Sarah Lazare

@sarahlazare

Editor of Workday Magazine, formerly In These Times.

131 Folgt7.076 Follower931 Posts

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Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· 21d

Francesca Hong is calling for economic conversion to a peace economy. www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclusive-...

Her economic case is that public spending yields more jobs than military spending:

“Engaging in the same old corporate welfare for arms manufacturers neither makes the world a safer place nor develops the Wisconsin economy... military spending creates five jobs per million dollars spent, compared to 13 in education.”

And the tell that she knows exactly how dangerous this terrain is:

“We will not arbitrarily nor deliberately cost workers their jobs... We needn’t ask whether Wisconsin can transition to a peace economy, but who writes the transition plan.”

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· 23d

Nurses at Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation addiction treatment center in Center City, MN are on strike. They're up against an employer that has considerable assets, yet is denying them a first contract. Critical reporting by Amie Stager & @matthewccook5.bsky.social workdaymagazine.org/striking-haz...

The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation as a whole, which includes the Center City location, has $349 million in net assets, according to its most recent Form 990. The foundation had eight executives who made over $400,000 per year as of calendar year 2024, and its CEO Joseph Lee made more than $844,000 that year. The foundation spent $5.6 million on consultants in 2024 as well, while sitting on more than $22 million in investments in “Central America and [the] Caribbean,” according to a Workday Magazine review of their most recent tax filings.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· 28d

Seems like we should be pooling our resources to figure out how to stop hazardous smoke from engulfing cities where millions live, rather than funding wars that unleash death and destruction and also worsen climate change, contributing to said hazards. inthesetimes.com/article/snap...

That’s right: The average U.S. taxpayer in 2025 had over $4,000 taken out of their paychecks to fund the Pentagon, according to the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. In the coming years, that amount is set to rise as Congress considers a $1.5 trillion war budget for 2027.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jul 13

ICE killed a man in Biddeford, Maine today, and then continued to terrorize the community. The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! Maine report that after the killing, calls kept coming to the hotline reporting "immigration enforcement activity." maineimmigrantrights.org/maines-immig...

The shooting itself was not reported through MIRC’s Immigrant Defense Hotline. However, calls received in the immediate aftermath reported additional ICE activity elsewhere in the area. It is deeply disturbing that immigration enforcement activity appeared to continue even as authorities responded to a fatal incident involving the agency. At a moment when a person had just lost his life, and an investigation had barely begun, members of our community were still reporting ICE activity and fearing that others could be detained or harmed.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jul 13

UAW President Shawn Fain released a statement today saying that federal monitor Neil Barofsky "has a political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza."

Statement from UAW President Shawn Fain
July 12, 2026
I've remained silent on the political infighting in our union over the past two years because it only distracts from our mission as a union and as a movement. But the stakes are too high, and the membership deserves to know the truth.
Let's be clear about what's going on here: Rich Boyer has fed the monitor false allegations about me and is now trying to weaponize these bogus allegations to steal the upcoming UAW election. He knows he can't win a fair fight because he has no real platform to run on.
I'm done being silent. Neil Barofsky has a political grudge against me because the UAW took an anti-war stance about what was happening in Gaza.
I've retained a law firm to fight against the Monitor's trumped-up claims against me. What the Monitor is doing is wrong, it's unfair to the UAW and to you as members, and my lawyers are looking at any and all legal options I can pursue to make it stop.
We are going to fight back hard.
The truth when it comes to Boyer is that I didn't want him running the Stellantis Department because he wasn't doing a good job for our members. I wouldn't let him hire family members into UAW positions, and I wouldn't stand by while he bargained concessions with Stellantis and failed to enforce our contract. Boyer is bad for our union and I'm not going to let him use the Monitor's bogus investigation so he can try to fail upwards into a bigger title.
I've stayed quiet about this because I don't believe it helps our union to have these fights out in public. But make no mistake: our contracts, our jobs, and our union are at stake here. Our members are either going to see through these lies and the nonsense, or let Boyer and Barofsky destroy our union and weaken us at the bargaining table. We've accomplished more in the past 3 years and 3 months than in the previous decades. This is what happens when you go against corporate America and their allies, and I'm not going to be intimidated or harasse…

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jul 6

It’s day 111 of the BP lockout in Whiting, Indiana. USW Local 7-1 is maintaining a 24/7 picket. Here is a husband-and-wife team Lety and Pedro Tirado, picketing next to a tank field. Pedro has been working at the refinery for 19 years. Lety says the lockout is “stressful.”

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jul 1

The messages and statements coming out of Minnesota in response to the federal indictments of 15 people have been really lovely. Overwhelming focus on solidarity, determination to keep organizing, refusal to be intimidated. (This is from a report by Amie Stager.)

Olga González is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul who read a statement from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “The Macalester chapter of the AAUP condemns the federal indictment of professor Erik Davis and 14 others for exercising their constitutionally protected right to protest the actions of the federal government during Operation Metro Surge,” she said, addressing the crowd. “The citizens of Minnesota, including Professor Davis and co-defendants, participated in a broad, popular movement to protect their communities against an indecent assault by our government.”

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jul 1

We are only seeing the beginnings of how a generation of workers has been transformed by witnessing a genocide against Palestinians, and then facing retaliation and firing for speaking out. theintercept.com/2026/07/01/c...

Voters chose democratic socialist Melat Kiros, an attorney who lost her job for condemning her industry’s silence on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ahead of longtime Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat representing Denver who touted progressive positions on domestic issues but drew criticism that she had grown complacent over three decades in Congress and generally followed the party line on support for Israel.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jun 30

The contributors are incredible: labor leaders, rank-and-file workers, community organizers, historians, labor journalists. We hear from Palestinian and South Korean unionists, a Waffle House worker in Georgia, the Minnesota workers who organized the Jan 23 shutdown against ICE.

Contributors include Saqib Bhatti, Nah'shon Blount, Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Stacy Davis Gates, Abdelhakim Elayan, Luis Feliz Leon, Feben Ghilagaber, Katie Giede, Marcia Howard, Wol-san Liem, Greg Nammacher, Hamilton Nolan, Jeff Schuhrke, Anonymous Target Worker, Claire Wahmanholm, Tony Williams, and Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jun 30

Very proud to have co-edited this book with Amie Stager, in partnership with May Day Strong. This tells the story of how, by striking, refusing, and SHUTTING IT DOWN, workers can resist an ICE invasion and go toe to toe with the most powerful people on earth. www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2966-t...

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jun 25

Horror story from my inbox. This person is a member of Fuerzas Activas de la Damen, a tenant union affiliated with the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance. I hope he gets justice.

LANDLORD NEGLIGENCE RESULTS IN RAT ATTACK

Rats bite unionized Rogers Park tenant in his sleep after pest problem goes unaddressed for weeks

Chicago, IL —June 21, 2026 — A tenant living in one of the four unionized Rogers Park buildings recently experienced a horrifying situation when rats bit his face while he was sleeping. The tenant, Herivierto Hernandez reported waking up to the bites and experienced several lesions on his face. His garden level apartment had been infested with rats for months, but neither the management, a company called Rogers Park Apartments, nor the owners including Rogers Park 1 Holdings, LLC and Imran Khan of Fulcrum Lawyers resolved the issue. The infestation culminated in the terrifying attack which has left Hernandez concerned for his health and safety in the building.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jun 18

Whoa this is quite an essay. And FYI, this contains info on how to support the legal defense of the Minnesota 15. labornotes.org/blogs/2026/0...

When I got to my cell after they took me, I did not know who else was targeted in the sweep. I saw one person I knew, and then was put into a cell alone.

Not knowing what else to do to pass the time, I began singing “Fields of Athenry.” When I was done with that, I sang “The Ballad of Joe McDonnell,” “Bold Robert Emmet,” “Jim Jones in Botany Bay,” and “Our Lads in Crumlin Jail.”

I was halfway through "The Town I Loved So Well," about to choke up thinking about Metro Surge and "with their tanks and their guns, oh my God what have they done, to the town I loved so well," when I heard a shout down the hallway:

"Play ‘Dick Blizzard'!"

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jun 17

Uh, this seems not good. inthesetimes.com/article/real... via @rebeccaburns.bsky.social

A$69 billion merger between two real estate behemoths is set to create the largest publicly traded apartment landlord in U.S. history, dramatically expanding the market power of two firms that have been sued repeatedly over alleged tenant abuses and illegal price-fixing.

Together, real estate investment trusts (REITs) AvalonBay Communities and Equity Residential own more than 180,000 apartments nationwide, with another 20,000 under development. Were these two companies banks or broadcast networks or grocery stores, their merger would face mandatory review by federal regulators. But long-standing loopholes exempt real estate mergers from antitrust scrutiny — even as concerns mount about the consolidation of housing in the hands of large investors.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· May 1

I’m here in Ladson, South Carolina covering a May Day picket against an Israeli weapons factory that makes the Howitzers Israel is using in Lebanon. “We want unions, not wars,” protesters chant.

Protesters hold signs criticizing Elbit war crimes.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Apr 2

The US war on Iran is wrong whether it makes Americans rich or poor. But this statement that it comes at the cost of childcare is one more piece of evidence that US wars of domination serve death, not life. They consolidate wealth and lethal power in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. government "can't take care" of child care, Medicaid or Medicare costs, suggesting states should fund the provisions while the federal government focuses on "military protection."

"We're fighting wars," Trump told an audience at a White House Easter lunch on Wednesday, as seen in a video posted on and then removed from the White House's website. "We can't take care of day care."

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Mar 31

I worked with artist and author @soljbrager.bsky.social to make a comic about the everyday, ordinary resistance against ICE that we've seen throughout Chicagoland. This was mostly reported last fall, and a lot's happened since, but I hope these stories are useful. jewishcurrents.org/running-towa...

Blowing the whistle, recording the agent, getting license plate numbers, making sure mutual aid was happening, protecting families, and following up. This is the kind of resistance work we need to do to go toe-to-toe with the federal government.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Mar 10

The workers I talked to were extremely upset that public dollars are going toward killing people in Iran and Lebanon. In opposing war on Iran, they reflect US public opinion, which poll after poll shows is firmly against the war. Here's what an ICU nurse and labor leader told me.

Mary Turner, an intensive care unit nurse in Minnesota who is on the council of presidents for the National Nurses United labor union (NNU), was brought to tears when discussing the U.S. and Israel bombing hospitals. The World Health Organization says it has verified the bombing of at least 13 hospitals and medical institutions in Iran and Lebanon. “That’s beyond the pale. That is unconscionable,” Turner says. “To be bombing and killing health care workers and obviously the patients in their most vulnerable state, it’s monstrous, inhumane. Boy, now we really know they have no respect for human life at all.”

“And the thing is, the hospitals get bombed and all that, and they’re half functioning, they lose power, those health care workers don’t leave their post,” she added. “That’s the thing about doctors, nurses, and all health care workers. We don’t abandon our patients, like the government does. The government abandons them, but we don’t.”

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Mar 7

This is a publicly funded industry, proof that the U.S. can create jobs programs and design industrial policy when it wants to, but only substantially does so for the purpose of war and violence.

Lockheed Martin, RTX Land F-35 Contracts, US to Triple Some Defense Prodution

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Mar 4

Very interesting reporting by @matthewccook5.bsky.social inthesetimes.com/article/debu...

American Future’s biggest beneficiary, receiving more than $263,000, is Emil Jones III, a state senator who was indicted in 2022 on federal bribery charges, and faces little-known opponents in his race to hold on to his seat. In a race featuring a stark ideological contrast, American Future has spent over $220,000 in the 40th Legislative District in northwest Chicago, backing an entrenched Democratic machine incumbent, Jaime Andrade, Jr., against a democratic socialist challenger, Miguel Alvelo-Rivera, who, in a statement to the Center for Media and Democracy, pledged to “fight to tax wealthy corporations and individuals in Illinois, and… make sure they know our legislature isn’t for sale.”

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Feb 12

And here are ongoing demands from ICE Out of Minnesota

Bring home everyone who was illegally taken to other states, including the children imprisoned in horrible conditions in places like Texas

Drop charges against the peaceful constitutional observers and prosecute ICE and federal agents for illegal practices during the operation

Stop funding for an ICE agency that has proven violent and unaccountable

Support for the small businesses and workers who are facing hardship, evictions and closures because of the attacks on our state.

No new increased cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE, also known as 287(g) agreements.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Feb 12

From a statement released today by the ICE Out of Minnesota Coalition.

“These masked agents leaving our state can be spun any way people want, but history will show what this was: regular people, clergy and teachers, janitors and soccer moms, people across all of our complicated differences, simply refusing to let our neighbors be attacked and abducted without a fight. The level of solidarity shown by Minnesotans should be an example for everyone and we couldn’t be more proud of our state.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Feb 6

A beloved workers' rights organizer in Minnesota, known for *successfully* fighting against wage theft and labor trafficking, has been detained by federal immigration agents and is now locked up in New Mexico. His family is calling for his urgent release. inthesetimes.com/article/work...

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Feb 4

A lot of people have been asking questions about how many workers stayed off the job for Minnesota's Jan 23 shutdown against ICE. Here is some more specific info passed along to me by labor leaders in Minnesota. prospect.org/2026/02/04/t...

Kieran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250, tells me that 80 percent of the Minnesota members of his local were “absent” on January 23 as part of the day of protest. His union represents 650 Minnesota workers in the telecom, satellite television, home security, and video game industries.

Sheigh Freeberg is the secretary-treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 17, which represents more than 6,000 workers for stadiums, convention centers, and hotels in the Twin Cities metro area. He tells me that several workplaces that do not have their first contract or have open contracts saw large numbers of workers stay out, and one shop had to entirely close as a result.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Feb 2

Since October 2023, Palestinian trade unionists have been urging workers in the US and around the world to strike in solidarity. This is the closest we've come to that here in the US. This was a thousands-strong strike, with 19,780 workers voting to authorize. inthesetimes.com/article/work...

Jack Davies says that the biggest barrier to pulling off labor actions in solidarity for Palestine was creating conditions where workers feel “we can wage a fight that’s actually worth the struggle and sacrifice. Asking people to walk off their jobs is different from other actions. Workers need to have reason to believe that the demands are meaningful and the strategy under discussion is adequate to win them.

“When considering walking off your job, even if the issues at stake are evidently more important than your own livelihood, people are unlikely to take this on in large numbers if they can reasonably conclude that it won’t have much or any effect on those issues.”

Davies talks quickly, like he can barely contain his excitement: “When people believe an action is realistic, they can go really far. Once you’re taking those actions, it’s sometimes quite shocking how far a group of even previously skeptical workers might go.”

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jan 27

Appreciate @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social description here of how cold it was in Minneapolis. You can't really understand how huge of a moral victory January 23 was until you realize how painful it was to be outside.

“NUREMBERG IS COMING.” This represents not the radical, but the median view of the regular folks in Minneapolis towards our current federal government. This is the average view of the normal middle-aged guy in the office. This helps to explain a lot of things. January 23, for example. When the temperature creeps down towards -20, as it did yesterday, being outside becomes difficult. Glasses fog over into an opaque film. Ice crystals form on men’s beards and the downy, transparent hairs on women’s faces. Warm breath condenses on the scarf covering your mouth and then freezes into an ice sheet that loses its utility. Toes begin freezing the second you step outside and take hours to defrost. Even in thick gloves, hands begin freezing as soon as you withdraw them from your pockets, so that even the act of holding a sign at all requires great commitment. Thighs freeze, knees freeze, eyelids freeze, the tiny spot on your forehead that your hat can’t reach freezes. You yearn to be covered in a full-body suit made of hand warmers. I had 11 hand warmers on me yesterday, stuffed in various pockets and socks, and it was not nearly enough.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jan 27

This was an actual, real US labor strike in solidarity with the Gaza protest encampments, and in opposition to the US-Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. 19,780 members of this union voted to authorize the work action. I asked workers how & why they struck for Gaza. inthesetimes.com/article/work...

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jan 23

Crowd is so big! There is the arena, and here are people waiting to get in.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jan 23

Shocked at how big the crowd is in Minneapolis. Don’t know an exact number but it’s in the many, many thousands. It is so cold your tears freeze to your face and your hands ache and yet people are here.

Sarah Lazare@sarahlazare· Jan 23

Minneapolis!