Portside

Jon Stewart -- Affordable Horror Story. Liquid Art. Canned Heat -- Woodstock Boogie. Burn: Detroit Firefighter Documentary. Professor Louie -- What Does it Mean to be Working Class?

In a preview of what will be a nationwide day of action on Black Friday, Walmart workers at several Southern California stores walked off the job this morning to protest Walmart's low wages. Just minutes ago, sixty Walmart workers were arrested for engaging in a peaceful sit-in in downtown Los Angeles.

Brooklyn College's plan to dramatically scale back the Graduate Center for Worker Education is one of the latest efforts to curtail examination of working class issues done in a way designed to provide students with activist skills.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas fifty years ago. And, fifty years later, a complicit media still covers up for the security state. We need to reclaim our history, writes David Talbot, the founder of Salon.com.

Tuesday's election showed gains for progressives and labor-backed candidates, and also for socialists. In Seattle, Kshama Sawant received 46.1% of the total vote for City Council. However, the count of the most recently counted votes gives her 49.69%. Even if her opponent holds on, he has announced that he will not run again - against her or anyone else.

Reader Comments - Science, Climate Change; Angela Davis; Israel; Elections and Labor; Music and Race Relations - Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun; Weathermen; Doctors & Interns as Workers; Mondragón; Golden Rice; Civil War was About Slavery; Announcements - Stop the Attacks on the School Bus Drivers' Union-Boston-Nov 9; Art to End All Wars - Live! Auction-New York-Nov 16; Unions & Child Care: Expanding Access, Raising Standards-New York-Dec 18; Travel-Study Delegations to Cuba

An overview of the Algerian Revolution, on it's fiftieth anniversary -the Algerian Revolution as something that was itself productive - of repertoires of contestation, of ideas about a "social contract," of something that could later be "confiscated" - rather than as a historical bookmark.

Las Vegas workers, stage sit-in on casino floor of the Cosmopolitan, demanding the Vegas resort recognize their union. For two years the $4 billion casino has refused to negotiate with their workers, and their union - Culinary Workers Union or UNITE HERE local 226.

Will Rahm Emanuel's effort to establish a privatized neoliberal outpost in Chicago succeed? Not if the ongoing uprising brushfires turn from kindling wood into a contemporary Chicago fire of political resistance. Kari Lydersen, author of "Mayor 1%," tells Truthout Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is representative of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party, and he's getting significant pushback in his efforts to expand privatization and limit protests.

We need to get much more organized on the democratic side of the divide in the Democratic Party. We may not be in a position for million-dollar media buys, but we can field tens of thousands of new organizers. Next year's congressional elections call for a more unified, progressive and revitalized Democratic Party.