(Common Dreams) Update: Bernie Sanders has won the Wyoming caucus, making it his seventh win in a row (eight out of the last nine) ahead of the upcoming New York primary. The Vermont senator won with 56 percent of the vote, with rival Hillary Clinton claiming 43.8 percent.

Earlier:

A possible record turnout was expected in Wyoming on Saturday as voters caucused in the U.S. presidential election, with 14 pledged delegates and four superdelegates available for Democratic rivals Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.The numbers are not likely to determine the race one way or another, but the Sanders campaign is hoping a win in the state will keep up the momentum he built winning a handful of recent primaries—including a critical contest in Wisconsin last Tuesday.

Winning the Cowboy State would give Sanders his eighth win in a row, just in time for the high-profile New York primary and upcoming debate with Clinton.

At a press conference conference later in the New York City borough of Queens, Sanders said, "In terms of state victories and other territories, we now have one seventeen and [Clinton] has won twenty. And I think that it is very fair to say that we were way, way behind during the first half of this contest, but we are having—to say the least—a very strong second half. And we are closing very fast and now that Wyoming is behind us, we are here in New York state. I have been pleased to sense a great deal of momentum... No question in my mind, we have the momentum."

But as New York Times finance and business reporter Peter Eavis argued, “taken as a whole, Mr. Sanders’s answers seem to make sense. Crucially, his answers mostly track with a reasonably straightforward breakup plan that he introduced to Congress last year.”

Sanders told the Daily News, “How you go about [breaking up the dangerously large institutions] is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail,” later adding that it’d be the banks’ decision “how they want to reconfigure themselves.”

“You would determine is that, if a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. And then you have the secretary of treasury and some people who know a lot about this, making that determination. If the determination is that Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail, yes, they will be broken up,” he said.

(In These Times) American unions appear on their deathbed. The percentage of workers in unions is at its lowest point in 75 years, corporate politicians have spread union-busting right-to-work laws to more than half the states in the union and labor’s traditional strongholds (from manufacturing to the public sector) are rapidly being eroded. But an opportunity for labor to reverse its fortunes looms large in the Black Lives Matter movement, the largest wave of anti-racist struggle in recent memory.

If American labor is going to reverse its declining fortunes, it must begin with attacking American racism.

Racism is the lynchpin that holds corporate America together—as well as the shoals upon which American labor has sunk for centuries. Racism in America—past and present, from the colonial to the Trump era—divides workers so to prevent an effective united front. The American labor movement must seize the opportunity presented by the current upsurge and put its institutional support behind the anti-racist movement. It is more than a moral matter. Organized Labor’s very existence depends on it—no American worker movement will succeed so long as racism remains rampant in America.

Activists in the labor movement must recognize that the question of which must take priority, anti-racist or labor struggle, is a false one. The two are inextricably intertwined and mutually dependent. The labor movement will never succeed without fighting and eradicating racism. Likewise, we cannot eliminate racism without eliminating the material inequality upon which it feeds. Racism is not a mere idea floating in the cultural clouds; it is an ideology rooted in and dependent on material inequality along racial lines. In the question of ending racism and economic inequality in America it is not one or the other, but both or none.

But overcoming that racism is not impossible. This is where the opportunity presented by a rising anti-racist movement comes in. The Black Lives Matter movement is waging war on American racism. Unions can help. Primarily, unions can mobilize their still-sizable membership of 16 million workers for anti-racist struggles. Where there is anti-police brutality, anti-mass incarceration, anti-ICE or any anti-racist protest, unions should turn out their members and lend their heft to the cause. Serious turnout from labor unions would be a serious jolt for the Black Lives Matter movement—and could help transform unions’ members, too.

Second, unions have an unparalleled ability to reach white workers for anti-racist political education. Beyond the sheer number of white workers in unions’ ranks, there is no better context than labor struggle to convince workers from different backgrounds of their common bonds.

Unions should directly engage their white members through education on the anti-worker function of racism. Union leaders will meet internal resistance to committing time and resources to anti-racist struggle, but internal battles on this issue are necessary and will lead to the tough conversations members need to have.

But the crux is that unions must mobilize all of their resources and energy in the anti-racist struggle. It can’t just be a symbolic bit. Unions cannot understand anti-racism as merely solidarity work; anti-racism must be understood as a union issue itself.

(In These Times) American unions appear on their deathbed. The percentage of workers in unions is at its lowest point in 75 years, corporate politicians have spread union-busting right-to-work laws to more than half the states in the union and labor’s traditional strongholds (from manufacturing to the public sector) are rapidly being eroded. But an opportunity for labor to reverse its fortunes looms large in the Black Lives Matter movement, the largest wave of anti-racist struggle in recent memory.

If American labor is going to reverse its declining fortunes, it must begin with attacking American racism.

Racism is the lynchpin that holds corporate America together—as well as the shoals upon which American labor has sunk for centuries. Racism in America—past and present, from the colonial to the Trump era—divides workers so to prevent an effective united front. The American labor movement must seize the opportunity presented by the current upsurge and put its institutional support behind the anti-racist movement. It is more than a moral matter. Organized Labor’s very existence depends on it—no American worker movement will succeed so long as racism remains rampant in America.

Activists in the labor movement must recognize that the question of which must take priority, anti-racist or labor struggle, is a false one. The two are inextricably intertwined and mutually dependent. The labor movement will never succeed without fighting and eradicating racism. Likewise, we cannot eliminate racism without eliminating the material inequality upon which it feeds. Racism is not a mere idea floating in the cultural clouds; it is an ideology rooted in and dependent on material inequality along racial lines. In the question of ending racism and economic inequality in America it is not one or the other, but both or none.

But overcoming that racism is not impossible. This is where the opportunity presented by a rising anti-racist movement comes in. The Black Lives Matter movement is waging war on American racism. Unions can help. Primarily, unions can mobilize their still-sizable membership of 16 million workers for anti-racist struggles. Where there is anti-police brutality, anti-mass incarceration, anti-ICE or any anti-racist protest, unions should turn out their members and lend their heft to the cause. Serious turnout from labor unions would be a serious jolt for the Black Lives Matter movement—and could help transform unions’ members, too.

Second, unions have an unparalleled ability to reach white workers for anti-racist political education. Beyond the sheer number of white workers in unions’ ranks, there is no better context than labor struggle to convince workers from different backgrounds of their common bonds.

Unions should directly engage their white members through education on the anti-worker function of racism. Union leaders will meet internal resistance to committing time and resources to anti-racist struggle, but internal battles on this issue are necessary and will lead to the tough conversations members need to have.

But the crux is that unions must mobilize all of their resources and energy in the anti-racist struggle. It can’t just be a symbolic bit. Unions cannot understand anti-racism as merely solidarity work; anti-racism must be understood as a union issue itself.

As I stood in a park amid dead-serious Bernie Sanders volunteers on a recent Saturday afternoon, it occurred to me that the media is missing the real story of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

There was an upbeat determination—instead of the pessimism reflected in news stories and analyses—at this Sanders rally, in Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles’ Fairfax district. Basketball was being played at nearby courts, but the Sanders supporters weren’t there for recreation.

“Every congressional district must have a full slate of Bernie supporters,” Fisher emphasized. What is important, he added, is to elect delegates who will hit the convention floor “very strong for Sanders.” And he told the group that only registered Democrats can vote. He noted that some Sanders supporters couldn’t stand the Democratic Party. “I know for some people this is a bridge too far, but they register as a Democrat,” he stated.

This process is being repeated throughout the nation for Democrats and Republicans, following rules so complicated—and generally so rigged against outsiders and newcomers—that only experts can understand them. At this stage of the game, the most valuable players are those who understand the twists and turns. If Sanders manages to deny Clinton enough delegates on the first ballot, a contested convention would be thrust into a delegate-by-delegate fight, and victory would go to the smartest, toughest and best organized. That is why Fisher’s presentation was so important.

There may have been bigger grass-roots organizations in history, but he’s got a point about the training. I’ve been following these folks for several months and have seen some of them evolve from computer-wary to proficient, tech-oriented workers who can make targeted phone calls from lists sent digitally from campaign headquarters in Vermont.

Such efforts are why the obituaries being written about the Sanders campaign are so premature.

The first black nation to overthrow its colonial masters still enslaves 300,000 of its children. Unlike the initial slavery which gave birth to Haiti, this slavery is not a result of kidnapping or intertribal warfare but poverty.

In an island with a population of 6 million, 300,000 children perform unpaid labor because their parents are simply too poor to care of them. Thus, they are given to families slightly better off than themselves where they work in an unregulated market for food and shelter. These vulnerable children are the face of Haitian poverty.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of millennials who do their research, it has now become well-known that Hillary Clinton, in her role as secretary of state, intervened in the internal politics of Haiti to prevent the government from raising the minimum wage $.24 per hour to $.61 per hour.

However, even that is only half of the scandal. Given the constant bleeding of American jobs to places like Haiti, how does it benefit American workers to keep wages in third world countries low?

From January 2008 to April 2015, about 86,800 jobs (or 39%) in the U.S. apparel manufacturing sector had disappeared. These jobs continue to be shipped abroad because free trade deals have made it lucrative for companies to outsource jobs to places where labor is cheap but to sell goods to places where consumer prices are high.

A State Department invested in the interest of ordinary Americans would have told the garment manufacturers if they don’t like Haiti’s new minimum wage laws, they can bring the 25,000 jobs back to the United States. Instead, Clinton took steps to maintain the very conditions that make outsourcing so attractive to corporations.

Who does our government work for? Who will Hillary Clinton work for?

(The Nation) Nation editors examined the qualifications of both Clinton and Sanders before making an endorsement in the race. We concluded that, on the most basic measures, both candidates are exceptionally well qualified: Clinton is a former senator and secretary of state with vast experience working on an array of critical issues: from children’s rights to women’s rights to healthcare reform, and the direction of American foreign policy. Sanders is a former mayor, congressman, and US senator who helped to form the Congressional Progressive Caucus, became a master of the legislative process (using amendments to shape policy even in Republican-controlled congresses), and forged a remarkable bipartisan coalition to develop and pass the most comprehensive piece of veterans legislation to be enacted in decades.

We could accept either of these candidates as president, but we endorsed Sanders with enthusiasm because we believe that he has additional qualifications rooted in judgement and vision.He did vote against authorizing the war in Iraq, and against the Patriot Act, and against trade deals that have done enormous damage to the prospects of American workers and American communities. He has steadily opposed the death penalty and argued for criminal-justice reform, and he recognizes and challenges the economic underpinnings of structural racism. He objects to regime change as a foreign-policy priority and instead argues for a focus on diplomacy and development. And he has recognized, along with Elizabeth Warren, that our rigged economy extends from a rigged political process in which special-interest groups and billionaires have far more influence that citizens. On many of these issues, Clinton has developed credible positions, but she keeps arguing for lowered expectations and more limited goals. That’s not what is needed. When Sanders speaks of the need for a political revolution, he evidences an understanding of just how serious the moment is and just how bold we must be in fighting for the future. To our view, that recognition is a qualification. Indeed, it is the qualification that makes us confident that Bernie Sanders is the candidate who is best prepared to be the Democratic nominee and the president of the United States.

(TomDispatch) And this, of course, is exactly the repetitive world of war (and failure) into which the young, especially in America’s poorest high schools, are being recruited, even if they don’t know it, via JROTC. It's a Pentagon-funded program that promises to pave the way for your future college education, give meaning to your life, and send you to exotic lands, while ensuring that the country’s all-volunteer military never lacks for new troops to dispatch to old (verging on ancient) conflicts. As Ann Jones has written, “It should be no secret that the United States has the biggest, most efficiently organized, most effective system for recruiting child soldiers in the world. With uncharacteristic modesty, however, the Pentagon doesn’t call it that. Its term is ‘youth development program.’” So let’s offer thanks for small favors when someone -- in this case, ex-Army Ranger and TomDispatch regular Rory Fanning (author of Worth Fighting For: An Army Ranger’s Journey Out of the Military and Across America) -- feels the urge to do something about that massive, militarized propaganda effort in our schools. In my book, Fanning is the equivalent of any 12 of our generals and we need more like him both in those schools and in our country. Tom

The Wars in Our Schools
An Ex-Army Ranger Finds a New Mission
By Rory Fanning

Early each New Year’s Day I head for Lake Michigan with a handful of friends. We look for a quiet stretch of what, only six months earlier, was warm Chicago beach. Then we trudge through knee-deep snow in bathing suits and, fighting wind gusts and hangovers. Sooner or later, we arrive where the snowpack meets the shore and boot through a thick crust of lake ice, yelling and swearing as we dive into near-freezing water.

It took me a while to begin to understand why I do this every year, or for that matter why for the last decade since I left the military I’ve continued to inflict other types of pain on myself with such unnerving regularity.

“Is the military like Call of Duty?” one of the students asks, referring to a popular single-shooter video game.

“I’ve never played,” I respond. “Does it include kids who scream when their mothers and fathers are killed? Do a lot of civilians die?”

“Not really,” he says uncomfortably.

“Well, then it’s not realistic. Besides, you can turn off a video game. You can’t turn off war.”

A quiet settles over the room that even a lame joke of mine can’t break. Finally, after a silence, one of the kids suddenly says, “I’ve never heard anything like this before.”

What I feel is the other side of that response. That first experience of mine talking to America’s future cannon fodder confirms my assumption that, not surprisingly, the recruiters in our schools aren’t telling the young anything that might make them think twice about the glories of military life.

I leave that school with an incredible sense of calm, something I haven’t felt since my time began in Afghanistan. I tell myself I want to speak to classrooms at least once a week.

My thought now is full disclosure going forward. If a teenager is going to sign up to kill and die for a cause or even the promise of a better life, then the least he or she should know is the good, the bad, and the ugly about the job. I had no illusions that plenty of kids -- maybe most of them, maybe all of them -- wouldn’t sign up anyway, regardless of what I said. But I swear to myself: no moralism, no regrets, no judgments. That’s my credo now. Just the facts as I see them.

It’s finally starting to dawn on me, however. In our world, life is scary and I’m not the only one heading for Lake Michigan on cold winter mornings or gloomy nights. Teachers out there in the public schools are anxious, too. It’s dark days for them. They are under attack and busy fighting back against school privatization, closures, and political assaults on their pensions. The popular JROTC program is a cash cow for their schools and they are discouraged from further rocking a boat already in choppy waters.

You’ll bring too much “tension” to our school, one teacher tells me with regret. “Most of my kids need the military if they plan on going to college,” I hear from another who says he can’t invite me to his school anyway. But most of my requests simply go out into the void unanswered. Or promises to invite me go unfulfilled. Who, after all, wants to make waves or extracurricular trouble when teachers are already under fierce attack from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his unelected school board?

I understand and yet, in a world without a draft, JROTC’s school-to-military pipeline is a lifeline for Washington’s permanent war across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa. Its unending conflicts are only possible because kids like those I've talked to in the few classrooms I’ve visited continue to volunteer. The politicians and the school boards, time and again, claim their school systems are broke. No money for books, teacher’s salaries and pensions, healthy lunches, etc...

And yet, in 2015, the U.S. government spent $598 billion on the military, more than half of its total discretionary budget, and nearly 10 times what it spent on education. In 2015, we also learned that the Pentagon continues to pour what, it is estimated, will in the end be $1.4 trillion into a fleet of fighter planes that may never work as advertised. Imagine the school system we would have in this country if teachers were compensated as well as weapons contractors. Confronting the attacks on education in the U.S. should also mean, in part, trying to interrupt that school-to-military pipeline in places like Chicago. It’s hard to fight endless trillion-dollar wars if kids aren’t enlisting.