Portside

Who You Gonna Call?

JULY 2 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of the first day of business for a brand-new federal agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which had been created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Today it is on its deathbed.

Over the last six decades, EEOC was the primary enforcer of federal laws that prohibit employment-related discrimination, including sex discrimination, racial discrimination, and age discrimination. Just last year, EEOC was able to compel hundreds of employers to pay a total of more than $700 million in damages to some 21,000 individuals who had been the victims of illegal employment discrimination.

For 60 years, EEOC has been responsible for attempting to ensure that employers determine wages, benefits and working conditions without regard to race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual preference, or age. Yet despite the law and EEOC’s efforts, it is indisputable that Blacks and women in the U.S. are the victims of employment discrimination that is little different than it was in the 1980s. 

It was EEOC that determined that newspapers were violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when they published “help-wanted” advertising in separate sections for women and for men.

It was EEOC that determined it was illegal for employers to fire female employees when they marry.

It was EEOC that required employers to desegregate restrooms, shower and locker rooms and cafeterias. 

In its first full year of operations, EEOC handled 8854 cases of employment discrimination. In 2011, it handled 99,947 cases. In 2025, it handled 237,251 cases.

On January 28, 2025, President Trump fired two of the three EEOC Commissioners. The Commission cannot meet or conduct business without a quorum present. It will remain out of business until and unless a second Commissioner is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Don’t hold your breath. 

For a 25-minute journey down memory lane, you can watch “EEOC at 40: Benchmark on a March to Justice” here: https://youtu.be/823c0gRCAk4?si=-sDF3kWBd_v60HsR

THIS Is Why Haiti Is So Impoverished

JULY 3 IS THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY of the arrival of three French warships in the harbor of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, on a mission of international blackmail.

On that 1825 day, more than 20 years had passed since the Haitian Revolution had forced the departure of the last French soldier, but France had never recognized (you might say, blessed) Haiti’s independence and every major power had followed France’s lead. (The U.S. did not do so until 1862, when Abraham Lincoln was President.) 

As soon as the French ships were joined by 11 more, they presented Haiti with a decree issued Charles X, King of France, who demanded Haiti compensate France for the value of what it lost in the Haitian revolution, namely 150 million francs, the equivalent of about 1.5 billion of today’s dollars, or else.

If Haiti did not agree to pay the required sum, the French fleet would proceed to reduce every Haitian coastal city to rubble. After a week’s discussion, the Haitian Senate accepted the French ultimatum. 

In 1922 Haiti had yet to pay France the entire sum, and France sold the debt to National City Bank (now Citibank).  It was finally paid off in 1947. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-history-how-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed

‘Fight—Don't Starve!’

JULY 4 IS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY of the beginning of the Communist Party’s National Unemployment Convention in Chicago. More than 1300 delegates attended the 2-day meeting in 1930, which resulted in the establishment of Unemployed Councils of the USA.

For a short, informative introduction to the Unemployed Councils, from the perspective of the organization that created them, visit https://www.cpusa.org/article/unemployed-councils-of-the-1930s-a-brief-history/

One Pipeline Too Many

JULY 5 IS THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of environmental activists forcing two of the largest utility companies in the U.S. to abandon their 6-year effort to build the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline across North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia

Long before Duke Energy and Dominion Energy threw in the towel in 2020, a Dominion Energy agent told a Churchville, Virginia, father whose home was in the path of the proposed pipeline, “We’re a billion-dollar company and we’re going to put the pipeline wherever we want to put it.”

But when the two giant companies abruptly cancelled the project, Southern Environmental Law Center relished their success. SELC Program Director DJ Gerken remarked, “No one is going to mess with public lands or underserved communities in our six states again without stopping, thinking, and worrying about SELC.” 

A representative of the Sustainable Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Project of the Natural Resources Defense Council agreed, saying “The costly and unneeded Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have threatened waterways and communities across its 600-mile path. As they abandon this dirty pipe dream, Dominion and Duke should now pivot to investing more in energy efficiency, wind and solar — that’s how to provide jobs and a better future for all.” https://ncnewsline.com/2020/07/06/pw-exclusive-the-death-of-a-pipeline/
 

Happy Birthday to The Nation, and Many More

JULY 6 IS THE 160TH ANNIVERSARY of the publication of the first issue of The Nation, one of the most important magazines ever produced in the U.S. https://www.thenation.com/

Mercury Poisoning at Its Worst

JULY 7 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the publication of “Minamata,” by W. Eugene Smith and Aileen M. Smith.  It is a sensational, lavishly illustrated, 192-page expose of a violent corporate cover-up of deadly mercury poisoning taking place in Minamata, Japan.

Minamata is a company town, dominated by a huge chemical company, Chisso, the town's biggest employer and owner of the local hospital.

Some Minamata residents had been concerned for years about an unidentified syndrome that was killing cats and crows and was suspected of causing central nervous system problems in humans. Their concerns were poo-pooed by local health authorities, who were all either on the Chisso payroll or the public payroll, which was heavily funded by taxes paid by the corporation.

Finally when multiple cases of unexplained paralysis among children could not be ignored, the hospital director, a Chisso employee, reported for the first time the existence of an "epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system."

The Chisso Corporation took charge investigating the cause of the epidemic, which had a fatality rate of 35 percent.  It took them more than three years to conclude that the victims had been poisoned by mercury, more than 20 tons of which had been intentionally dumped by Chisso into Minamata Bay.  The bay's fish and shellfish were a major food source for Minamata residents.    

Faced with the certain knowledge that many Minamatans were suffering from mercury poisoning, Chisso denied that its dumping was responsible, and continued  to use the process that produced tons of mercury-contaminated waste. Then children began to be born in Minamata with horrible physical deformities and deafness and blindness, caused by the mercury poisoning of their parents.

For nearly a decade after mercury was identified as the culprit, Chisso continued to dispose of mercury waste in the bay. When Minamatans and their supporters protested, Chisso unleashed their second weapon against public health, namely thugs or goons, which in Japan are known as yakuza. Any Minamatan bold enough to protest what Chisso was doing was very likely to be heavily beaten.

And even though the mercury-caused disease had been officially identified, Chisso was powerful enough to keep the lid on the story. When W. Eugene and Aileen Smith decided in 1971 to live in Minamata in order to document the disaster, yakuza beat Eugene badly enough to cause permanent brain damage and considerably shorten his life. But they were unable to prevent him and Aileen Smith from taking the photographs and writing the text that appeared in Life magazine and later formed the nucleus of the Smiths’ award-winning book. Eugene, who had never recovered from the attack by Chisso's goons, died less than three years later. https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/w-eugene-smith-minamata-warning-to-the-world/

Cuba Stands Up to U.S. Bullying

JULY 8 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of Cuban Premier Fidel Castro celebrating Cuba’s recent success in taking over two oil refineries owned by U.S. corporations, Texaco and Standard Oil, and one owned by British-owned Shell Oil. Cuba seized the three refineries when they refused to refine crude oil from the Soviet Union.

Castro said Cuba had won “every round” in the fight against U.S. economic aggression and that Cuba would continue to do so. He said that the U.S. government had miscalculated when it thought the refusal of the foreign-owned refineries to process Soviet crude oil would deprive Cuba of essential fuel. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2022-02-02/cuba-embargoed-us-trade-sanctions-turn-sixty

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