75 Years for Protesting in Black?

75 Years for Protesting in Black? feature image
June 22, 2017
Inauguration Day demonstrators potentially face decades in prison on charges they say are all ‘Trumped’ up. The arrests and subsequent indictments appear to correspond to the Trump Era pattern of a shock-and-awe gambit followed by a lot of confusion and disarray. Advocates are concerned President Trump’s ‘law and order’ message, combined with his contempt for dissent, could mean an intensified police and prosecutorial response to demonstrations.
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75 Years for Protesting in Black?

Cuban Foreign Minister Responds to Trump

Cuban Foreign Minister Responds to Trump feature image
June 22, 2017
Donald Trump announced in Miami the policy his government has decided to implement with regard to Cuba. These were announced in a Theater named after Manuel Artime, civilian leader of the mercenary brigade that invaded our country at Playa Girón or the Bay of Pigs. It was a grotesque Cold War-era spectacle, made before a small audience, composed of old henchmen and thieves of the Batista dictatorship, mercenaries from the Playa Girón brigade and terrorists...
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Cuban Foreign Minister Responds to Trump

Tidbits - June 22, 2017 - Reader Comments

Tidbits - June 22, 2017 - Reader Comments feature image
June 22, 2017
Reader Comments: GOP's Secret Health Bill - not popular in Red states; Across the Country, Verdicts Protect Cops Who Kill; Naomi Klein; Mueller's Trump Investigation - Follow the Money; Readers respond to various Portside posts - Progressive Electoral Politics, People's Summit, Socialists and Electoral Politics; On the United Front; Gig Work; and more...
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Tidbits - June 22, 2017 - Reader Comments

75 Years for Protesting in Black?

75 Years for Protesting in Black? feature image
June 22, 2017
Inauguration Day demonstrators potentially face decades in prison on charges they say are all ‘Trumped’ up. The arrests and subsequent indictments appear to correspond to the Trump Era pattern of a shock-and-awe gambit followed by a lot of confusion and disarray. Advocates are concerned President Trump’s ‘law and order’ message, combined with his contempt for dissent, could mean an intensified police and prosecutorial response to demonstrations.
Read More »

75 Years for Protesting in Black?

Problem of Working Class White Voters

Problem of Working Class White Voters feature image
June 22, 2017
Why the white worker theme is harmful. It’s a mistake to racialize an economy that harms the entire working class. What has happened to more whites now is that the market has moved past them as well. It took almost 40 years to get to this point, in the near term no recipe of policy fixes will sufficiently remedy the effects. Democrats need to focus on reversing those long-term trends, but also must have something to offer workers now.
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Problem of Working Class White Voters

Campaign Against Colin Kaepernick

Campaign Against Colin Kaepernick feature image
June 22, 2017
The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder. Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better toe the line.
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Campaign Against Colin Kaepernick

Podemos: Lessons From Spain

Lessons From Spain feature image
June 21, 2017
Podemos has created a new form of struggle based in large part on the ideas of people working in the tradition of Gramsci. Iglesias argued that as the broad mass of people were not engaging in politics through the existing parties, the left had to go where the people were. This was a war of ideology and of position.
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Podemos: Lessons From Spain

Jay Z: I'm Taking On the Bail Industry

I'm Taking On the Bail Industry feature image
June 21, 2017
Carter, known as Jay Z, is a lauded recording artist, philanthropist and father: "When black and brown people are over-policed and arrested and accused of crimes at higher rates than others, and then forced to pay for their freedom before they ever see trial, big bail companies prosper. This pre-incarceration conundrum is devastating to families."
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Jay Z: I'm Taking On the Bail Industry

Chicago Rally Philando Castile Verdict

Chicago Rally Philando Castile Verdict feature image
June 21, 2017
As much as Sunday’s rally was a show of solidarity in Chicago for Castile’s family, organizers said, it also was a reminder that the work of activists was far from finished and that the fight must continue.
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Chicago Rally Philando Castile Verdict

How to Save the N.A.A.C.P. From Irrelevance

How to Save the N.A.A.C.P. From Irrelevance feature image
June 21, 2017
Today, the N.A.A.C.P. carries the weight of history and burden of bureaucracy. But it does not seem willing to shed blood, literally, or in terms of the uncomfortable work that characterizes effective activism.
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How to Save the N.A.A.C.P. From Irrelevance

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Portside Culture

The Sense of Art: In Memoriam John Berger

Mike Gonzalez
International Socialism
British artist, novelist, prodigious essayist and poet John Berger, best known for her magisterial and approachable Ways of Seeing and who died in January, is remembered here for his radical approach to Art, when it functions to make sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, when it becomes a meeting place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, what Berger called guts and honor.

A Great Vision

Kim Scipes
Substance News
A writer tells the story of his left wing family. Reviewer Scipes takes us on a tour.

A Great Vision

Kim Scipes
Substance News
A writer tells the story of his left wing family. Reviewer Scipes takes us on a tour.

Eat the Food You Trust: Lessons from Food Fraud 2017

Roy Manuell
New Food Magazine
Food Fraud 2017 highlighted just how serious an issue food fraud has become. It’s organised, criminal and widespread, but there are solutions that we must explore. Consumer trust in the food industry is on the decline in light of scandals such as the inescapable European horse meat incident in 2013 and melamine milk incident in China.These are two examples of what we call food fraud.

In Its First Season, The Handmaid’s Tale’s Greatest Failing Is How It Handles Race

Angelica Jade Bastién
Vulture
How can you attempt to craft a political, artistically rich narrative that trades in the real-life experiences of black and brown women, while ignoring them and the ways sexism intersects with racism? The bodies and histories of black and brown women prove to be useful templates for shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, but our actual voices aren’t.

War Alphabet

Jill McDonough
Poetry Daily
What is war? Jill McDonough’s alphabetical poem evolves from World War I’s soldier-oriented them vs. us to the hidden terrors of today’s warfare: CIA, NSA, Black Ops, ETC.

Bill Clinton: His Career a Disaster for Black Americans

Nathan J. Robinson
Jacobin
With all the toxicity coming out of the White House and the GOP-dominated Congress, it's important to remember how insufferable were the politics of the neoliberal Democrats in power under Bill Clinton. The book under review (an article derived from the book is below) should help us remember how malignant were the Clinton years when it came to economic and social justice.
More Portside Culture

Portside Labor

Brazil: Workers’ Rights Under Threat From Government Reforms

Mathilde Dorcadie
Equal Times
The ousting of President Dilma Rousseff has provided an opportunity for the proponents of neoliberalism and those who want to break union power. Most of Brazil's union centers fear that proposed government reforms will weaken unions and further the spread of subcontracting.

L.A. and Long Beach Port Workers Begin Striking

Jack Flemming
Los Angeles Times
"Around 60 truck drivers and warehouse workers serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports began striking terminals across the region Monday morning. The strike was called by the Teamsters union Local 848 to protest what it alleges is illegal subcontracting, misclassification and wage theft by trucking companies."

The Conservative Case for Unions

Jonathan Rauch
The Atlantic (July/August 2017 issue)
The decline of the business model of old-style industrial unions may have been economically inevitable, but the lack of any new model to replace it has been socially calamitous. Unions will not be easy to fix, but allowing them to innovate would be a first step, and possibly also a last chance. How a new kind of labor organization could address the grievances underlying populist anger.

Don't Make a Bad Deal Worse: UE Statement on Renegotiating NAFTA

UE General Executive Board
UE
UE's General Executive Board denounced Trump's racist and jingoistic proposals for a renegotion of NAFTA and instead called for a new set of trade policies that prioritize workers common interests and relies on international solidarity as its cornerstone. Any renegotiation of NAFTA must be oriented around the improvement of workers’ lives and protection of the environment focused on those regions of the continent where conditions are the most desperate.

California Looks to Expand Overtime Pay

Margo Roosevelt
Orange County Regiser
"Two weeks after the November presidential election, a Texas judge put a hold on a sweeping reform of federal overtime standards that would have raised the wages of 4.2 million Americans. President Barack Obama’s administration appealed the ruling. But after Donald Trump took office in January, the appeal was delayed. Now California and a handful of other states are moving to enact the Obama proposal. Their reasoning: workers have seen their pay erode"

A Day in the Life of a Day Laborer

Stephen Franklin
In These Times
He waits along with more than 100,000 others who gather daily on dozens of street corners across the United States, according to figures from 2006. It is a world, where workers are often cheated out of their wages, injured on the job and then left without medical care, according to a 2006 survey. Where workers who complain often suffer retaliation by employers who fire them, suspend them, or threaten to call immigration officials.

Cab Drivers Union Says Chicago Taxi Industry Is Nearing Collapse

Jeff Schuhrke
Working In These Times
The union stresses that the decline of the taxi industry is a loss for the broader public. Unlike most rideshare vehicles, taxis serve people without bank accounts by accepting cash, and they also have more stringent requirements on providing access to people with disabilities.
More Portside Labor

Friday Nite Videos

How Does Money Laundering Work?
Posted by Portside on June 16, 2017

Money laundering "cleans" money of its criminal origins. But how does it actually work? 

Woody Guthrie -- I Ain't Got No Home/Old Man Trump
Posted by Portside on June 17, 2017

In December 1950, Woody Guthrie moved to an apartment building in Brooklyn – Beach Haven Apartments. His landlord: Fred Trump, father of Donald Trump.

What's in the GOP's Mysterious Health Care Bill?
Posted by Portside on June 16, 2017

The Senate GOP keeps its plan to repeal and replace Obamacare shrouded in secrecy

Lynching in America: “Uprooted” Trailer
Posted by Portside on June 16, 2017

When their grandmother died, Luz Myles, Phoebe Dedman, and Shirah Dedman found a box of old articles revealing a shocking story at the center of their family tree: their grandfather was lynched in Louisiana in 1912.

Australian Prime Minister Does Donald Trump Impression
Posted by Portside on June 16, 2017

In new leaked audio from what was supposed to be an off-the-record dinner, Australian Prime Minister Turnbull roasts the American president.

 

Naomi Klein: How to Resist Trump's Shock Doctrine
Posted by Portside on June 14, 2017

Some savvy people around Trump are using the daily shocks as cover to advance wildly pro-corporate policies. Here's a 5-step plan to resist.

The Case for Obstruction of Justice in Three Minutes
Posted by Portside on June 9, 2017

 

 

Key moments in the testimony of former FBI director James B. Comey about his interactions with President Trump before the Senate Intelligence Committee June 8. 

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