Amy Dean

Amy Dean is co-author, with David Reynolds, of "A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement". She worked for nearly two decades in the labor movement and now works to develop new and innovative organizing strategies for social change organizations in progressive, labor, and faith communities. You can follow Amy on Twitter at @amybdean, or she can be reached via the Web site, www.amybdean.com.
Articles by this author
Views Friday, October 11, 2013 How Domestic Workers Won Their Rights: Five Big Lessons Domestic workers have had some breakthrough wins over the past two weeks. Up until then, these workers were excluded from protections such as a guaranteed minimum wage, paid breaks, and overtime pay. Read more |
|
Views Monday, September 02, 2013 Alt-Labor Day, 2013 Fast food workers in dozens of cities staged a national day of strikes on Thursday, August 29. The action sought to galvanize public support for a living wage of $15 per hour, and respect for fast food workers' right to organize. Read more |
|
Views Thursday, August 01, 2013 Are Street Protests Next in the Fight Over Education Reform? “As it stands now, if nothing changes, the schools are going to have to open without any adults in the large spaces where kids gather,” predicted Philadelphia public schools parent Michael Mullins in late June. Read more |
|
Views Tuesday, January 29, 2013 Immigration Reform Must Include Workers' Rights At this moment, various plans to reform America's broken immigration system are working their way through Congressional debate. On Monday, a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers unveiled a plan that includes what they call a "tough but fair" path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Read more |
|
Views Thursday, November 22, 2012 Help Obama Find His Shoes President Barack Obama’s re-election is a huge relief—we dodged the Romney/Ryan bullet. Read more |
|
Views Saturday, October 27, 2012 Lesson From Chicago: We Need Resources and Accountability to Avoid a Two-Tiered Education System The Chicago teachers' strike may be over, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel may have replaced the Chicago schools CEO, but the underlying issues that caused the rift between teachers and public schools officials haven't gone away. Because our education system is such a vital public asset, we cannot resolve these issues in the context of a crisis. Read more |
|
Views Saturday, September 01, 2012 Should Labor Boycott Charlotte? The Democratic National Convention is less than a week away, and liberals are getting fired up. But at least one of the party's key constituencies isn’t quite so excited. Read more |
|
Views Friday, December 23, 2011 OWS: A Protest Against a Broken Economic Compact During the early months when Occupy Wall Street maintained tent cities in lower Manhattan and other metropolitan areas around the country, the occupations attracted an array of young counter-culturalists and itinerant radicals. To many people seeing the images of the encampments on the news, it looked like a motley assembly, not something out of the American mainstream. Read more |
|
Views Friday, October 28, 2011 Occupy Wall Street and America’s Democratic Tradition I was recently talking with some friends who work at the Chicago Board of Trade. Hearing the opinions voiced by Occupy Wall Street protesters, the traders agreed that they’d seen disturbing changes within their industry. While they might have written off criticisms 15 years ago, they’ve since watched the financial sector become more and more based on speculative gambling—with people trying to make profits by moving money around rather than by supporting real economic activity. To a surprising degree, my friends were willing to consent that the system has grown bankrupt. Read more |
|
Views Thursday, August 11, 2011 What’s the Real Lesson of Wisconsin for Progressives? Despite coming up short of retaking control of the Wisconsin Senate, yesterday's recall elections sent a clear signal to conservative politicians who are using false pretenses to slash social safety nets, scapegoat public employees and immigrants, and take away the rights of working people. The message: Beware. The public will no longer accept your abuses of power. Read more |