to the contrary) and still make up the overwhelming majority of high-paid executives — whereas women still make up the overwhelming majority of low-wage service workers. So, something tells me that this educational crisis is perhaps not the biggest gender equity issue on the table right now.

For further reading:

• GT 2001/04/24: Salon, Cathy Young, and the Frilly Pink Mantle

• GT 2001/03/14: LTEs Challenge Salon’s Love Affair for Pop Anti-feminists

  Read the rest of The Weird, Wild World of Anti-feminism …

1. ^[1]Sidebar: An aleatory sampling of my high school reading list
   • The Odyssey (abridged) – male author, male protagonist
   • Great Expectations – male author, male protagonist
   • The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet – male author, male and female protagonists
   • Mutiny on the Bounty – male author, male protagonists
   • Animal Farm – male author, male protagonists
   • To Kill a Mockingbird – female author, female and male protagonists
   • A Separate Peace – male author, male protagonists, all male school, boy culture coming-of-age wank-a-thon
   • The Tragedy of Julius Caesar – male author, male protagonists
   • Oedipus the King – male author, male protagonists
   • Antigone – male author, female protagonist
   • Edith Hamilton’s Mythology – female author, but from all male sources, male protagonists
   • excerpts from Sundiata and Ramayana – male authors, male protagonists
   • One Hundred Years of Solitude – male author, mostly male protagonists
   • Ficciones – male author, male protagonists
   • The Lost Steps – male author, male protagonist
   • Ethan Frome – female author, male protagonist
   • A Farewell to Arms – male author, male protagonist, same old swaggering Hemingway crap
   • The Awakening – female author, female protagonist, proto-feminist
   • The Cherry Orchard – male author, male and female protagonists
   • The Great Gatsby – male author, male protagonist
   • Death in Venice – male author, male protagonist
   • A Streetcar Named Desire – male author, female protagonists
   • The Crucible – male author, male protagonist
   • Native Son – male author, male protagonist, overly apologetic for brutal violence against women
   • The Inferno – male author, male protagonist
   • The Taming of the Shrew – male author, male protagonist, ragingly misogynistic
   • Hamlet – male author, male protagonist
   • The Bachelor of Arts – male author, male protagonist
   • Heart of Darkness – male author, male protagonist
   • Pygmalion – male author, female protagonist
   • The Importance of Being Earnest – male author, male protagonist, strong female characters
   • Their Eyes Were Watching God – female author, female protagonist, proto-feminist
   • Things Fall Apart – male author, male protagonist
   • Bread and Wine – male author, male protagonist
   • The Metamorphosis – male author, male protagonist
   • Richard III – male author, male protagonist
   • Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead – male author, male protagonists
   • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – male author, male protagonist↩

Adriene Sere questions who is being silenced and who is doing the silencing in the debate over pro-sex within feminism and leftist media [Said It].

I ran across an interesting article by Libertarian feminist Joan Kennedy Taylor (whose articles I have often admired) today giving a critical view on why so few women are involved in the Libertarian movement, citing many Libertarians’ reflexive antifeminism and the movement’s marginalization of women’s issues, as well as hostility by Libertarian men when criticized on these grounds. She advocates that Libertarians work with and try to reach out to mainstream liberal feminists. Well, I think she errs in defining radical feminists as the enemy – I think that radical feminists (especially those that are, well, anarchists/anarcha-feminists) are by and large going to be far more amenable to the argument that male-dominated government is hostile to women’s interest, than the average liberal feminist is going to be. Unfortunately, for the time being, even self-proclaimed Libertarian feminist groups (such as Wendy McElroy’s ifeminists online community) remain mostly oppositional in nature: they set themselves up as Libertarian feminists and then spend most of their time criticizing other feminists for not being Libertarian enough—rather than forging more respectful alliances between Libertarians and feminists. I hope that Joan Kennedy Taylor’s article may be the first step in the right direction towards that goal.

To my deep sorrow, I learned that Dr. Sharon Presley died last week on October 31, at the age of 79. Sharon was a lifelong libertarian and feminist activist, writer and lecturer, the author of Government Is Women’s Enemy and numerous other essays and books, a member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, co-founder of Laissez-Faire Books, co-founder and long-time coordinator for the Association of Libertarian Feminists (ALF), co-editor of Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre, and author of many articles on de Cleyre, Suzanne LaFollette and the individualist feminist tradition. I will miss her thought and her voice immensely. My deepest sorrow and condolences to everyone who knew her and loved her.

Shared Article from Notablog

Sharon Presley (1943-2022), RIP

My dear friend, Ellen Young, announced today that Sharon Presley, lifelong libertarian feminist writer and activist, died on Monday, October 31, 2022,…

Chris Matthew Sciabarra @ notablog.net

Since my article on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Walmart, and alt-labor is appearing this morning at Reason.com, a fair number of y’all passing by may be readers who are more or less new to the blog.

Shared Article from Reason.com

Free-Market Labor Wins Wage-Boost Victory

Economic liberty shouldn't simply assume a pro-business stance, or discuss only the privileges government extends to unions.

Charles Johnson @ reason.com

So–welcome! I’m Charles W. Johnson; often, I write online under the handle Rad Geek. (Not because I’m trying to hide who I am, but because it suits me, and because sometimes it helps me avoid being confused with some folks I am not.) I’m an individualist anarchist, living in Alabama. I write this blog, I co-edited (together with Gary Chartier) the left-wing market anarchist anthology, Markets Not Capitalism (Minor Compositions/Autonomedia: 2011). I write occasional columns for libertarian and anarchist outlets including The Freeman, Reason.com, Free Voices, and The Industrial Radical. I publish a lot of small-press anarchist and left-libertarian literature through the Distro of the Libertarian Left. If you’re new to the blog here, and trying to get oriented, here’s some things you might find interesting to read, which will give you some broad idea of where I’m coming from, and what I care about.

I’ve written a lot over the years about the C.I.W., both basic event coverage of some of their main campaigns, and also a fair amount of my own commentary on what I take to be the significance of their use of social protest and state-free, market-based methods in their activism.^[1] If you’ve come here from the article and you want to read more about the C.I.W. or the context of its campaigns, I have some links, both to my own writing and also to a number of other sources that I consulted while preparing the column on the recent Walmart victory. Those are at the bottom of the post, though, so feel free to scroll right down past the following, which is mostly just orientation on me and where I’m coming from.

Speaking generally, I am a market anarchist: I am radically opposed to any invasion of economic liberty and to the state as such, and I am in favor of freed markets, free exchange, voluntary association, open competition and individual ownership of property. But, unlike many pro-capitalist libertarians, I argue that one of the likely and important features of freed markets is their tendency to cut against socioeconomic inequalities, to provide a space for economic alternatives to status-quo corporate capitalism, and to undermine and replace traditional top-down firms or employer-employee relationships. The kind of things I believe are often called free market anticapitalism or left-wing market anarchism. For more on what I mean by all that, and why I believe it:

• Pigs as a Paradigm (17 August 2013) and We Know Other Marketplaces (20 August 2013)

• Mutual Markets vs. Corporate Capitalism: A Formulation (10 October 2010)

• Introduction to Markets Not Capitalism (14 October 2011)

• Bits & Pieces on Free Market Anti-Capitalism (May 2010)

• Writing about the C.I.W.’s boycotts, and responding to some common, but I think misguided, objections from fellow libertarians, actually played a major role in clarifying these issues for me; see, in particular, my discussion with Dan D’Amico and Art Carden in ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! (23 March 2005) and in Anarquistas por La Causa (31 March 2005).

I also think that rambunctious nonviolent social activism, worker-owned enterprises and radical labor unions, based on voluntary association without government privilege, and an anti-authoritarian culture of worker solidarity, are all an important part of a flourishing free market.

• On free-market unionism, in general, Free the Unions (and all political prisoners)! (1 May 2004)

• And also In reply to a reply by J.H. Huebert and Walter Block

• On free-market social and economic activism generally, We Are Market Forces (12 June 2009)

• Toward a Really Social Safety Net (23 March 2013)

• I’m against Civil Rights Acts because I’m for Civil Rights Movements, in The Freeman (September 2010) on direct action and anti-racist activism

• Radical healthcare reform (25 October 2007) and Universal health care does not mean government health care (28 May 2012), on corporate healthcare and grassroots alternatives

Since Walmart is at the center of the story, I should say that, while I am immensely pleased to see Walmart signing an agreement for the Fair Food Program, I think that many of the common criticisms of Walmart’s business model, exploitative labor practices, and economic dominance are justified, and that I would be quite happy in general to see Walmart constantly confronted and challenged with some really vigorous and uncompromising competition, social criticism and alt-labor organizing and activism. I say this not because I object to business, or to low prices, or whatever, but because I object to highly centralized state-capitalist business models that depend on, and heavily exploit, corporate welfare, eminent domain, and other favors from corporatist local governments.

• Écrasez l’Wal-Mart (2 May 2005)

• Three notes for the critics of the critics of apologists for Wal-Mart (25 April 2009)

• Enclosure comes to Los Angeles (14 June 2006)

More broadly, much of my writing on economic questions aims to focus attention on the relationship between the economic privileges granted by the State, class, poverty, and corporate power.

• Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty As We Know It, in The Freeman (December 2007)

• Trickle-Down Politics: The Only Good Government Is No Government, in The Freeman (23 August 2010)

• On crutches and crowbars (6 March 2008), on why left-libertarian views on economic privilege and labor do not imply any compromise or gradualism on the abolition of all statist controls, including regulations that supposedly help workers.

I am an Anarchist. I don’t care about smaller government, or limited government, or about Constitutions, or about electing libertarian candidates to political office. I am the farthest thing possible from a conservative. I believe in abolishing the State as such, and in doing so through the practice of education, solidarity, and direct action.

• GT 2010-03-02: Liberty, Equality, Solidarity discusses at length why I am an anarchist, and why I think that limited government is actually an incoherent and destructive goal for libertarians to adopt.

• GT 2008-01-25: Take the A-Train discusses why I think that market anarchists should make their primary political alliances with other anarchists, not with Constitutionalists or minimal-statists.

• GT 2008-01-26: In which I fail to be reassured

• GT 2009-02-07: Counter-economic optimism

• GT 2008-09-17: The statist We don’t, GT 2005-09-17: International Ignore the Constitution Day, and GT 2007-12-28: A Higher Law Than the Constitution explain why I'm not a Constitutionalist, and why I think appeals to the paper Constitution are either useless or harmful struggles for liberty and peace.

• GT 2009-04-04: The State of the Debate, GT 2008-02-25: I am shocked!–shocked!–to find that politics is going on in here! and GT 2008-09-10: The Stupid Campaign Season Distraction and GT 2013-08-17: Direction of Fit (Progressive President Edition) discuss problems with electoral politics, as a strategy, that I take to be built in to the structure of partisan elections.

• GT 2013-12-23: The Age of Bronze, on why conservative nostalgia for the old America is a pure fantasy of social privilege.

As an Anarchist, and as a human being, I am utterly and irreconcilably opposed to all forms of government warfare.

• GT 2009-01-25: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? and GT 2011-05-04: Military targets discuss the wars inflicted on the world under our current Progressive Peace President.

• GT 2005-08-09: A day that will live in infamy, GT 2007-12-26: Bomb after bomb, and GT 2009-01-05: In which commentary becomes copy-and-paste explain some of the reasons why I’m not just opposed to The War here and now, but in fact condemn all government wars, on principle, and in all nations and all ages. I don’t believe in good wars and bad wars; in fact, I think that the wars people tend to be most invested in passing off as good wars — wars like World War II or the American Civil War — are typically the worst, most ghastly wars in recorded history.

I believe that the nationalistic violence of the warfare State is closely linked with the paramilitary patrols, police state, and nationalistic violence of government border controls — which are nothing other than international apartheid. See for example:

• GT 2008-05-14: Voyage of the S.S. St. Louis (on the use of government border laws against war refugees)
• GT 2008-01-31: Bordercrats Against Joy and Plenty (on government border controls in the perpetual military siege of Gaza)
• GT 2007-11-12: Sin Fronteras

I also believe that the violence of the U.S. government’s imperial military abroad is closely linked with the repressive violence of (increasingly militarized) paramilitary police forces within the U.S. See for example:

• GT 2013-08-08: By the book
• GT 2008-09-25: How cops see themselves
• GT 2008-09-19: No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter…. (#6)
• GT 2008-05-10: Cops are here to protect you (#3)
• GT 2010-01-23: Siege mentality

And as a feminist I think that the violence of men’s wars and of men’s law enforcement are closely linked with the violent ideals of masculinity and patriarchy that men are brought up with in our society. For more, see:

• GT 2006-07-31: War and Manhood
• GT 2009-08-24: Rapists on patrol (#6) / Men in Uniform (#4)
• GT 2008-05-16: Women and the Invisible Fist
• Charles Johnson and Roderick Long (2005): Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved?

I’m against all forms of Intellectual Property restrictions, which represent not genuine forms of property, but a grant of monopoly privileges over the minds of other people — which I view both as tyrannical in themselves and also as immensely, lethally destructive in the effects of the coercive monopolies that they grant:

• Anticopyright (6 February 2013)

• GT 2005-07-06: Libertarians for Protectionism

• GT 2003-02-13: Patents kill, part III

Thanks for coming on down; I hope you stay a while, do some reading, and enjoy the blog. So, come, let us Reason together . . . .

Further reading on C.I.W., the Fair Food Program and Alt-Labor

As I mentioned, I’ve been following the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Program for over a decade now. Here are some other articles that I’ve written on C.I.W.:

• GT 2001-08-30: ¡Sí se puede!, on the Taco Bell boycott, and the UFW’s endorsement of CIW’s campaign
• GT 2005-03-23: ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!, on CIW’s victory in the Taco Bell boycott, the non-state methods of the CIW, and a response to misguided attacks by Dan D’Amico and Art Carden
• GT 2005-03-31: Anarquistas por La Causa, more exchange with Dan D’Amico on labor organizing, capitalism, and free markets.
• GT 2007-04-19: The CIW wins a groundbreaking wages and conditions agreement with McDonalds
• GT 2007-11-30: Coalition of Immokalee Workers marches in Miami
• GT 2007-12-06: Solidaridad
• GT 2008-05-23: Victory for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in the Burger King penny-per-pound campaign
• GT 2008-05-27: Even better than I thought: victory for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers against the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, too
• GT 2008-07-03: ¡Chipotle, escucha: estamos en la lucha!
• GT 2008-09-08: Slavery in Florida’s tomato fields
• GT 2008-09-10: Coalition of Immokalee Workers announces another victory in penny-per-pound agreement with Whole Foods
• GT 2008-12-02: Victory to the farmworkers! Coalition of Immokalee Workers announces that Subway has signed on to the penny-per-pound pass-through agreement
• GT 2012-10-19: Coalition of Immokalee Workers victory in Denver; struggle in Miami

And here are a bunch of things that other people have written, which I consulted at some point or another recently while preparing my column, and which you might find useful as elaboration, context or backdrop about C.I.W., the Fair Food campaign and the creative activism used to win it, or the development and direction of alt-labor groups in general.

• C.I.W., BREAKING NEWS: Walmart joins CIW’s Fair Food Program! (16 January 2014), original release from Coalition of Immokalee Workers about the agreement.
• C.I.W., American history happens in a watermelon shed… (January 20, 2014). ciw-online.org. Press round-up of reaction to the C.I.W.’s winning an agreement from Walmart.
• Associated Press, Wal-Mart joins initiative on farmworker pay in Fla (January 16, 2014). Washington Post.
• Bernice Young, Wal-Mart signs deal with farmworker program that fights harassment (January 16, 2014). The Center for Investigative Reporting. Report focusing on the code of conduct included in Fair Food Program certification, and especially its efforts to address problems of sexual harassment and rape in the fields.
• Willy Blackmore, Here’s Why Florida Farmworkers Are Thrilled About Walmart’s Extra Pennies (January 17, 2014). takepart.
• Barry Estabrook, Labor Takes Historic Stride Forward as Walmart Joins Fair Food Program (January 17, 2014). CivilEats.com.
• Katrina vanden Heuvel, Sweet Victory: Coalition of Immokalee Workers Wins (23 May 2008), an analysis from back when C.I.W. won an agreement from Burger King, including some interesting discussion by Eric Schlosser on the C.I.W.’s strategy of deliberately avoiding governmental or political mechanisms, in favor of market action.
• Fair Food Standards Council: Fair Food Program Report 2011-2013 (20 November 2013). 62pp detailed glossy PDF report with facts, figures, testimonials, and descriptions about the first two years of the full implementation of the Fair Food Program in Florida, how the program works, the amount of money passed through to workers in the first 3 years, the new code of conduct policies, etc.
• C.I.W.: PUBLIX, news on C.I.W.’s ongoing picket and protest campaign to convince the Publix grocery store chain to join the Fair Food Program.
• C.I.W. (video interview), Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) talks about Radio Conciencia (20 November 2012). YouTube. A nice interview about one of their ongoing community projects, a low-power FM station for community news and discussion, based in Immokalee. More about the low-power FM station at ciw-online, Radio Anniversary Report (9 December 2002), ciw-online.
• C.I.W., Community Center News (10 May 2009). ciw-online.org. Another community program, the community center that C.I.W. has built in Immokalee.
• Josh Eidelson, Alt-labor (29 January 2013). The American Prospect.
• Josh Eidelson, Who Should Fund Alt-Labor? (17 July 2013), The Nation.
• J. D. Tuccille, Organized Labor Discovers the Joys of Voluntary Association (16 October 2013), Reason.com.
• Robert VerBruggen, Why Conservatives Should Love Alt-Labor (16 October 2013), RealClearPolicy, and Reihan Salam, The Virtues of Alt-Labor (October 16, 2013), National Review. A couple of conservative views in favor of alt-labor, or at least the shift towards alt-labor and away from NLRB unionism.
• F. Vincent Vernuccio, Attack of the UFOs (4 September 2013), Capital Research Center, and WorkerCenters.com: Labor’s Loophole. A couple of fairly comical conservative attacks on alt-labor, in which conservative pro-business lobbies stick up for limited government and free enterprise by moaning about loopholes in the labor law, and asking Congress to pass more rigorous labor regulations so that the NLRB can intervene more often in labor disputes.
• WorkerCenters.com: Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Worker Center Watch: Coalition of Immokalee Workers, much the same, focused on the grave evils of the C.I.W., in particular, operating through unregulated market processes.
• Rural Migration News, Florida and NC: FLOC and CIW Boycotts (July 2010). Rural Migration News. Analysis of secondary boycott strategies by farmworkers’ groups, including CIW.
• OUR Walmart, OUR Walmart, Supply Chain and Warehouse Workers Renew Calls for Improving Jobs At Walmart (January 16, 2014). OUR Walmart, an alt-labor group which has been using pickets and high-profile walk-outs to organize associates on Walmart shopfloors, takes notice of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ win, and says that it intends to keep up its own pressure on Walmart for improved pay and conditions for employees working within Walmart retail shops, in spite of Walmart’s large-scale retaliatory firings.

1. ^[1]Full disclosure: besides having written frequently about the C.I.W., many years ago I was also indirectly involved in setting up an organizing workshop for C.I.W. that led to an impromptu radical cheerleading picket at our local Taco Bell in Auburn.↩