Portside

The local Steelworkers union Shores decertified is the inheritor of Mine-Mill Local 890, a union made famous by the 1954 film “Salt of the Earth”, which dramatized Local 890’s 1951 Empire Zinc strike. A number of members of the creative team behind the film had been blacklisted by Hollywood.

Federal watchdog report "calls into question" US efforts to stamp out opium production.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Scathing Dissent Offers 12 Reasons Why Texas' New Voter ID Law Is Racist. Ginsburg dissent calls out thinly veiled GOP voter suppression.

The report, "Election Spending 2014: 9 Toss-Up Senate Races", found that outside spending by undisclosed "dark money" groups is on track to "shatter previous records."

The U.S.has sent soldiers to West Africa while Cuba has sent emergency health care workers. The difference is fundamental: Cuba sees both public purpose and moral imperative to help those stricken with Ebola and the U.S. sees a threat to profits at ‘home’ and a military exercise to ‘contain’ the spread of Ebola abroad.

Stereotypes about German history and about the German Democratic Republic distort history. Simplifications of the past inhibit our ability to understand the nature of fascism and anti-fascism, to understand the complexities of socialism.

Attacking allies does not move immigration reform forward. And, an argument from a position of moral correctness does not change policy. We need to be on the morally correct side but that is not enough to change policy because political and economic power largely controls this country. We have a political oligarchy- our government is dominated by corporations. We need to understand neoliberal capitalism, then, work to change it.

There is no silver bullet in this fight for economic justice. Not one public official, nor one economist, nor one President will solve our mess. A return to democratic principles and a deepening of participatory process is what it will take to uplift the working class.

The confidential memo from a former pollster for President Obama contained a blunt warning for Democrats. Written this month with an eye toward Election Day, it predicted “crushing Democratic losses across the country” if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls.

Ebola is a problem that will not be solved, because it isn’t profitable to do so.