Today's Liberal News

Black-owned distillery embraces its workers’ union, this week in the war on workers

When workers at Du Nord Craft Spirits decided to form a union, joining UNITE HERE Local 17, the company voluntarily recognized them without any delay and in fact publicized the occasion itself. Du Nord bills itself as the first Black-owned distillery in the United States.

“The production staff of Du Nord Craft Spirits chose to form a union because we enjoy and appreciate working here,” the workers said in a statement to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

The Real Problem With Globalization

Few ideas today are more unfashionable than globalization. Across the ideological spectrum, a once-robust consensus about the liberating power of free trade and financial markets has transformed into the conviction that the world has spun out of control. Economic inequality is rising in developing and developed countries alike. Hopes for a global human-rights awakening have given way to frank assessments of the persistence of slave labor and extreme poverty.

Modern China’s First Diplomats

When Chinese diplomats arrived in New York in 1971, they might as well have landed on another planet.The United Nations had just transferred China’s seat at the global body from Taipei to Beijing, a momentous step. Yet what first struck many of these new arrivals were the colors. On clothing, in shop fronts, and on neon signs, they saw a world that seemed physically and even morally jarring compared with the monochrome uniformity of home.

Heated NYC Mayoral Primary Race Enters Final Days; City Uses Ranked-Choice Voting for First Time

Early voting is underway in a historic New York City Democratic primary election for mayor, 35 City Council seats and several other key races. For the first time in almost a century, New Yorkers will use ranked-choice voting, which allows them to choose up to five candidates in order of preference in each race. In the mayor’s race, Brooklyn borough president and former New York police officer Eric Adams has led recent polls, while businessman Andrew Yang seems to be falling behind.

What pandemic-inspired changes to your life aren’t going away even if or when COVID-19 does?

For all the talk of “post-COVID life” or anything like it, the coronavirus pandemic remains very much with us. Talk of its end is premature. But we do know something about how our lives have already changed, and maybe a sense of what new or continuing changes we can plan for once the pandemic is really over.

That can be enormous or tiny. Too many of us have been very sick, or have lost loved ones, or both.