Portside

Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator Emeritus, U.S. Labor Against the War shares his thoughts on 2016 elections.

The actions taken recently by law enforcement at the Dakota Access pipeline site have made it plain that the climate crisis cannot be adequately addressed until we come to terms with the history that climate change and the policing of communities of color share.

Influenza kills around 36,000 people annually in the U.S. but they are the least effective of all our vaccines. The influenza virus is constantly changing, and there is a lot of guesswork involved in choosing which strains to use in each year’s vaccine.The benefit to the population depends on individuals getting the vaccine. They may not benefit personally, but they indirectly benefit others by reducing transmission rates in the community and increasing herd immunity.

Ultimately, a new left politics in the United States will have to involve recapturing the energy of some of those pre-New Deal labor, agrarian, and socialist radicals who held on to the promise of a party of their own.

Governor Pat McCrory is crying voter fraud, and rumors are swirling about a possible bid to pack the state Supreme Court.

Please call the following agencies now! Governor, Morton County Sheriff, ND National Guard. Demand that law enforcement STAND DOWN on Highway 1806. There is no room in a democracy to fire hose, tear gas or use rubber bullets on peaceful, unarmed water protectors.

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Catastrophically high lead levels in the West Calumet Housing Complex will force over a thousand residents to leave by July 2017

On Myanmar’s coast the villages of the persecuted Rohingya Muslims keep going up in flames, displacing 30,000. The army has shut out aid workers and independent observers, and plans to arm a local Buddhist militia, composed of ethnic Arakanese, a “recipe for disaster,” according to the International Commission of Jurists. But the Arakan National Party (ANP), which hailed Donald Trump’s election and favors “inhuman acts” to cleanse Myanmar of Muslims, endorsed it.

For the foreseeable future our primary focus will be on building a vibrant, independent democratic socialist movement and helping to cultivate progressive coalitions capable of wielding political power at all levels. But we should never lose sight of the democratic socialist vision that serves as the guiding thread tying together the many struggles for freedom and equality in which we are constantly engaged, day in, day out.