Jackie, the big-haired innkeeperin Johnson City, Tennessee, sings “Jolene”to piped-in music while she runs the phones:“I’m beggin of you please don’t take my man”—Don’t you just love Dolly?She’s been through it, honey,I swear she’s my patron saint.She wears chunks of hematite aroundher neck, singing loud but melodicat the front desk barwood register, thenfans herself with a Tennessee Whiskey Menu.She has spirit all around her—vibrating.I’m flighty, she says,I need me some grounding.C’mon darlin, let me check you inbefore things get any worse.Blue eyeshadow running so highand she’s crying, telling me I’ve gota king room with one bed, telling meher ex-husband beat her, kidnapped her kids.I’m sorry, she says, I can’t stop crying.I’ve read over 2,600 books, she says.Do you know why women can’t sleep?Because we have so many stories in our heads.I’m waitin for a time when I can writea few hours a day, she says.I have to wait until he’s dead.That’s the only way.He used to laugh at me for my body—It started there—made fun of mein front of our friends.When I left I took the kidsand the back roads to Florida, but withinan hour the truckers were on me—he knew a lot of people.When he went to prison it stopped.He got saved and I forgave him, but hestill doesn’t remember the kids’ birthdays.Laughing now, talking louder:Her bright red lips working hard:I’m a strong woman.How did I let that happen to me?I’ve lost friends over it—my sisterand niece are in abusive relationships.They seem angry that I got out,they chose money over freedom.Not me—I don’t give a damn about money.I have a lot to say.I’ve lived many lifetimes.A woman in Florida wanted to help me,signed me up for school, but when shedropped me off, it was a women’s center.They gave me a survey, I got 8 out of 10—they said if you answer 1, you were being abused.I didn’t really get it until I saw it on that paper.Tears rolling down her cheeks as sheanswered the phone: Yes, the 21st, sure thing,can’t wait to see you!In one motion, back to me at the front desk:I have a good man now—I’m a Christian butI drop the F-bomb all over the place.Sometimes you just have to get things out.

Abstract Is American labor law constitutional? The US Supreme Court resolved this question almost ninety years ago: yes, Congress can use law to promote worker power; and yes, Congress can entrust the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with the authority to make labor law’s promises real. Today, however, twenty-first-century employers are reviving the lost constitutional claims of their twentieth-century counterparts, with shocking success, given how settled the law has been. According to employers in a spate of recent suits, the NLRB is rife with constitutional infirmities, afflicting its judges, its remedies, and potentially its inherent structure. In the conservative Fifth Circuit, courts are already ruling in employers’ favor. Ironically, these attacks can be seen as a testament to labor’s recent successes. The suits are defensive as much as offensive: a frenzied response by employers unnerved by labor’s political momentum and the Biden Board’s efficacy in making labor law work for workers again after decades of quiescence. What does the future hold for the Board? This short essay gives context and clarifies the stakes.

Abstract Focusing on the three decades from 1945 to 1975, this article views the role of Catholicism vis-à-vis the world of workers as a frequently shifting but often surprisingly virtuous relationship. Rather than functioning as a brake on the development of the workers’ movement in the period of the postwar boom, the Catholic portions of the international labor movement often played a crucial, and on occasion even pioneering, role in pushing the labor movement in the direction of greater self-confidence and more radical demands. In the second half of the 1940s, but then particularly during the red decade (1965–75), the Catholic lifeworld played an often singularly powerful role as prime mover of innovative solutions to the multiple crises of the day.

1.First, we feel the trainSlowing.Then we see the pens as the train stops.The doors open.We leave the excrement-covered floorsOf the cattle cars and the stench of our journey.A joy to stand in the ankle-deep dust and dried dung of the yards!Sun? And a high blue sky!We blink in the glare of light and our cries go up:Bellowings, snorts, grunts, whines, farts and whinnys –A bedlam of many languages lifts toward heaven.Then we stampede to the watering troughs and the sparse food.As evening grows out of the earth,Uneasy in the failing lightWe push at the fences . . .Moaning and bleating,Sending our separate criesInto the openrange beyond the wire . . .A kind of singing in all our languagesOut . . .Into the desolation –The emptiness that we once thought was home.A kind of singing . . .Barbaric discords before we lie down to sleepIn the feathery dust and dung.2.Morning comes in with the first train.Others arrive and our lives are repeated.But the afternoon brings rainAnd a new thing:A ramp at the end of our pen, leadingUp to what we had never noticed:A vast black iron door.They want us to ascend: to rise,To fly up the ramp toward the black iron.So we are lead, bullied, cajoled, prodded, bulldozedAnd we resume our ascensions until – suddenly –Turning in complaining concert, we look backAnd lifting our eyes to the hills – we see:Everywhere – ! mountain, valley, seacoast, and plain:Wooden dog-legs, cactus-hedges, thorn-and-wattle, and barbed-wire fences:Pens!Everywhere!The whole world a pen . . .What we had thought unique . . . universal.3.The black gate opens on its shuddering hinge.Our first contingent is cut out and enters.The door swings . . .But not before we hear a dull thuddingAs of maulsOn wood stumps muffled by animal skins . . .And we see the flash of axes, rising and falling,Like puny lightning in the heavy gloom . . .The door swings shut before we might race in and stop it –If we could or if we would.But we still hear and see – as if in dream.And so we begin to sing.Not as complaint – but loud!Despair and defianceTo shout down all the pens and all the stars!And it seems properTo sing in solidarity a little while still together –Before we go under the axe.