Portside

The tradition of May 1 as the international holiday of the working class began in the United States, but for many decades was lost to the U.S. working class. Beginning in 2006, with mass marches and work stoppages by immigrant workers, working people in this country have begun to reclaim their day.

Chicago area municipalities that witnessed sharp declines in white population between 2000 and 2010 have continued to lose population, lose jobs or lose both since 2010, particularly majority-black and majority-Latino suburbs

Few state tax trends are as striking as the rapid decline of state corporate income tax revenues. As recently as 1986, state corporate income taxes equaled 0.5 percent of nationwide Gross State Product (GSP) (a measure of statewide economic activity). But in fiscal year 2013 (the last year for which data are available), state and local corporate income taxes were just 0.33 percent of nationwide GSP- representing a decline of over 30 percent.

Three women, all clearly desperate for jobs, arrive for "orientation" at the work room of a meat processing plant. They have been sent by an employment agency as "temporary workers" - a euphemism for low wages, no benefits, short-term contracts with uncertain payroll dates and the most appalling work conditions. So begins Alexander Zeldin's remarkable "immersive" soul-stripping production of "Beyond Caring."

Picasso painted Guernica eighty years ago this spring. It still stands as a searing protest against the brutality of war and fascism.

Marin County’s “Game of Floods” teaches citizens how to make tough decisions for the future.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ arrogant dismissal of a federal district judge’s ruling against the Trump Administration’s ban on refugees and certain Muslim travelers, because he presides on an “island in the Pacific,” is a reminder of how islands in the Pacific have been colonized, commodified, and militarized. From Hawaii to Okinawa, Pacific islanders are demeaned and their islands relegated to vacation getaways and military outposts for the U.S. empire.

A new book urges activists to avoid insularity and purism--and to focus on winning.

We have entered a period of deep political crisis in the US, and both dominant parties stand on treacherously shifting sand. They are confronted by the exhaustion of the campaign models that brought them success since 1948. Hints of Trump's victory can be found in Nixon's "silent majority" as well as the subsequent Reagan Revolution, the current circumstances represent a sharp break from "business as usual."

Billed as the Peoples Climate March, the demonstration here in Washington, and hundreds of smaller events like it across the country, had long been planned to mark the 100th day of the new president’s term. What organizers did not know, at least initially, was that that president would be Mr. Trump.