Portside

Gayle McLaughlin, the bold mayor of Richmond, California is threatening to take underwater mortgages by eminent domain from Wall Street banks and renegotiate them on behalf of beleaguered homeowners. A member of the Green Party, which takes no corporate campaign money, she proved her mettle standing up to Chevron, which dominates the Richmond landscape. Richmond’s city council is only one vote short of the supermajority needed to pursue the eminent domain plan.

Venezuela's struggle is widely misrepresented in western media. This is a classic conflict between right and left, rich and poor. Although there are abuses of power and problems with the rule of law in Venezuela – as there are throughout the hemisphere – it is far from the authoritarian state that most consumers of western media are led to believe.

One feature of recent Mardi Gras celebrations is missing this year, however. Thanks to a city council vote, the growing trend of taking over swaths of sidewalks and neutral grounds (as we New Orleanians call medians) is a thing of the past. The long walls of chairs and ladders at the very front of curbs that impeded visibility and mobility, and the roped-off areas that effectively privatized city grounds, are now illegal. It is a vote in favor of the commons.

Moral Monday pix; Fracking for you but not for me; Guggenheim; Google; Smart diapers

Micah Uetricht's "Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity" relates the stirring transformation of the Chicago Teachers Union into a democratically organized force for social justice.

Lee Lorch, a soft-spoken mathematician whose leadership in the campaign to desegregate Stuyvesant Town, the gargantuan housing development on the east side of Manhattan, helped make housing discrimination illegal nationwide.

Revitalizing labor's commitment for a government healthcare system is essential or we risk the peril of being overwhelmed by an ever increasing cost structure imposed by private insurers "just because they can."

"We are not interested in waving Brazilian flags or volunteering for the World Cup… We need jobs. We need education. We need land titles. We need health care. And we need to know where this road they are planning to build is going, and who will be affected.” - Brazilian activist Rafael Lima

Beyond the massive effort to deliver clean water, there has been an unprecedented surge of interest in organizing for long-term solutions.

I think we now have seen the descent of a new Cold War divide – this time not in Berlin but on Russia’s borders. Can it end there? I mean it’s already fateful – can it not get worse? I think it depends on whether the West now rises to leadership and gives Putin the guarantees he needs to back off. Now, in America there’s a different view – that he has to back off first. But that’s where we stand. -- Steven Cohen