Eli Broad made headlines in November last year when he offered to bail out soon-to-be-bankrupt Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. While most papers have described his bailout as a $30 million bailout, I think it’s important to clarify that he has offered to match funds up to $15 million, meaning he will only provide the funds if other philanthropists “step up.” He has also pledged $3 million a year for the next 5 years, making a possible total of $30 million. This deal would save MOCA from a proposed merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to which Broad “gave” part of his multi-million dollar collection about a year ago. The question is raised, then: why would Broad, who has a

More than 60 years after the last mass general strike of a city in the US, a group made up of labor organizers as well as performers from groups such as the SF Mime Troupe, staged a recreation of that general strike: the Oakland “Work Holiday” of 1946. Max Bell Alper, looking more like a picket captain than a theater director with his bull horn and clipboard in hand, introduced the reenactment by telling the audience gathered on the sidewalk at Latham Square that they were in the exact center of where the general strike had occurred in 1946.

The story of the Oakland general strike is the story of how two small strikes of mostly Continue reading...