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Gaza Debate Reopens Divisions Between Left-Wing Workers and Union Leaders

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Last week’s Democratic National Convention surfaced differences over the war in Gaza that could widen fissures between labor activists and union officials.When members of the Chicago Teachers Union showed up to march at the Democratic National Convention last week, many expressed two distinct frustrations.The first was over the war in Gaza, which they blamed for chewing up billions of dollars in aid to Israel that they said could be better spent on students, in addition to a staggering loss of life. The second was disappointment with their parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, which they felt should go further in pressuring the Biden administration to rein in Israel’s military campaign.“I was disappointed in the resolution on Israel and Palestine because it didn’t call for an end to armed shipments,” said Kirstin Roberts, a preschool teacher who attended the protest, alluding to a statement that the parent union endorsed at its convention in July.Since last fall, many rank-and-file union members have been outspoken in their criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,000 people and took about 250 hostages. The leaders of many national unions have appeared more cautious, at times emphasizing the precipitating role of Hamas.“We were very careful about what a moral stance was and also what the implications of every word we wrote was,” the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said of the resolution her union recently adopted.In some ways, this divide reflects tensions over Israel and Gaza that exist within many institutions — like academia, the media and government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Pro Sports in Las Vegas Aren’t Cheered by Everyone

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    The history of Las Vegas has been marked by a relentless churn of hotels, casinos, theaters and restaurants. But only recently has the city’s landscape included major professional sports teams.The Golden Knights of the National Hockey League were the first to start play here in 2017. The Aces of the Women’s National Basketball Association started in 2018, and the National Football League’s Raiders arrived from Oakland in 2020. Last year, Major League Baseball’s Athletics were given the go-ahead to make the same Oakland-to-Las Vegas move, and the National Basketball Association is expected to add a team in the coming years.Las Vegas’s transformation into a pro sports town reflects not just the leagues’ interest in the city and their general embrace of sports betting, but also the power of the region’s primary economic driver, tourism. No other major city in the United States is as reliant on a single industry, and a broad coalition led by the top resort operators helped win lucrative subsidies to build new stadiums, with the thought that out-of-town visitors would follow.Those efforts will be on display on Sunday when Allegiant Stadium, home of the Raiders and built partly with public money, hosts Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.“Our role here and what Vegas provides is a platform for people with great ideas to come in and make them real,” said Steve Hill, the president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the man most responsible for helping to entice the teams to the city. “We’re a destination that is trying to say yes.”Not everyone has embraced that strategy, however. In Las Vegas, the decision to set aside public money for privately held teams has amplified scrutiny of the state’s funding of critical social services, most notably for education in the nation’s fifth-largest public school district, with about 300,000 students.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Fading Coal County Bets on Schools, but There’s One Big Hitch

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    WELCH, W.Va. — Lillian Keys came back.After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Concord University in Athens, W.Va., the 24-year-old English teacher did something rare among her peers: She returned home to Welch to teach at Mount View High School, from which she graduated in 2014. “People my age and older usually don’t come back to the county,” Ms. Keys told me. “A lot of our kids want to go away.” More