On November 16 more than 1,000 workers staged a wildcat walkout at the Smithfield Packing Company plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, the largest hog slaughterhouse in the world.
For those who've followed the working conditions at Smithfield--the ruthless speed of the production line, the lacerating injuries and the recent firings of several dozen immigrant workers--the walkout was a major development, as Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in an exclusive online report.
For background, read an editorial by Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, published last September in The Nation's first food issue about the modern-day "jungle" Smithfield's workers face.
And don't miss new Nation weblog posts by vanden Heuvel, Liza Featherstone, Tom Engelhardt, John Nichols and David Corn.
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RadioNation with Laura Flanders
Broadcast each Saturday and Sunday from 7:00 to 10:00pm EST on the Air America Radio Network, and available for listening online, RadioNation also produces a one-hour version, which is provided free to noncommercial community and college stations. If you missed last week, you can still listen online to a journalists' roundtable with Nation writer Roberto Lovato and Nation Books' Adam Shapiro, co-author of the recently released Darfur Diaries.
Bookstores
Many thanks to all of you who answered our call for suggestions for America's top bookstores. We received more than 400 submissions, including multiple plugs for well-known independent stores like Portland's Powell's, Seattle's Elliott Bay Books, San Francisco's City Lights, DC's Politics and Prose, Berkeley's Cody's, Denver's Tattered Cover and Austin's Book People. But we also received invaluable tips from Oklahoma City, Omaha, Fayetteville, Kansas City, Kalamazoo, Buffalo, and small towns in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Michigan and Nevada. Stay tuned for more info on the Nation Guide project.
Around the Nation
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The Nation
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