Portside

As a Korean American whose parents were born in an undivided Korea, I care deeply about whether my adopted country - which drew the line in Korea, led the Korean War and signed the Armistice Agreement, and to this day militarily enforces the division - takes the just course of action to bring the Korean War to a final resolution.

Bill Fletcher's powerful speech at USLAW's founding in October 2003 is still on target. That founding conference launched USLAW and set the course to the 2005 AFL-CIO convention where we succeeded in putting the federation on record in opposition to the Iraq War - the first time in its then fifty year history it publicly opposed the commitment of US military forces anywhere in the world. His remarks show us how far we have come and how far we have yet to go.

Aside from her 35-year prison sentence, Chelsea Manning is now facing indefinite solitary confinement to be determined in a closed hearing August 18th.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution insists that Cuba will never stop struggling for peace and the well-being of all human beings, for every inhabitant on the planet regardless of skin color or national origin.

July 23, 2015, a formal Mediation Committee established by Samsung and civil society groups issued ground breaking recommendations to compensate hundreds of workers who became ill while working at Samsung and to implement innovative prevention policies to protect their workers in the future. Samsung has agreed to the Committee’s recommendation to provide 100 billion won ($85.8 million), but rejected the core recommendation — funding an independent non-profit foundation.

The country has lost one of its most passionate and eloquent voices for the cause of social and economic justice.

Police ... sometimes are workers who make very little money, oftentimes receive very little benefits in terms of the capitalist system that we live in and we want to recognize that . . . If police were to excise police brutality and anti-Blackness from their institution, I think we'd be having a very different conversation. And that's also a conversation that I would be happy to have.

Along the Atlantic coast of Honduras, Afro-Caribbean Garifuna communities are being forced from their land, as proposals for the creation of mega-tourism projects and corporate-run “model cities,” gain momentum. Mega-projects are just one of the problems Honduran Garifuna communities have had to face in the six years since a U.S-supported coup d’etat removed then-President Manuel Zelaya from power. But the Garifuna are organizing to defend their land and culture.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is warning of a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where violence “has radically increased” since March, when the U.S.-backed Saudi aerial offensive began. According to Teresa Sancristóval, the head of MSF’s emergency unit, “The impact of this conflict is much wider than only the bombing or the shooting. Yemen is predicted to be the first country in the world to have a capital without water, and water scarcity has an enormous impact.”

Fires are proliferating throughout California where an unprecedented drought has turned the California countryside into a tinder box of dry and dying vegetation. But the fires are also emblematic of the state’s dependence on inmates to help battle the wildfires. California’s firefighting program (Cal Fire) boasts the country’s largest inmate firefighting program. Close to half of Cal Fire’s firefighters, approximately 4,000 prisoners, are inmate firefighters.