Böcker utgivna av Hard Ball Press

Who really makes history?Radical Connecticut: People's History in the Constitution State tells the stories of everyday people and well-known figures whose work has often been obscured, denigrated, or dismissed. There are narratives of movements, strikes, popular organizations and people in Connecticut who changed the state and the country for the better.Unlike a traditional history that focuses on the actions of politicians, generals, business moguls and other elites, Radical Connecticut is about workers, the poor, people of color, women, artists and others who engaged in the never-ending struggle for justice and freedom. It offers a fresh look at history that should especially inspire young people engaged in social justice work in an increasingly dangerous world.

In December 1980, an officer with the longshoremen's union in San Francisco learned that a shipment of military weapons on the docks was soon to be loaded onto a ship bound for the military dictatorship government of El Salvador. While the Salvadoran regime murdered thousands of its citizens, in the United States, Ronald Reagan was elected president on a conservative, union-busting agenda.Herb Mills, a local officer in the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union), led his union's campaign to refuse to load the weapons. But such a direct violation of their union contract could lead the government to jailing the officers and putting the union into receivership.How could the union stop the shipment and keep out of jail? Would the public support them and, if so, how? Would the press vilify or praise them?Based on his personal archives and historical union records, Mills fashions a fictional account of that campaign. The names have been changed, but the courage and the daring of the union men and women are not made up, they are all real, and now their story is told.

Margarito's Forest is a story of Maya culture and wisdom passed from one generation to the next. This beautifully illustrated bilingual book in English and Spanish, with excerpts in K'iche', is based on María Guadalupe's memories of her father, Don Margarito Esteban Álvarez Velázquez. It follows Don Margarito's lifelong work of planting and nurturing trees after his village in Guatemala is chased from their ancestral land by a right wing military. The Maya carry their love for the forest with them, creating a beautiful forest in the mountains.As the devastating effects of climate change become clear, Don Margarito's life and the ways of the Maya offer timely wisdom for a planet in peril. The lovely illustrations show Maya children learning to plant trees and to nurture them until the trees are tall and sturdy. The book can provide opportunities for a conversation with children about their own community and the impact of the heavy carbon footprint that is threatening ecosystems everywhere.

Margarito's Forest is a story of Maya culture and wisdom passed from one generation to the next. This beautifully illustrated bilingual book in English and Spanish, with excerpts in K'iche', is based on María Guadalupe's memories of her father, Don Margarito Esteban Álvarez Velázquez. It follows Don Margarito's lifelong work of planting and nurturing trees after his village in Guatemala is chased from their ancestral land by a right wing military. The Maya carry their love for the forest with them, creating a beautiful forest in the mountains.As the devastating effects of climate change become clear, Don Margarito's life and the ways of the Maya offer timely wisdom for a planet in peril. The lovely illustrations show Maya children learning to plant trees and to nurture them until the trees are tall and sturdy. The book can provide opportunities for a conversation with children about their own community and the impact of the heavy carbon footprint that is threatening ecosystems everywhere. There are helpful study questions for teachers, librarians and parents about Don Margarito and his village. The book also includes a brief explanation of the Maya numbering system, which is likely the first civilization to introduce the use of zero in counting. Children will learn how to count in K'iche' and to compare their number system with our own Arabic system.

This 4th edition of Bill Barry's New Union Officer's Handbook couldn't come at a better time. His revised training manual for union leaders is supercharged with lessons learned from the Covid pandemic.Covid has presented labor with obstacles...and opportunities for organizing. I Just Got Elected, Now What? explains how to overcome those barriers and take advantage of corporate weaknesses that the pandemic has uncovered.As Bill likes to say, "Now go out there and do it!"

March 25, 2020When I walk through the automatic doors into the ICU at 7 AM, I step into a war zone. There are overflowing trash buckets and debris scattered all over the unit. Four red crash carts are outside the rooms, their drawers open and largely empty, witnesses to the chaotic night. One of the patients who coded survived, the three others died. One body in a white plastic shroud is still in a room on theb ed waiting for a stretcher.So opens the personal diary of Nurse T. She is one of the thousands of health care workers in New York City who covered their twelve hour shifts day after day as the Covid-19 virus raged through the city. Her account is personal, poitnant and poetic as she documents the suffering of the poor, largely immigrant patients who flooded the facility seeking treatment.It is also the story of a city, state and federal government that long denied hospitals like hers the funding and support they need to meet current standards. Long starved for funds, the facility's ancient infrasturure and inadequate supplies placed a heavy burden on the staff, who nonetheless walked up the marble stairs all through the crisis and gave their best, whatever the personal cost, whatever the outcome.

The moon lit the riverbank as George and Dorothy each made their way to the teen dance hall. It''s 1935, and sons and daughters of black and white workers in Pittsburg look forward having some fun dancing the LIndy Hop, until the police come in and break up the dance...with their bully clubs.The teens all scatter, but Dorothy has a plan to save the dance. Is George ready to join the fight? Or will he play it safe and just go home to his family?Down on James Street is based on a real historical incident in 1930''s Pittsburgh. Today, young and old an take inspiration from this wonderful story of courage and solidarity, with gorgeous illustrations by Byron Gramby that summon up the style and the cool of that long-gone era.

Updated in 2020, this plain-spoken guide will help leaders evaluate and revitalize their unions. For officers who are committed to doing thing differently, Just Elected walks the reader through steps that will mobilize members and breathe fresh vitality into the union. The labor movement isn't about servicing workers, it's about building a sustainable workers' organization - and this handbook shows you how to do it.Learn about:>the organizing model (vs. the sevicing model) of unionism;>the strategic planning needed to build your union;>the various functions of the union and its finances;>building a communicaitons network that involves and rallies the members;>the laws you have to look out for, how to deal with other officers and union staff, and how to organize yourself to do what needs to be done to pull it together and make it all work;"available from Hard Ball Press and booksellers everywhere.

An easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to how you can get the most out of your job in a unionized workplace, from understanding what a union is and how it operates to what you can do to make your union more successful.This is a book for workers in a unionized workplace who want to know what protections and benefits their union gives them, and for workers in a shop that’s just been unionized who want to know how their work life will change. It has a strong message for workers in a non-union shop who want to know about the benefits of working in a union shop. And it’s an in-depth resource for students in labor education and labor-management programs as well.Topics include: Understanding how unions operate, getting your say in contract demands, the full story on union dues, a union's responsibility to its members, getting help with workplace problems, a member's rights and responsibilities, labor laws that affect you, how to file a grievance, and social media for union. 

Pregnant nurses at James Madison Hospital beg to be relieved from caring for patients with the Zika virus that is raging through a hot Philadelphia summer. But Mother Burgess, the Director of Nursing refuses. So the nurses turn to Lenny Moss for help joining his service workers union. But Lenny has his hands full investigating repeated attempts to murder Rachel Austin, a popular doctor. As the epidemic overloads the hospital with cases, and the administration retaliates against the nurses who are leading the union campaign, a killer roams the facility with murder in his heart.

A galloping horse interrupts a sleepy afternoon as Thaddeus rides into the life of young Harriet. The Fugitive Slave Act is about to send a river of freedom-seeking men, women and children to the historic Elgin Settlement in Canada, where the Underground Railroad has carried Harriet and hundreds more. She is determined to become a courier like Thaddeus for the secret black anti-slavery Order. As she welcomes newcomers to the Settlement, Harriet struggles with her feelings for Thaddeus while fighting for an equal place in the Order, and Thaddeus agonizes over the family he left behind in the North Carolina Great Dismal Swamp community.Freedom Soldiers brings alive the turbulent and prophetic experiences of two young people freed from slavery who vow to destroy the hated system. Their story reveals the leadership and courage of self-liberated and enslaved black men and women who secretly worked to bring enslaved people to freedom and abolish slavery forever.

A New Book That Demonstrates How Ordinary American Communities Challenge the “One Percent” and WinGood Trouble: A Shoeleather History of Nonviolent Direct Action is a riveting chronicle of stories that prove time and again the actions of thoughtful, committed people can change their country and the world. It is a brisk, inspiring primer for veteran activists and newcomers alike.Civil Rights struggles. “Fight for $15” strikes. Tenant occupations. LGBT campaigns. Each of the 40-plus examples in Good Trouble focuses on the power of organizing and mobilizing, relevant in any context, and serves as an “emergency tool kit” for nonviolent direct action.  “Good Trouble comes to us at a time when faith in our democracy is fading,” writes Rev. Damaris Whittaker, senior minister of Fort Washington Collegiate Church, New York. “Change is the result of action, but those without hope do not act. Good Trouble is a tale of overcoming despair to beat the system,” says Jackie Allen-Doucot, lifelong member of the Catholic Worker Movement.The book takes its title from a quote by John Lewis, member of congress and legendary civil rights hero, who led a 2016 sit-in on the floor of the U.S. House Of Representatives: “Dr. King and Rosa Parks inspired me to get into trouble. Good Trouble.”Good Trouble author Steve Thornton is a retired union organizer who has spent forty-five years on the front lines of student, labor, community, environmental, and anti-racist struggles. This is his third book, the first with Hard Ball Press, publisher of a wide range of working class writings.

As a pastor and a community activist for progressive causes, I find that it helps me to center my thoughts early each morning to help me in my writing, church and community work. So first thing every morning I spend time in God's Word and in prayer. The next thing I do every morning is read one of Stewart's poems. His poetic words dovetail with what I had just read in Scripture…Stewart mixes righteous anger with genuine caring and love for those whom society has marginalized. His poetry energizes me for my daily tasks. ~Rev. Paul White, Lutheran Church, Menphis, Tennessee

In 1970, a sniper's bullet shocks the sleepy Cape Cod village of Osterville. David Gomes, a young reporter for the Cape & Islands Gazette covers the story, thinking his reporting might lead to a job with a major metropolitan newspaper. With protests against the Viet Nam war and the rise of the Black Panthers roiling the county, the murder investigation becomes deeply personal when Gomes, a Cape Verdean American, encounters the legacy of the often overlooked history of a non-enslaved African people in the USA, as well as the deep-seated hatred toward all people of African descent among members of the white community.Gomes soon learns that investigating a murder can put him in the cross-hairs of a cold-blooded killer. It's a dangerous place for the young reporter as he peels away layers of family history in his quest to discover the motive behind a savage act of murder, and comes to understand a complicated, contradictory history of his own people.

In 1970, a sniper’s bullet shocks the sleepy Cape Cod village of Osterville. David Gomes, a young reporter for the Cape & Islands Gazette covers the story, thinking his reporting might lead to a job with a major metropolitan newspaper. With protests against the Viet Nam war and the rise of the Black Panthers roiling the county, the murder investigation becomes deeply personal when Gomes, a Cape Verdean American, encounters the legacy of the often overlooked history of a non-enslaved African people in the USA, as well as the deep-seated hatred toward all people of African descent among members of the white community.Gomes soon learns that investigating a murder can put him in the cross-hairs of a cold-blooded killer. It’s a dangerous place for the young reporter as he peels away layers of family history in his quest to discover the motive behind a savage act of murder, and comes to understand a complicated, contradictory history of his own people.

WINNING RICHMOND - HOW A PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE WON CITY HALLGayle McLaughlin"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." - Native American proverbA group of political activists, environmentalists, and social justice advocates formed a Progressive Alliance that took their city back from the Chevron Oil Company. They transformed Richmond, long polluted and poisoned, into a national leader in sustainability, equity and grassroots democracy, giving hope to the San Francisco Bay Area, the state of California, and the world.Gayle McLaughlin was at the center of that long-term struggle, organizing with co-activists, going door-to-door campaigning and serving as the two-term Mayor of Richmond, California. This is her story. This is Richmond's story.¿"…the eyes of the country are on you. And if Chevron can roll over you, they and their buddies will roll over every community in America. If you can stand up and beat them with all of their money, you're going to give hope to people all over America that we can control our destinies." - Bernie Sanders at Richmond Town Hall for the Richmond Progressive Alliance¿