Portside

In his new book, Unions, Race, and Popular Democracy: Building a Progressive Labor Movement (Cornell), sociology professor Kim Scipes examines parallel efforts to build two CIO unions in the Midwest—via the Steel Workers and Packinghouse Workers.

One of my favorite quotes from an early populist leader posed the enduring question: “Why is it that those who work most get least, and those who work least get most?”

This book examines organized crime in New York City unions and the rank and file fightback.

This readable volume has much solid advice for socialists trying to revitalize existing unions or create alternatives to them today.  One key lesson is that building a big labor or political tent is better, for the left, than becoming a small one.

Telling the story of Jessica Mitford and the fight to integrate public housing in Richmond, California is an inspiration for today's movements for both housing and against ICE and defense of immigrants.

In a new memoir, New Left leader Michael Ansara wants to impart lessons from his own time as a campus activist to today’s protesters. But his later role in a corruption scandal that set back Teamsters reform for decades offers its own cautionary less

Under Siege, and Showing its Age

Blanc argues that the current imbalance of power between labor and management in the U.S. can only be changed, for the better, with large-scale, coordinated organizing efforts rooted in the rank-and-file. His most detailed case focuses on Starbucks.

Steve Early reviews Debbie Goldman’s Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2024, 246 pages).

It doesn’t often make national headlines, but the city of Richmond, Ca. has been home to a successful progressive political reform project in recent years. Here are ten lessons for other municipal reformers from the Richmond Progressive Alliance