Portside

Reader Comments: NBC Nightly News Report - Grassroots Opposition to Military Action Against Syria; AFL-CIO and ILWU; March on Washington; 40th anniversary of Chile coup; Announcements: No one should die for fashion - Sept 6-New York; Veterans For Peace Speak Out-New York-Sept 9; #femfuture Retreat-Oct. 20 - 22 - Rhinebeck, NY - Scholarships Available; Sept 21st: Draw the Line against Keystone XL; Chilean posters-1970-73 Exhibit-New York-Sept. 23; STOP WARS - Yard sign

The AFL-CIO is discussing “the next stage” in alternate formations and there “will be some limited, thoughtful experiments in different places through various affiliates.” The AFL-CIO also plans to support an ambitious multi-union effort to organize in Texas. “The AFT has come to us and said, ‘We want you to convene other unions to make a long-term investment in Texas and we’re going to do it.”

Reader comments: Prisons; Labor Unions; Banning Russia from the Olympics - a Very Bad Idea; Remembering Viola Liuzzo; Bayard Rustin & '63 March on Washington; American Jews & Israeli Racism; Student Debt; Announcements: FREEDOM '63 REMIXED - Legacies of the March on Washington - Aug 16 -New York; The Forgotten History of the March on Washington, Aug 22 -Washington, DC - two events; Walmart Workers are Standing Up!; CCDS 7th Convention; Useful graphic on Climate Change

The Workers Defense Project, founded in 2002, has emerged as one of the nation's most creative organizations for immigrant workers. Its focus is the Texas construction industry, which employs more than 600,000 workers. It is one of 225 worker centers nationwide, aiding immigrant workers. Workers Centers show what is possible, and may help infuse new life into the labor movement.

Not only does an image like that of construction workers attacking protesters (as famously occurred on Wall Street in May 1970) justify foreign interventions and military spending, it stigmatizes dissenters as illegitimate and alien to the body politic. That grossly distorts real working class sentiment or the class composition of protesters, all to divide critics themselves.