Portside

Reader Comments: Contested Convention is Needed; and "#BernieorBust" Dead End; The Left in 2016; Stopping Israel's Occupation and BDS; Israel as the Last Remaining, Active Settler-Colonialist Project; Who's Afraid of Communism - Paul Buhle comments; Teamster and Other Multi-Employer Pension Plans; Teacher Challenges Low Evaluation in Court and Wins; Baldwin; Shakespeare; James Connolly - appreciated today; Just Released - Panama Papers Database...

'It's scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here,' Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan said during a Holocaust Remembrance speech. The lunatics who will now start to scream against him need to know: This is what morality and responsibility sound like. - Israeli opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog.

We lost one of the great social justice warriors of our time, Michael Ratner. While a law student at Columbia University in 1968 this empathy and compassion helped him find his political focus during student protests against the Vietnam War. "[E]vents like this created the activists of the generation and I never looked back; I declared that I was going to spend my life on the side of justice and non-violence."

In this exclusive interview, Prof Peter Kuznick speaks of: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagazaki; US crimes and lies behind the Vietnam war, and what was really behind that inhumane invasion; why the US engaged a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and how that war and the mainstream media influences the world today; the interests behind the assassinations of President Kennedy; US imperialism towards Latin America. . .the War on Terror and War on Drugs.

Bernie Sanders' call for political revolution has inspired grassroots groups to continue his work even after the election is over. In nearly every state, autonomous grassroots organizations began campaigning for Sanders months before his campaign established any official presence on the ground. Now, those organizations are beginning to build coalitions with labor, socialist and progressive groups to set a post-election agenda for the political revolution.

Sheri Lederman, the beloved fourth-grade teacher New York, won her battle to have her 2013-14 VAM score of “ineffective” rating vacated. Why this court ruling matters to more than Sheri Lederman.

As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data.

A movement has emerged to take up the mantle on one of the most pressing civil and human rights issues of our time: criminal justice reform. Many of these movement leaders are mothers with a child in prison, rendering this cause just as political as it is personal.

Labor educator Bob Bussel’s new book, Fighting For Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working Class Citizenship (University of Illinois Press, 2016) describes a lesser-known effort to remake another Midwestern IBT local--without drawing the same kind of fire from Tobin’s successors, including Hoffa himself.

Who's watching what, when; Throwing down with social media; Following the money; Democrats on Facebook