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A bet on Silicon Valley was a bet on the future, and the future after the solution of the ’70s meant driving down labor costs. The number of union members as a percentage of American employed workers began falling dramatically in the early 1970s, and Palo Alto was leading the trend. While big indus…

U.S. chip manufacturers kept pace with Japan by recruiting a global workforce of women. Firms offshored the vast majority of fabrication work to Mexico, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand while filling local manufacturing roles with Vietnamese and Filipina women. Domestically, employers…

As capitalists locked down public resources through privatization, tax evasion, and austerity, the high-growth technology industry hardened its defenses, erecting literal and metaphorical walls between the people and computer power. “Such elaborate precautions may have appeared unnecessary up to no…

The AEL occupation ended with the removal of classified research from campus, a real victory. But in addition to that met demand, the occupation was a step forward for the movement, a model for action. The A3M not only halted classified research at the AEL during the occupation and after, they conv…

We can see the tensions on the Stanford left in a documentary about the 1968 SDS occupation of the university president’s office. The viewer watches activists debate whether to frame their confrontation in deliberative or aggressive terms. Bruce Franklin clutches his head in his hands, cigarette da…