News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Tuesday December 23rd 2025
Movie Corner: Unhoused
By HOWARD MCQUITTER II
Adjust your eyes when you see director Chloe Zhao”™s superb road film Nomadland because it has a feel of a documentary and a feel of an arthouse film, yet it”™s a true narrative. The principal star is Fern, played by Frances McDormand, who has recently lost her husband; and the local gypsum and sheetrock factory in Empire, Nevada where she worked, closed shop. The town just disappears, even the zip code doesn”™t show up on the map.
Fern decides she will not stay in Empire so she packs up some small possessions and puts them in her beat-up van and takes off on the road. But before she hits the road the townspeople offer her help, even places to stay. She smiles and quietly refuses the offers. What we learn early is Fern is fiercely independent and refuses any help from churches, social services, and charity.
Now she”™s a nomad traveling from one nomad community to another meeting various people with circumstances similar to hers, becoming kicked out or pushed out by corporate America. Surely this nomad feeling is quite evident today with COVID-19, massive unemployment and racial tensions swirling around us like a gale.… Read the rest “Movie Corner: Unhoused”
Random alley Labor News:
By LINDSEY FENNER
Union Workers at Abbott and Phillips Eye Institute Hold Strike Vote:
After Allina Hospitals refused a to extend an expiring contract for union workers, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare workers in negotiations at Allina/Abbott Northwestern Hospital/Phillips Eye Institute voted at the end of March to decide whether to authorize an Unfair Labor Practices Strike against Allina. Results of the strike authorization vote were too late for print. According to the union, Allina has declined to negotiate health and safety issues. SEIU-represented workers at Abbott went on a two-day Strike last October over safety and COVID-pay. SEIU workers at Children”™s Hospital are in separate contract negotiations, where key issues are pay and safe staffing levels.
Teamsters Locked Out at Marathon Refinery:
The labor movement in MN is asking everyone to avoid buying gas at Marathon and Speedway gas stations in solidarity with locked out Marathon Refinery workers. About 200 workers at the Marathon Petroleum Refinery in St. Paul Park have been locked out of work since January 22 and have been on the picket line 24/7 ever since. Workers, who are members of Teamsters Local 120, have been fighting against staffing cuts and changes that they are worried will make the refinery more dangerous.… Read the rest “Random alley Labor News:”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
“Judas and the Black Messiah” and “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners”
SOMETHING I SAID
By DWIGHT HOBBES
There are times you have to question how seriously black folk take our own history. Two examples are the films currently arching eyebrows, turning heads and topping just about everyone”™s must-see list, “Judas and the Black Messiah,” and 2012”™s “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” (LionsgateDVD). When you consider what Fred Hampton, chair of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Illinois Chapter and iconic activist Angela Davis went through so the bourgeoisie could blithely change its tune from “We Will Overcome” to “I have overcome” it truly is saddening.
The plain facts are that even in the 60”™s, while even middle class blacks rallied around Martin Luther King”™s social protest, freedom fighters like Hampton, Davis and Malcolm X weren”™t socially acceptable. They were too angry for assimilationists. Today, scores of African Americans less interested in the African as anything but a way to look cool around white liberals, are no longer interested in struggles, period. They have their equality, content that some black men, women, and children are more equal than others.
The Panthers, no less than the hallowed American Revolutionaries, battled to throw off the yoke of oppression. An aspect you never hear much about is part and parcel of that war against the white system was not race hatred but simple self-empowerment, which included by the end of 1969 setting up kitchens across this country, sending impoverished kids to school mornings with a hot meal in their stomachs.… Read the rest ““Judas and the Black Messiah” and “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners””