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Where energy, grit, creativity, resiliency, and solidarity came together for three (3) solid, pulsating days…

Labor Notes is the forty-five (45) year-young, dynamic media and organizing project serving frontline union activists and agitators – self-described troublemakers committed to infusing the movement back into the labor movement. Through the deployment of a news magazine, website, books, pamphlets, conferences, and workshops, Labor Notes promotes and supports aggressive strategies to confront employers, build labor-community solidarity, and cultivate bottom-up, member-driven unions.

Within the context of a labor movement more popular today than at any time since 1965 (68% approval in 2025, see: https://news.gallup.com/poll/12751/labor-unions.aspx), but also a worker organizing crusade more besieged than at any time since the Reagan years, with lower wages, declining job security, and weak or non-existent benefits packages.
So, following an evening of late-night carousing, what would be the turnout at our Sunday 9am workshop: “Fighting for Good Healthcare for Working People”? Fifty-three (53) worker-organizers packed our 50-seat room, ready to engage, share, and prepare for battle. Blew. Us. Away.

My presentation partner, former United Electrical Worker president Carl Rosen, did an incredible job leading off with reality-check facts about rising healthcare premiums being passed on to workers in contract bargaining, in addition to increased out-of-pocket payments for deductibles, co-payments, surprise bills, and hidden “taxes” (auto insurance premiums, workman’s comp, property taxes, emergency transport, etc.), plus skyrocketing pharmaceutical prices, out-of-network restrictions, medical care denials, employment-based insurance “job lock,” shifting provider networks, and the boss’s go-to threat to cut off, or actual cessation of, health insurance coverage as punishment for worker strikes.

Bottom line: employment-based health insurance is a drag on workers’ pockets (whether union or non-union), workplace power, work and social mobility, community cohesion, state and national economies, and the labor movement itself.
My part-2 job, as an AFT Local 9608 member and president of One Payer States (OPS), was to define the healthcare solution for all but the Medical Industrial Complex’s (MIC) “Four Horsemen from Hell” (Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Hospitals, Big Medical Device and Supply Manufacturers) and their anti-worker owner-management class allies, especially in non-MIC big industries: national expanded-and-improved Medicare for All (MFA+).

I then updated folks on the tremendous progress being on MFA+ at the state and regional levels, where several states (CA, CO, ME, NY, OR, WA, to name a few) are poised to legislate and implement universal healthcare systems in the next few years – state-based demonstration programs to prove the lower cost, administratively efficient, patient-centered, life enhancing, and job-generating outcomes on the way to national expanded-and-improved Medicare for All. Put another way, think of OPS’ 50-state campaign goal as achieving national MFA+ through the states.

For part-3, Carl then pivoted and talked about workers and unions using the leverage of contract negotiations to improve healthcare benefits and as an instrument to test the boss’s stated concern about worker health – which it rarely is! – with a firm and specific request that they publicly endorse state and national universal healthcare bill. This two-prong strategy, in addition to the continued job of educating co-workers and neighbors to increase advocacy pressure on state and national legislators to pass one-payer/single-payer/MFA+ legislation, more effectively uses the most potent tool workers possess: workplace power.

Finally, my part-4 portion of our presentation leaned into the discussion of a comprehensive economic strategy to win healthcare and health justice for all. Transformative Justice for All. As with several previous articles here on OpEd News, I referred to the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA) project to build a secure, web-based infrastructure to connect and coordinate the collective power of all justice organizations and individuals in pursuit of universal justice, across-the-board. I laid out the argument that our shared vision and values, tools and skills training, bolstered by a unified strategic vision and workable plan, executed with discipline and purpose, offers all of us the best chance of lifting the labor movement and all economic and social justice campaigns to victory after victory after victory.
More than half of the worker-organizers in the room signed up to engage with the AJA infrastructure and strategy project. With off-the-charts Labor Notes recruitment coming on the heels of the powerful Netroots Nation connecting the previous week and now, the international, anti-fascist Global Resistance (which I’ll report on next week) networking going extremely well this weekend (18-21 June), the AJA and OPS campaigns are hitting full stride.

As always, radical hope, eyes wide open, strategy forward,

Chuck

P.S. Special thanks to labor organizing comrades Peter Olney (ILWU), Peter Knowlton (UE), Dan DiMaggio (Labor Notes), Mark Dudzik (LC4SP), Rose Roach (LC4SP) and, of course, Carl Rosen (UE), for their extraordinary help in supporting the creation and launch of this incredible panel.

This being the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it was only appropriate that the 21y.o. Netroots Nation (shorthand for ‘Internet Grassroots Nation’) came back to Philly, the cradle of our republic’s birth in 1776.

The conference, unsurprisingly, had a mixed vibe and a mixed message, which accurately reflects the angst, hope, fear, strategic, non-strategic, connectedness and disconnectedness so many of us have witnessed and experienced, inside and outside our economic and social justice organizations over the last seventeen months of Trumpism/Fascism 2.0, in particular, with accumulated frustrations (win some wins) over the preceding decades.

Indeed, the flood-the-zone, Steve Bannon-inspired, “Firehose Fascism” has sent, organizers, leaders and builders in one, two, or both directions simultaneously:

1.        Looking inward, anxious, and scrambling for resources – mostly competitive, territorial, tactical, and uncreative;

2.        Looking outward, hopeful, and sharing limited resources – mostly collaborative, cooperative, strategic, and creative.

My unscientific study, based on clipped and extensive conversations with three dozen builders, leaders and staffers, found 67% leaning into #1 (angst-ridden and stuck in conventional thinking), with a distinct but significant minority, roughly 33%, aligning with #2 (open, intentionally listening, connecting, and practicing unconventional politics).

However, after sharing with everyone the good news of the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA) project – a secure, on-line utility for social justice organizations to plan, build and execute strategic campaigns together – the negative number flipped from 33% to 67% and the 67% number jumped to 92%. Hearing about the rapid development of AJA – a visionary, connective infrastructure that has never, previously existed on the left – at least not since the Civil Rights/Second Reconstruction Era (1954-1968) – progressive anxiety quickly turns into relief, and hope converts into action. Bottom line: we now have a growing list of new partners, across most sectors, in the ‘justice for all,’ anti-fascist, and pro-democracy fight.

Full disclosure: I’ve been working with Rob Kall on the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA) project, with input from several seasoned thinkers and strategists, since January 20, 2025, the day  47 (Trumpism/Fascism 2.0) was sworn in as POTUS, the Epstein-Billionaire class collectively beat their chests at the inaugural, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 went full throttle.

I now write to you from the Chicago-based Labor Notes convention, where I’m courting a far-more-energized, unified, and radically hopeful (with eyes wide open) gathering of workers, organizers, and builders to become partners with the visionary, strategic, and infrastructure-connecting AJA project. When I explained the vision, mission, and purpose of AJA to one of the Chicago-based labor organizers, she asked: “Did God send you?”

I am also flying the flag for my longer-standing One Payer States (.org) affiliation of seventeen (17) years, where we champion the concept of ‘Universal/One-payer/Single-payer/Medicare for All healthcare through the STATES: a 50-state strategy intent on launching MFA+ bills in every state and every territory in the U.S. orbit.

So, it is here, at the bi-annual Labor Notes conference in the Windy City, where I will co-present “Fighting for Good Health Care for Working People” with my new friend and partner, former United Electrical Workers president Carl Rosen, Sunday at 9am Central Time. Thinking good thoughts, strategic thoughts, intersectional and winning thoughts at a time of crisis and opportunity.  

(Looking forward: I will file a separate report following Labor Notes, going deeper into the workplace-leveraging strategy to expose the boss’s hypocrisy on healthcare benefits in contract negotiations – hint: the boss does not care about their workers! – and the deepening crisis in public healthcare via draconian cuts in Medicaid and Medicare from last year’s passage of HR1. To the positive, the passage of state-based universal healthcare models will fuel the adoption of national Medicare for All in the next few years. The net effect will be multifold: first, it will supercharge economic growth and workplace benefits for all workers, union and non-union; second, it will generate high-paying jobs with underserved and under-valued healthcare professions [primary docs, nurses, dentists, etc.]; and it will help lift communities, and all intersectional “health justice” issues, from housing to climate to global peace, as values and resources shift to human needs and away from Billionaire-Epstein greed and destruction.) 

Subject: Urgent Call to Override the Mayor’s Veto and Pass the FAAR Act into Law

March 30, 2026

Dear Honorable Councilmember,

Thank you for your March 3 vote to pass the Full Accountability in Arrest Reporting (FAAR) Emergency Amendment Act of 2026. DC residents need and deserve absolute transparency in the actions of federal agents operating in our communities. Therefore, as a DC citizen and resident, I urge you to override Mayor Bowser’s March 23 anti-democratic veto when the FAAR Act again comes up for a vote tomorrow, March 31. 

Mayor Bowser’s veto of the FAAR Act is a betrayal of those she ostensibly represents, at a time of military occupation and the absence of constitutional protections, such as due process of law. Bowser’s action sends a clear message that not only is she complicit in enabling the Fascist Trump regime to advance their illegal and unconstitutional agenda, but she is doing so in the face of your democratically representative vote.

FAAR provides basic and straightforward steps to improve safety in DC — as you and your colleagues testified on March 3. As you know, it would require MPD officers to record in arrest reports and probable cause affidavits whether federal officers are present at the scene of an MPD arrest, the names of those federal officers, and whether any of those federal officers used force. It would require MPD officers to report any instances of federal agents’ use of force, and to provide body-worn camera footage whenever possible.

This legislation was written to prevent more incidents like the one where Department of Homeland Security officers shot at Phillip Brown. MPD officers were not only present, but they participated in that incident and later attempted to cover up the shooting by failing to document the case in official reports.

We have also seen MPD officers riding with federal agents, making arrests with federal agents, sharing information with federal agents, and patrolling neighborhoods with federal agents. Transparency and accountability regarding these interactions is the bare minimum we should expect. It is infuriating that our mayor seems to believe that we, DC citizens and residents, do not deserve basic protection from, and open reporting about, such activity.

I join with all concerned community members to urge you to override Mayor Bowser’s veto and pass FAAR again, at the upcoming legislative meeting on March 31.

Thank you in advance for representing all DC neighbors, citizens, and residents,

Chuck Pennacchio, Ph.D.

1425 Monroe Street, NW

Washington, DC 20010

I heard the reports of Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran, fresh from the field, at 1:30 am ET, Saturday 28 February. Hardly a surprise to me, as the incentives for two fascist heads of state, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, think only in terms of their immediate self-interest. Neither can lose power or they will face the consequences of their uber-corrupt activities, covering decades.

Moreover, Israel has been priming for a take-down of Iran for more than the 30+ years Netanyahu has been prime minister or prime minister-in-waiting. Israel’s Intel and Special Ops agency, Mossad, has been plotting regime change for Iran much longer, ever since Shah Pahlavi (junior) was overthrown in 1979 and radical Shi’ite clerics prevailed in the Iranian Revolution of the same year. Similarly, the CIA has thirsted for revenge ever since their removal of democratically-elected Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installment of the Shah Pahlavi (senior) led to the loss of Shah junior, opening the way for the Ayatollah Khomeini to come to power in 1979.

Expanding on the failed 11-day, June 2025, campaign to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel and the United States are in for not only a likely defeat to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capacity and likely failure to trigger “democratic” regime change, but the latest assault on heavily-armed Iran and spiritual center for 15% of Shi’ite Muslims worldwide will almost certainly lead to a protracted global conflict, potentially the “Third World War” scenario so many scholars and military analysts have warned about under similar scenarios.

Daniel Ellsberg, who former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called “The Most Dangerous Man in America” for revealing the secret history and nuclear threats of the U.S. war in Vietnam, left the living on Friday morning, June 16, due to inoperable pancreatic cancer. In a world where irony often triumphs over justice — at least in the short term — the truth-telling Pentagon analyst-turned-anti-war activist Ellsberg passed away at age 93 while his (unconvicted) war criminal opposite Kissinger lives on, at age 100, to continue advising fascist authoritarian leaders, among others, across the world. 

For a comparison of the polar lives of the moral Ellsberg and the amoral Kissinger, I recommend a screening of the deeply moving 2009 documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America” (more below) and reading Christopher Hitchens’ book “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Hitchens’ examines Kissinger’s alleged war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus, Argentina, and East Timor — coup, advisory, and military-directed activities that caused the direct and indirect deaths of 3-5 million human beings.  

Probing for an understanding of the ‘extreme danger’ Ellsberg represented for the Nixon White House in 1971, OpEd News editor Rob Kalls’ interview with Ellsberg (see “The Bottom-Up Revolution,” pp. 179-81) reveals the general institutional threat that whistleblowers pose for state and corporate secrecy and power, and the particular alarm Nixon and Kissinger felt with Ellsberg, about covert threats of military escalation, leading to possible nuclear war, leaking into the public sphere through release of the Pentagon documents. 

Still, Ellsberg continues, “Don’t do what I did. Don’t wait till more bombs have fallen and thousands and thousands have died, as I did, before you tell the truth with documents to the press and…Congress…which is likely to get you identified and means you will not just lose your clearance and your access and your career, but you might be prosecuted. You might go to prison…(but again) you might save hundreds and thousands of lives.”   

As for the impact of Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers heroism, he has directly inspired numerous insider truth-tellers, including the second-most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden. Snowden’s sensational expose of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs, shared from the sanctuary of a Hong Kong hotel room in 2013, is captured in another compelling film, Laura Poitras’ “CitizenFour,” and in interviewer Glenn Greenwald’s book “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.” 

In Snowden’s own words, “While I was weighing up whether to come forward or not — and this was an agonizing process because it was certainly life-changing — I watched that documentary (‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’). Dan’s example, hearing the arguments from someone who has lived through this; it helps to prepare someone to make that jump themselves.” 

Whistleblowers like Ellsberg and Snowden — not to mention Chelsea Manning, Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, Wendell Potter, Colleen Rowley, Jeffrey Wigand — and whistleblower facilitators like Julian Assange and Neil Sheehan, are critical to democracy restoration, especially in a country like ours that is now leaning hard into fascism (see https://americanfascists.us/the-three-cornerstones-of-american-fascism). But so too are all of us, Ellsberg told “The Nation” magazine’s John Nichols and a room full of academics and organizers at a 2009 premier screening of “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” We all have a role to play; every action connects us to each other which then links us back to the whole.

So, when I actively considered the risks of union-organizing our faculty colleagues at University of the Arts in Philadelphia five years ago, as the then-president targeted our liberal arts school for “reorganization” (i.e., dissolution), ignored our formal and repeated protests, and targeted free-thinking adjunct faculty for prompt dismissal, the upside of possibilities — via unionization — far outweighed the downside of risks, as processed through the “Ellsberg filter” of societal and community risks and rewards. 

So, long story short, we won the union vote 255-2, but I lost my job as full-time associate professor (after 32 years in the classroom) before the union officially came into existence. For the three year run-up, when my identity was discovered and the admin targeted me in more ways than I care to recount (let’s just say I was “radioactive” to all but a handful of my colleagues), I stayed focused on the vision of a better future for the school, students, faculty, and staff. 

Two years removed from higher education, I have only gratitude that Dan Ellsberg helped me to see the big picture all along, from when I met him at an undergrad lecture at Cal-Berkeley, to hearing his wise guidance during a draft counseling workshop, to marching and organizing together for peace in the U.S. and Europe, to discussing his and our journey at the “Most Dangerous Man” film showing in 2009. I never saw Dan again, but I carry his wisdom forward, in my head and heart.

Rest in radical peace and power, dear friend. We will carry on with the good works you inspired.

I remember well meeting Harry Belafonte, along with Coretta Scott King, at a peace rally in Bonn, West Germany, in the “hot autumn” of ’81 — October 10, 1981, to be precise. A truly remarkable human being, dedicated social justice warrior, musician, singer, actor, and friend to all, Harry inspired anyone who came in contact with him. When he took my outstretched hand and welcomed me as a “fellow American” and “peace and justice warrior,” I knew I had made a friend for life. Though he has moved onto another place, after 96 years of life among the living, Harry Belafonte will live on in my heart and mind.  

So, what made 1981 a “hot autumn”? It was the fact that Reagan administration cabinet and sub-cabinet members openly said they were “preparing to fight and win” a “limited nuclear war” in central Europe. The popular pushback was incredible to experience firsthand. Some 300,000 folks showed up that day in Bonn, and millions more across Europe poured into the streets in the following days and weeks — including another rally I attended in Rome, where 500,000+ turned out. To this day, I truly believe that peace activists across Europe and around the world, in 1981, preempted what easily could have turned into a nuclear nightmare. 

Thank you Harry, for your everlasting radical hospitality, radical hope, and radical love!

Thanks to Mark Hertsgaard who translated the just-released (20 March 2023) scientific language-laden UN “last warning” on climate change danger here: https://coveringclimatenow.org/climate-beat-story/translating-the-ipcc-report-into-plain-english 1. Countries must now do “everything, everywhere, all at once” to limit heat-trapping emissions; 2. If we “act now” we have the solutions “to secure a livable, sustainable future for all”; 3. People are starving because of climate change, especially in poor countries throughout the Global South; 4. Global temperatures will stop rising if we slash heat-trapping emissions, starting now; 5. Global North countries and institutions must finally meet their legal obligation to provide $100 billion-plus in annual climate aid; 6. Ways must be found to remove CO2 from the atmosphere;

To which I reply: intentional and radical hospitality, hope, love and vision will prevail on the bedrock of people-to-people, progressive-populist, mass-movement, outside-inside, bottom-up, direct action, civil-disobedience, power-politics. 

We, the 99.9%, have the power over the fascist billionaire class who fund and fuel destruction, distraction and division — through state-corporatism, white nationalism, and religious nationalism. 

The good news is that we’re winning. We just don’t see it yet: the tiny ripples of justice connecting and rising; the arrogant autocrats and pompous plutocrats falling on their swords. “The revolution will not be televised, the revolution will not be televised.” (Gil Scott Heron)

Justice for all means justice for ALL.

Justice for All blog launch, 2023:

Reflecting on the “miracle” year that was and projecting the “magical” year to come, I am most struck by the radical hospitality, hope, and love of the Cuban people we encountered in the first ten days of December 2022. Part of a Witness for Peace education tour across much of northern Cuba, comprised of 18 truth seekers from Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New York, the trip broadened my conception of spiritual, personal, and historical connections – and the limitless possibilities that can spring forth from intimate encounters and exchanges within, across, and between cultures.

With more to say on the Cuban experience itself in future writings and presentations, my main takeaway from the ten-day tour is the remarkable resourcefulness and resilience of a neighboring island population with whom the United States government has been at war – economically, militarily, and psychologically – since 1960, the year after the Cuban Revolution succeeded in overthrowing the U.S.-backed military dictator Fulgencio Batista (1952-1959). Setting aside the ongoing propaganda battle, still firmly planted in the Cold War Era that technically ended in 1991 (!), I know we can learn so much from Cubans’ compassion, hopefulness, and endurance. For me, saying and acting on “radical hospitality, hope, and love” is not enough; it needs to be both an organic, personal commitment and process, as well as an aspirational goal to wrap around the universal transformational justice goals that unite us in common vision, mission, and strategy.

So, I choose to call 2022 a “miracle” year not only because of what Cubans can teach us, but also for what we accomplished at OnePayerStates.org and JusticeforAll.global (including our breakthrough 05/20-21 Denver OPS hybrid convention, and 08/27 and 11/19 Intergenerational Justice Summits), and the Pennsylvania Midterm Miracle that likely spared the Keystone State (aka, birthplace of our Republic, Declaration, and Constitution) from plummeting into American-style Fascism 2.0 (see https://americanfascists.us), similar to Texas and Florida. Through a mostly grassroots, non-partisan, education and voter turnout campaign, our team of door knockers, phone bankers, and texters swept to victory up and down the ballot. That’s the most prosperous election I’ve been a part of in five decades. In addition, the electoral education and GOTV work I did with Andrea Miller and her team at Center for Common Ground, focused on rural BIPOC communities in nine Southern states, helped produce several more miracle outcomes.

Last, I hereby crown 2023 a “magical” year, as we continue to translate our electoral successes into policy gold: health, healthcare, economic, racial, gender, climate, housing, legal, electoral, and educational justice for all.