Murray Hill Incorporated is Running for Congress

Murray Hill, Inc. is a Maryland corporation and a public relations and advertising firm that announced at the end of January, 2010 that it intends to run as a Republican for Maryland's 8th Congressional district. The company's announcement that it will run for office came after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark January, 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case that corporations have the same political and free-speech rights as U.S. citizens. The company is selling mugs and T-Shirts with the political slogan, "Corporations are people, too!"



Thom Hartman Interviews Murry Hill Incorporated About Running for Congress

Howard Zinn Died

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam... died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

Full story at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/145455/people%27s_historian_and_progressive_hero_howard_zinn_dies

Union Activism

You might want to check out this article from TruthOut.

SAN FRANCISCO HOTEL ARRESTS - A SIGN OF A BIGGER CONFLICT TO COME
By David Bacon, TruthOut Report

San Francisco, California - AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm joined 1400 hotel workers and their supporters last week as they rallied and marched to the San Francisco Hilton demanding a fair contract. Over 100 protesters, including Trumka and Wilhelm, were then arrested for sitting in and blocking the doors. The action culminated in the launch of a boycott of the hotel, one of the city's most luxurious.

The Hilton march and arrests are a preview of a spring of growing conflict between workers and the giant chains that now own and operate the city's Class A hotels. Although San Francisco has seen more of that conflict over the last six months than other cities, it is now spreading around the country. By the summer, it may involve a confrontation among the hotels and over 40,000 workers in at least nine cities.

For the rest of the story go to: http://www.truthout.org/san-francisco-hotel-arrests-a-sign-a-bigger-conflict-come56042

Welcome to INFS 2520

You are viewing this page as the homepage of the course in D2L. However, this page is actually a blog that you can view at anytime by going to the Alternative Knowledge blog at <http://altknow.blogspot.com/>.

I will be adding information to this blog often, so please take time to check it at least weekly. You will also notice links to videos and web sites to the right. Some of these videos we will be viewing in class (see the syllabus for details). I have put links to the online versions here so that you can refer to them if you are writing a video reaction paper. Some of the videos are here for your own personal viewing if you are interested. If you want to view these after the class is over you should bookmark the links. After the first week I will be emailing you an invitation to join the blog. If you sign up you will be able to contribute postings to the blog which will appear in the homepage of D2L. This will allow you to share topics related to the course with me and your classmates. (Note: the topics that you share must be related to the course. The course blog is NOT a completely open space to share issues or topics that are not related to the course.)

Go to the Content area of the class and check out the syllabus, the assignments, and all the other course material. I will be setting up discussion forms later in the semester. The discussion forums will be used by book discussion leaders. Everyone in the class will sign up to work in a group of 2-3 to lead small group discussions on one of the course books.

Attendance in this class is very important since we will be covering a lot of unique material, and there will be a lot of conversation in class that you will not be able to benefit from unless you attend class. We will also be watching many videos that provide unique and important content. I will place all the videos on library reserve so that you can watch them in the library, and many have links from this blog page. If you miss viewing the video in the class you will have to make it up on your own time. The last important thing is to keep up with the readings. Since we will be discussing the material that I am assigning you to read, our discussions will only be useful if everyone reads the material by the time we discuss it in class. See the end of the syllabus for a reading schedule.

I look forward to spending time with all of you this semester.