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If party politics seems hopeless to you these days, look for a glimmer of hope down ticket, as we did with North Carolina’s Eric Fink, who is running as an insurgent outsider for State Senate. The law professor and Brooklyn transplant is challenging one of the lawmakers behind the HB2 “bathroom bill”—widely decried as an attack on transgender rights—with a grassroots platform based on economic justice and social democracy. He reports from the campaign trail about his state’s struggle for LGBT rights, Moral Mondays, and progressive politics in a broken electoral system.

We also check in on Verizon’s massive strike, Uber’s new legal troubles, the Rana Plaza factory disaster three years on, and campaigning for Palestinian rights within organized labor. With recommended reading on labor and the elections, and the founders and inequality.

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Verizon Brand Takes a Hit With Consumers As Strike Drags On (Fortune)

Verizon Strike Update: Replacement Workers Unsafe, Unions Allege (Patch)

Uber Settles Cases With Concessions, but Drivers Stay Freelancers (New York Times)

Will Uber’s New ‘Drivers Association’ Have Any Real Power? (Huffington Post)

UAW Overrules Academic Workers BDS Vote Against Israel Despite Finding Strong Turnout, No Misconduct (In These Times)

Three years after Rana Plaza disaster, has anything changed? (Reuters)

Michelle: A Western Company Could Finally Be Held Accountable for the Rana Plaza Disaster (The Nation)

Conversation

Eric Fink, North Carolina State Senate Candidate

Fink for NC 2016

Feeling the local Bern: Professor challenges lawmaker (Triad City Beat)

Faculty page

Argh, I Wish I’d Written That!

Michelle: Alana Semuels, The Founding Fathers Weren’t Concerned With Inequality (Atlantic)

Sarah: Jake Blumgart, Labor’s Cautious Endorsements (American Prospect)

The post Belabored Podcast #102: A Left Turn on the Campaign Trail, with Eric Fink appeared first on Dissent Magazine.