Some of the best reporting and commentary on the Chicago teachers strike:

• “Why I’m Striking,” by Teacher X, a Chicago public school teacher, who notes the irony of saying that it’s just fine for kids to lose 18-25 days out of every school year for unproven standardized testing, but not a few days for a strike.
• Brian Jones salutes the striking teachers in the New York Times’ “Room for Debate” section.
• Corey Robin on “Liberals Who Hate Teachers Unions” in Jacobin Magazine.
• “Chicago Teachers Push Back Against Neo-Liberal Education Reform,” by Matthew Cunningham-Cook in The Nation.
• Dana Goldstein on the history of teachers unions as a women-led labor movement.
• Mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced to officially deny Nickleback fandom after a 10th grade math teacher, Mike Konkoleski, walked the picket line with a sign alleging “Rahm Emanuel Likes Nickleback.”

The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century, a new book by Peter Dreier, names Sidney Hillman as one of the leading lights of the social justice movement. I spoke to Dreier about the book and Hillman’s legacy.

The book is a kind of Who’s Who of social justice in America. Dreier honors three types of luminaries: organizers and activists, politicians, and intellectuals. Hillman’s achievements span all three categories. He was a dazzlingly successful organizer of immigrant garment workers; he went on to become trusted adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and an architect of the New Deal; and he was an intellectual founder of social unionism.

Social unionism is the idea that a union should fight for more than higher pay and better working conditions. Hillman believed that the union should serve as a center of social, intellectual, and family life. This model was very appealing to immigrant workers who were pleased to find an American institution that would welcome them with open arms and teach them how to thrive in a new country. Hillman’s later support of the welfare state was a natural extension of this community-oriented approach to politics.

Dreier attributes Hillman’s success as an organizer partly to his eclectic background. He was a Chicago garment worker who came to the U.S. from Lithuania as a young man after serving time in prison for revolutionary politicking in Russia. He was also an intellectual who had studied to be a rabbi as a young man. Even before coming to the U.S., he pored over the social thought of Marx, Darwin, and Mill.

“Hillman was an empathetic member of the working class,” Dreier said, “He understood that ordinary people could do extraordinary things.”

“He wasn’t a great public speaker, but he was persistent and clever, and he knew how to find other people with talent,” Dreier added.

Hillman rose to prominence during the Hart, Schaffner, and Marx strike of 1910. Tens of thousands of Chicago garment workers, led mostly by women, walked off the job. While many male garment workers laughed at the women, Hillman joined their cause. In 1914, at the age of 27, he became the first president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a post he held until his death in 1946.

Chicago was a hotbed of social protest. Hillman forged friendships and allegiance with progressive leaders including Clarence Darrow, Jane Addams, Frances Perkins, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (all listed among the 100 Greatest Americans).

As an adviser to FDR, Hillman helped shape the New Deal and the nascent welfare state. He pushed for public works, unemployment insurance, and a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Sidney Hillman’s career shows how the radical ideas of one generation become the commonsense ideas of the next.

[Photo: Sidney Hillman (left) and David Dubinsky of the ILGWU, Kheel Center @Cornell University, Creative Commons.]

• Josh Eidelson of Working In These Times has the latest on the Palermo’s Pizza labor dispute.
• Hillman judge Harold Meyerson compiles a history of American labor in photos for the American Prospect.
• The Radio Rookies, young reporters at WNYC, examine the effects of stop-and-frisk in the Bronx. They really put NYPD chief Ray Kelly on the spot in a one-on-one interview.
• In honor of Labor Day, ProPublica compiled a great set of stories on the dismal state of occupational health and safety in the United States. [Submitted by reader EF]

“Homicide Watch, one of the most important experiments in improving journalism in the era of the internet, will die in a week, unless we save them,” writes new media expert Clay Shirky.

Homicide Watch is a young journalism startup that reports on every single murder in Washington, DC. No other media outlet comes close. Murder victims in DC are disproportionately black and poor, and their stories are underrepresented in mainstream media coverage. Homicide Watch provides an invaluable service to members of beleaguered communities.

Shirky describes the site’s innovative design:

Homicide Watch matters because they are more than just thorough, they’re innovative. They’ve designed the site like a set of feeds and a wiki rather than like the crime section of a newspaper. The home page shows the most recent updates on all pending cases. Each victim gets their own page, where those updates are aggregated. Every murder is mapped. Every page has the tip line for the detective assigned to the case. Every page hosts a place for remembrance of the victim.

This way of working isn’t just technologically innovative, it’s socially innovative, in a way journalism desperately needs. The home page of Homicide Watch shows photos of the most recent seven victims; as I write this, all seven, are, as usual, African-American. Like a lot of white people, I knew, vaguely, that crime was worse in black neighborhoods than in white ones, but actually seeing the faces, too often of kids not much older than my own, makes it clear how disproportionately this crime is visited on African-Americans.

Homicide Watch has received national recognition for its journalism and its innovative design. The site’s co-founder and sole full-time reporter, Laura Amico, has received a prestiguous Niemann Fellowship at Harvard. Homicide Watch needs to raise enough money to hire a reporter to replace her during her yearlong stint at Harvard.

The most dedicated users of Homicide Watch can’t afford to pay for it. So, Laura and Chris Amico are reaching out to those who care about socially conscious journalism to help keep the site alive.

Please donate, if you can.

As of Wednesday morning, the Homicide Watch Kickstarter had over $20,000 in pledges, putting the campaign a little over halfway towards its goal of $40,000 with 8 days left in the campaign. Remember, they only collect those pledge dollars if they meet the $40,000 threshold. So, keep those pledges coming.