Portside

Shutdown: 'Not Some Damn Game'. Robert Johnson -- Crossroad. Our Story in Two Minutes. Pete Peterson's 'Grand Bargain' Hoax. Flashmob in Madrid Unemployment Office. Movie: Let the Fire Burn.

We will, no doubt, be needing roads - urban, local and interstate - for the foreseeable future, despite their negative effects. The good news is that we are now heading toward a transportation ecosystem that is far more varied and useful. Rather than encouraging more cars, more trucks, more pollution, less interpersonal connection and more privatized space, people throughout the country are radically changing travel and interpersonal connection.

Definitely go out and buy Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to Americas Public Schools by Diane Ravitch. Reign of Error lays out step by step the relentless thirty year drive to either centralize the education of the young - on one hand - or divest it entirely into privatized hands on the other. Finally, the two sides have joined forces on a strategy that simultaneously does both. (Deborah Meier)

"It's really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day,Do you think this is fair, that I have to be making $8.25 when I've worked for McDonald's for ten years?" (Nancy Salgado addressing McDonald's USA President Jeff Stratton's speech at the Union League Club of Chicago.)

The chained CPI has risen to walk among us again in the muttering and jawboning around the government shutdown/debt limit standoff and the search for an exit. We're hearing again about a "grand bargain" on the government deficit -- never mind that the deficit is falling, not rising.

Reader Comments- Teachers Protests in Brazil and Mexico; Shutdown and Social Security; , GOP Playbook; Two Countries in 2014; Koch Bros. Monster Out of Control; Ghost of McCarthy; Lessons from Germany; Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap; Mission Accomplished? More Responses; Annnouncements- Trans-Pacific Partnership Forum - New York-Oct 25; Concert Celebration for Jon Fromer - New York-Oct 26 Social Cost of America's Race to Incarcerate - Chicago-Nov 7; Shorts, Job Announcement

They lost 1.4 million votes and ceded "safe" seats in their east German stronghold to Angela Merkel's conservatives, but the radical Left are smiling about an election outcome that may finally upgrade them from pariahs to the political mainstream.

Democratic Congress members, labor leaders and immigration advocates are arrested at a protest outside the Capitol calling for the House to vote on immigration legislation.

Mexican leftists have flocked to support teachers’ unions in their protests against proposed education reforms. But by overlooking the unions’ undemocratic features and lack of popular support, the left weakens the fight against neoliberalism.

Those of us on the far left (particularly those of us with well-worn armchairs) should cast off the cynical approach of simply waiting for these campaigns to collapse due to the “inevitable” betrayal of the labor bureaucracy. . . Our go-to slogan shouldn’t be “I told you so,” but “organize or die”--because that’s the reality of the labor movement in the US today.