Portside

In the run-up to SEIU’s largest and most disastrous local union take-over—involving United Healthcare Workers (UHW)—some of the first punches where thrown at a Labor Notes conference in Dearborn, Michigan ten years ago this month.

At 350-person rally organized by Torrance Refinery Action on the third anniversary of a giant explosion at Exxon Mobil’s facility there, people were eager to hear about how Richmond is working to hold Chevron accountable for its pollution. His piece ref

Two new books about making change in smaller cities are worthy of close study by anyone hoping to push their own city hall in a similar left-wing direction.

In it, he documents how racial segregation in housing did long-term damage to African-American family wealth, income, job opportunities, and access to good public education.

It takes continuous organizational effort—in the form of training and recruitment, new leadership development, and structural change–to insure that the bullying, harassing, divide-and-conquer behavior of bosses, big and small, doesn’t infect and weaken the “house of labor” too.

Will Unions be Part of the Solution Or the Problem?

My mother was devastated that I never became the radical she dreamed I’d be. — Peter Andreas, “My Mom, The Marxist,” New York Times, May 14, 2017

Gonzalez, in his book Reclaiming Gotham: Bill De Blasio and the Movement to End America's Tale of Two Cities argues that de Blasio has presided over the “most left-leaning government in the history of America’s greatest city." He "reports that, under de Blasio, poor and working class New Yorkers have received a $21 billion “infusion of income and economic benefits” which also includes long deferred wage increases.

Meet the First in the New Wave of Local Progressive Officials. At Local Progress’s 150-person meet-up, left-leaning politicians from around the country share plans to build rebel cities.

Two Progressive Alliance leaders–city councilors Jovanka Beckles and Gayle McLaughlin–are preparing to run as “corporate free” candidates for higher office.