Portside

Way Down in the Hole (Tom Waits). Preachin' Blues (Son House). Stand Up, Stand Up for Judas (Leon Rosselson). Atheists Don't Have No Songs (Steve Martin). I'm on My Way to Canaan Land (Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry).

Reader Comments - Black Friday protests; Walmart and retail workers; Congress filibuster; Warren, Sanders - the 2016 elections; healthcare; Detroit; Climate Change; "Hunger Games;" Africa; Iran; Announcements - NC Music Love Army benefit album; New Books - What We Can Learn from the New Deal and JFK - The Cuba Files the untold story of the plot;; Performance-talk and jam - Nueva Canción - New York - Dec 6; PM Press - Holiday Sale and Upcoming Releases!

The ultra Right tastes blood in the snafu that threatens "Obamacare"; they are gleefully throwing everything into their last, best chance to overturn any expansion of health care. A "broader" coalition, both domestic and international, is feverishly doing its all to abort efforts at easing tensions with Iran.

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, many are focused on the political atmosphere in the country and the world - specifically the role of the ultra-right in whipping up hysteria, and the machinations and secret plots of the "hidden government," the spy agencies, the FBI and CIA. Now we have previously unreleased material (from the National Archives) about secret negotiations between JFK and Fidel Castro,. Was this the reason to kill?

It was Abraham Lincoln who used the theme of Pilgrims and Indians eating happily together. He was trying to calm things down during the Civil War when people were divided. It was like a nice unity story. So what really happened? We made a treaty. They couldn't make a treaty for a boatload of people so they made a treaty between two nations - England and the Wampanoag Nation.

It was the night before Thanksgiving. Walmart's top brass had assembled in the executive boardroom for a last celebration before heading home to their families. ...Meanwhile, "Black Friday" would begin on Thursday evening, leaving many of its workers unable to spend the holiday with family or friends.

Remembering a passionate activist against the death penalty.

“Surveilling a professor’s communications is a really troubling approach to protecting liberty,” the law professors wrote in a letter published Tuesday on the Chapel Hill News website and in the paper’s Wednesday print edition. “We deeply admire Gene Nichol’s commitment to protecting and speaking for the state’s poor and disempowered. The only comfort we take from this sorry request by Civitas is our confidence that it will increase his passion.”

It seems retailers are now experimenting with how aggressive they can be.

Canadian Labor Activists Chart a Path Forward