Ebisu Publications

Child Labor In my previous posts I looked at the history of the labor movement and at three of the tools used to control the work force. Today I’ll focus on child labor. Most child labor laws date back to the New Deal, which prohibited it in a variety of occupations and regulated it in […]

Indentured Servitude, or Debt Bondage In the last three posts I took a look at the history of labor struggles, at home and abroad, and about two of the methods used to control workers, propaganda and so-called scientific management. Today let’s look at another tool the bosses use, indentured servitude, also known as debt bondage. […]

Scientific Management in the Workplace In the last couple of posts I took a look at the history of labor struggles, at home and abroad, and how propaganda has been used as a tool by the bosses. Today I’m considering how so-called scientific management has been, and is, used to control the labor force. Monitoring […]

Propaganda is the Bosses’ Best Tool In the last post I talked about the history of labor struggles, at home and abroad. Today I’ll be considering how propaganda has been used to manage labor. Brute force is always a last resort among the various methods for controlling the labor force. Convincing people to work their […]

This is the first of a series. I’ve been interested, lately, in the perennial war between capital and labor or, really, between the few who own the land, the factories, and sometimes the bodies of slaves who work for them—and the many who do the work. Today I’m taking a look at the long history […]

The mother of all life stretches before me, rolls, roars, licks the shore devourer of all life she eats the soft parts first spits out the harder bits they litter the beach I pick my way through the bleached remains of trees a driftwood jungle, a tumble of disjointed crab legs hollowed-out halves of clams […]

As I write this post, Israel has begun to invade Gaza. This promises to be a lengthy, bloody conflict, as Hamas says it has constructed around 300 miles of tunnels under the Strip, under whatever buildings remain after bombardment. Urban warfare is notoriously brutal, costing huge number of civilian lives as well as the lives […]

These last two weeks I’ve been reminded of certain lines from Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”  He wrote that in 1918, shortly after World War I—a senseless orgy of slaughter, with around 20 million dead and 21 million wounded. I disagree with Yeats […]

  I flew to the East Coast a week ago, staying with my sister Jeannette in East Brunswick NJ and with my friend Phyllis in Manhattan. In the last few days I did three readings, two in Manhattan and one in Philadelphia. Spent a lot of time driving around New Jersey, walking around the streets […]

It’s Gay History Month! My next stops are New York City and Philadelphia. I’ll be doing readings and book signings at the following venues: Edie Windsor Sage Center 305 Seventh Avenue, 15th Floor New York, NY 10001 Thursday, October 12, 6:30 pm Giovanni’s Room 345 South 12th Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 Friday, October 13, 6:00 […]