Information is power. Our mission at Portside is to seek out and to provide information that empowers you -- that empowers the left. Every day we search hundreds of sources to connect you with the most interesting, striking and useful material. Just once a year we appeal to you to contribute to make it possible to continue this work. Please help.

 

Friday Nite Videos | December 6, 2019

Why Billionaires Won’t Save Us. GIULIANI! (Here He Goes Again). Pete Buttigieg and the Republican Lie. Youth Climate Strike Leader Endorses Bernie. Who Is Worse: Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell?

Bloomberg TV Interview: Exactly Who You Feared

That Bloomberg’s comments on his stop-and-frisk policies are so easy to demonstrate as false suggests he either wasn’t prepared to handle the question or that he doesn’t care about the truth

General Strike in France Challenges Macron

Thursday’s protests completed the circle of anger against Mr. Macron begun last year by the Yellow Vests. This time, it was the unionized employed — teachers, hospital workers, some civil servants — who came out.

Limited Eating Times Fight Obesity and Diabetes

Healthy people can adopt Time Restricted Eating (TRE), independent of diet and exercise, to reduce their risk for metabolic diseases. A new study suggests it is also an effective treatment for people with obesity or diabetes.

Kansas City, Missouri, Approves Free Public Transit for

Mass transit measure is championed as "visionary" way to reduce inequality and better serve everyone in the community. "Let's do this everywhere."

French General Strike; One Year of the Yellow Vests

French workers cherish their welfare state. That’s why they’re striking. Macron’s proposed retirement reforms are latest attempt to erode the safety net. The people are fighting back. First anniversary of Yellow Vest uprising marks an historic moment

There’s a Philosophy Behind Trump’s Lies

The president’s falsehoods are dizzying in number, but they follow a predictable, time-honored tradition of how dictators and totalitarians rule.

Fred Hampton Murdered by Chicago Police 50 Years Ago

Early morning, December 4, 1969, fourteen police officers executed a search warrant on a Chicago flat rented by the Black Panther Party. Supposedly looking for illegal weapons, instead, they shot and killed two people, leaving four others wounded.

Reconstruction - The Unfinished Revolution

Charting the ironies of freedom won and lost during and after the Civil War, Eric Foner, the American historian, has also helped us better understand the ambiguous consequences of what were almost always only partial victories.

Dec. 5, 2019-Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements

Reader Comments: Economy Not Fine, Half Work Low-Wage Jobs; Reparations; Centrist Dems; Work at Amazon; Chicago Teachers Strike Lessons; UAW GM Strike Was Significant; Resources: Bullies in Blue; Multicultural Children's Books; "I Am Troy Davis"....
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Culture

Mark Zuckerberg and I

Brendan Walsh Rattle
“I’ve become obsessed,” writes the poet Branden Walsh, “with trying to understand the compulsions and sickness of a society that believes billionaires are a healthy/natural component of civilization.” He tries here to humanize just one.

books

Monopoly and Its Discontents

Gerald Berk The American Prospect
It's no Marxist critique of class power--would that it were--but Matt Stoller's Goliath, aimed at moving the Democratic Party off dead center, slams all the right enemies in urging the resuscitating of the anti-monopoly tradition of the 20th century

books

Racial Terror & Totalitarianism

Mary Helen Washington Solidarity
African American anti-fascist intellectuals sought to link colonialism and U.S.-style racism with European fascism using a variety of rhetorical and artistic means. This book offers a portrait of those efforts.

Labor

labor

Harvard’s Graduate Student Union Begins Strike

James S. Bikales and Ruoqi Zhang The Harvard Crimson
Harvard’s graduate student union began its strike Tuesday at midnight after more than a year of contract negotiations with the University.

labor

Almost Half of All Americans Work in Low-Wage Jobs

BY Aimeea Picchi CBS News
Even though the economy is adding more jobs, there's increasing evidence that many of those new positions don't offer the kind of wages and benefits required to get ahead. Americans are working but aren't earning enough to gain economic stability.

Friday nite video

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Why Billionaires Won’t Save Us

Hasan Minhaj dissects how the ultra-rich use philanthropy to get richer, distract from the injustices on which they built their fortunes, and dictate politics and policy

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Who Is Worse: Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell?

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich discusses the most dangerous politician of his lifetime, who has damaged our country in ways that will take a generation to undo...Mitch McConnell

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The Report | Movie

The plot follows staffer Daniel J. Jones and the Senate Intelligence Committee as they investigate the CIA's use of torture following the September 11 attacks. It covers more than a decade's worth of real-life political intrigue. Starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening. Streaming on Amazon.

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Dark Waters | Movie

Mark Ruffalo stars as an attorney who goes after DuPont for dumping toxic wastes in West Virginia. But more than a simple "superhero triumphs" docudrama, Dark Waters is a dark tale of the human consequences of corporate power for everyone it touches.