Portside

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.

Michael Yates has produced a primer on inequality for our times. Steve Early takes a look.

Unfortunately, Chevron has taken no vacation from its longstanding, deep-pocketed work of rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies, often with greater success than in Richmond. A coalition of environmental, consumer protection, labor, and political groups released a damning report last week entitled The Chevron Way: Polluting California and Degrading Democracy. (available on line at: http://www.chevrontax.info/the-chevron-way).

Residents of Richmond and other California refinery towns have learned, over time, to be wary of state and local officials too closely tied to companies like Chevron.

Labor educator Bob Bussel’s new book, Fighting For Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working Class Citizenship (University of Illinois Press, 2016) describes a lesser-known effort to remake another Midwestern IBT local--without drawing the same kind of fire from Tobin’s successors, including Hoffa himself.

Whether he wins or loses, Sanders is already helpfully tapping into rank-and-file discontent about who gets to decide what in our unions. While other big union endorsements of Clinton may soon be announced, the Labor Day buzz—at the grassroots, in early primary states—is largely about Bernie.

Whether he wins or loses, Sanders is already helpfully tapping into rank-and-file discontent about who gets to decide what in our unions. While other big union endorsements of Clinton may soon be announced, the Labor Day buzz—at the grassroots, in early primary states—is largely about Bernie.

Amid all that’s clearly wrong with Indiana’s current direction under right wing Republican rule, Quigley ( If We Can Win Here: The New Front Lines of the Labor Movement, Cornell University Press, 2015) finds cause for optimism. “Despite a state political climate that proved inhospitable to labor in the right-to-work debate, private sector workers are launching union organizing campaigns across the state’s capital,” and in smaller towns as well.

Bernie Sanders has a long record of supporting pro-worker policies. Vermont union members learned long ago that the mutual benefit derived from their work with and for Sanders goes far beyond the results of labor’s usual (and sometimes tawdry) transactional relationships with public officeholders.