Portside

Ju-Hyun Park grew up in Northern California. In his early childhood, he remembers, people asked, “Where are you from?” That question later shifted to “North or South Korea?”

For the past 50 years, some of this country’s most celebrated historians have taken up the task of making Americans less stupid about the Civil War.

November 7, 1917, the American writer John Reed said, was "Ten Days That Shook the World." A hundred years on, the anniversary of the October Revolution is celebrated and debated. But, for more than seventy years the revolution inspired millions around the world, in the belief in socialism, and for an end to colonialism. The failures of the Soviet Union have not however diminished the hopes, aspirations and renewed faith in socialism - a socialism of a different type.

Reader Comments: It's a New Beginning - Election Day Victories; AFL-CIO Delegates Support #BlackLivesMatter; Lessons for Democrats; Painters Union Support Nicaraguan Workers and their Families; Readers Debate: Why Soviet Union Collapsed; Workers' Tips; Lots of Announcements: Los Angeles, Pasadena, Culver City, New York, and Cuba; and more....

The so-called gig-economy is celebrated, maligned, fetishized, and qualified by analysts. Whether it is called the collaborative, platform, crowd-sourcing, or sharing-economy, the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges does raise important questions for workers. Do emerging ‘sharing-economy’ platforms such as Uber and Airbnb mark a significant shift in production and distribution systems? Are they emancipatory or exploitive?

By now the botched, indifferent response of the Trump administration to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico has been well-documented. Puerto Ricans, however, are not the only US citizens whose lack of democratic rights has affected its quality of life, and for the worse. The same can be said for the residents of Washington, DC, the nation’s capital.

Ending the medical tax break could be a ‘gut punch’ to the majority of the country. Eliminating the medical-expense deduction would end a source of relief that has helped millions of people cope with steep medical costs in a country without comprehensive, universal health coverage.

One day after the Revolution, the Soviet government issued a Decree of Peace -- a signal of the centrality of the struggle against war to the building of socialism.

Rural rout; High school fallout; Muslims rock vote; Kelly's krazy kommentary; Pageant protest; Rahm's rough night

US senator warns that documents exposing offshore tax havens show ‘rapid movement’ toward a group of billionaires controlling the global economy