Portside

Mythology has hidden the true history of how and why the great grape strike started, especially its connection to some of the most radical movements in the country's labor history. After 50 years that silence is lifting. Dawn Mabalon, a history professor at San Francisco State University, has documented the radical career of Larry Itliong, who headed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), one of the two organizations that carried out the 1965 strike.

The refugee influx struck a strong emotional chord with me, as a Hungarian-American visiting my parents' homeland. I had arrived in Hungary on August 25 with my wife Debi, to visit my late Catholic mother's relatives, and retrace the stories of my Jewish father who had survived the genocide of World War II.

Comics critics say they are hard pressed to remember Batman ever addressing institutional racism and its socio-economic dimensions as bluntly as this in the character’s 75-year history.

What happens when corporate America appropriates high school football . . .

Cellular clocks are almost everywhere. Clues to how they work are coming from the places that they’re not.

No one expects a laptop to last for 10 years. How can we expect these machines, many of which were designed and engineered in the 1990s, to keep running without increased failures?

There are 2.4 million people in U.S. jails; and the burden of mass incarceration falls heavily on the many families of inmates who can’t pay off thousands of dollars in debt after paying court-related costs. According to a report published Monday, the average family of an inmate incurs $13,607 in court-related debt, one-third of the families go into debt to pay for phone calls and visits, and 83 percent of the family members responsible for these costs are women.

It is long past time for a campaign to end the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia and all of the cruel grasping hereditary dictatorships in the Persian Gulf. While U.S arms merchants are making billions selling weapons to these dictatorships, U.S. taxpayers are underwriting the expenditure of trillions of dollars on military bases, troops, contractors, weapons systems, and fleets, all in support of tyrannical regimes, unending wars and cruel occupations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcoming response to the refugee crisis won her accolades as Europe’s most humane leader. But with few European Union countries agreeing to accept even small numbers of refugees, Merkel performed an about-face, re-imposing border controls and further exacerbating the crisis. And still neither Merkel nor any other European head of state acknowledges the refugee crisis is the result of wars started and supported by “western democracies.”

After four years as a growing, thriving voice of Walmart workers, the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) re-launched itself on Thursday. Founded and funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, OUR Walmart will now rely more heavily on a coalition of 20 community-based partners. OUR Walmart will not attempt to gain union recognition, but continue its fight for $15 an hour minimum pay and improved working conditions and protections.