Ben Bochner, 56 Austin, Texas Job: Singer-songwriter Previously: Video production and songwriting on the side This fall, Bochner left steady work as a videographer in his longtime home of Eugene, Ore., to pursue music in Austin. Why Change?: “I fell in love with Texas nights. I felt I understood why cowboys wrote songs. There’s a…
Esther Merves, 54 Springfield, Va. Job: Adjunct professor at George Washington University and standardized medical patient, both part time Previously: Full-time staff research scientist at GWU A doctor of sociology, Merves was laid off from her full-time position several years ago. After fruitlessly searching for another fulfilling full-time job, she is “still in the process…
On April 24, just outside of Bangladesh’s capital city, one of the worst industrial disasters in history killed over one thousand workers and injured scores more in the dubious service of making cheap clothing for consumers like you and me. Around the same time, about 8,000 miles away in Brooklyn, my wife and I were…
The AFL-CIO posts the following question on it Web site: “The sustained war on workers from the right has left unions trying to prevent rights from being weakened rather than setting the agenda. Where are the opportunities to play some offense?” The answers are all over the lot; no coherent agenda is evident. But that…
Recently, Elissa Strauss wrote a post about how most of our clothes are likely made in sweatshops. I thought of the issue again as I woke up each morning this week to see the death toll rise in the gruesome wake of the collapsed clothing factory in Bangladesh. It’s now 700. In the ashes of…
That fight within the Jewish Home party over nominations for chief rabbi has more to it than meets the eye. True, it opens up a fault line within the religious Zionist movement, between the liberal wing that backs Rabbi David Stav and the more religiously conservative wing that backs Rabbi Yaakov Ariel. But it’s also…
Israel’s new finance minister, Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, gave his first Knesset speech as a cabinet minister on Monday, April 22, the opening day of the parliament’s spring session, and in defiance of longstanding tradition, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. Longtime Knesset observers say they can’t remember ever hearing such a…
Stav Shaffir, the Knesset’s youngest member and one of the leaders of the 2011 social-justice protests, has a net worth of approximately NIS 75,000 ($20,650). Shaffir (Labor) recently agreed to TheMarker’s request to disclose the statement of wealth she submitted to the Knesset. The 27-year-old MK does not own an apartment or a car and…
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