Portside

June 22 kicked off AFL-CIO Worker Center Advisory Council. There, UCLA Labor Center’s Victor Narro presented the center’s most recent analysis of labor-worker center partnerships, Building a Movement Together: Worker Centers and Labor Union Affiliations.

Who in our community will be left to push for full equality for all transgender and queer people, now that this one fight has been won?

The head of the white supremacist group that Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof cited as an influence has contributed to high-profile politicians, but he's not the only white supremacist leader to do so.

In a few words, it can be said that the book tells it like it is—it describes the vast governmental-industrial-legislative complex that controls our lives via war and violence. This is not conspiracy theory any longer—it is rooted in fact and record. The authors cite names, organizations, places, and dates that not only promote war, but also benefit from it financially.

When people say they are “bad at math,” they usually mean that they had trouble with algebra, although if you corner them and ask the right questions you can usually make them realize that they use algebra all the time without noticing it. This leads to valid criticisms of how we teach math, but it doesn’t mean we’re a nation of math idiots.

In what may not be a coincidence, a string of nighttime fires have damaged or destroyed at least six predominately black churches in four southern states in the past week. The series of fires – some of them suspicious and possible hate crimes — came in the week following a murderous rampage by a white supremacist who shot and killed nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.

The initial scope of the EPA fracking study was ambitious, though certainly not unachievable. The inherent problem, however, with technical studies of complex industry practices is that the EPA relies heavily on the willingness of the industry to give the agency access.

The 2016 election will be the first in 50 years where voters will not have the full protections of the VRA, Since the Shelby decision, onerous new laws have been passed or implemented in states like North Carolina and Texas, which have disenfranchised thousands of voters, disproportionately those of color. In the past five years, 395 new voting restrictions have been introduced in 49 states. Half the states in the country adopted measures making it harder to vote.

In arguably the strongest signal Congress has ever sent in support for Palestinian human rights, 19 members of Congress sent a letter June 20th to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging the Department of State to make the human rights of Palestinian children a priority in the U.S. bilateral relationship with Israel. The letter was initiated by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), and focuses a Congressional spotlight on Israeli military abuse of Palestinian children.

Although the White House has repeatedly said it would not add “boots on the ground” to wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc., the assurance is bogus. U.S. ground forces have been active in Yemen, and more recently Syria, and the Obama Administration, which has delayed the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, is now adding 450 U.S. “commandos” to the 3,000 military advisers in Iraq.