Skip to main content

We Need Your Help - We Made Changes to Help Our Fight

Portside
Once a year Portside asks readers for their support. This is that time. Like everyone, we’ve been straining to keep up with astounding developments over the past year. We've also made a lot of changes, to create better tools to help meet the needs of the moment. So if you haven't donated yet, it's not too late.

Tidbits - January 18, 2018 - Reader Comments: Nuclear Disarmament; Trump's Racism; Radical lessons of Martin Luther King; #TimesUp; Sports; Oprah; report from Austria; The '60s; War or Peace with North Korea? and more....

Portside
Reader Comments: Nuclear Disarmament - Again on the Agenda; Trump's Racism - recalling Martin Niemöller's dire warning in Nazi Germany; Radical lessons of Martin Luther King; #TimesUp; Traditional Labor Organizing - sharp disagreement with Portside Labor post; Sports in Colleges; Oprah - more disagreement with Portside posts; Grim Times in Austria; Announcements: The '60s-Years that Changed America; Concert for Puerto Rico; War or Peace with North Korea? and more....

Dr. King’s Crusade, Economic Justice and Media Consolidation

Bob Hennelly Salon
King’s critique of power was never purely about race: The collapse of independent media is partly what got us here. It was the independent and radical left media that forced mainstream media to cover the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, poverty and the fight against it. Over the last 15 years, more than half the jobs in the news industry had disappeared, media consolidation will quicken this trend.

Taxing Puerto Rico to Death

Nelson A. Denis Orlando Sentinel
Puerto Ricans on the island are the most heavily taxed of all U.S. citizens. From 2013 to 2014, 105 different taxes were raised in Puerto Rico. Over a 19-year period, from 1990 to 2009, Puerto Rico paid more federal taxes than six U.S. states. Puerto Rico is projected to have the worst economy on the entire planet in 2018.

Yes, Your Ancestors Probably Did Come Here Legally — Because 'Illegal' Immigration is Less Than a Century Old - No Visas Were Required Until 1924

Kevin Jennings Los Angeles Times
There were no federal laws concerning immigration until 1924. When a massive influx of new immigrant groups came at the turn of the 20th century — Italians from Southern Europe and Jews from Eastern Europe — a backlash developed. A new law required for the first time that immigrants to the U.S. have visas, introducing the concept of “having papers” to American immigration policy.

Small Businesses Are Overrated

Matt Bruenig Jacobin
We shouldn’t fetishize mom and pops. They offer lower wages, skimpier benefits, and inferior labor protections.