Portside

Amiri Baraka is one of the most respected and widely published African-American writers. We are happy to publish the poem he sent Portside, placing the recent shutdown events in the context of U.S. history, and the on-going struggle for equality and justice. We get clear enough to elect Obama the terrorists take off they Klan clothes put on some suits , they the t party, now. TEA The Evil Assholes

The mass assault on this social order is eviscerating the soul, spirit and vision of a country that by decree but not sustainable policies and leadership could have been an inclusive and viable Democracy. ...founded in treachery and structured on the bones of colonialism, there were so many components from which a real Democracy could have been forged and sustained. For the sake of our grandchildren we can't be held hostage by Tea Party terror.

On the heels of recently report showing that taxpayers lose when fast food workers, who receive low wages, are forced to seek public assistance (Univ. of California), fast food workers and their allies rallied in cities across the country. Front-leading New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio called for not only supporting efforts to raise the minimum wage, but to also help these workers organize.

Reader Comments- Mexico teachers; Social Security; Israel; Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap; McDonald's; Grad Student unions; Jobs; Unemployment; Announcements- NYC - Full Employment and the Right to a Job: (Oct 18); Film showing - Anne Braden-Southern Patriot(Oct 24); D.C - Government Surveillance in Communities of Color; So.Calif - Government Spying, Immigrant Detention Policies(Nov 12); Louis E. Burnham Award Welcomes Applicants Today in History-Salt of the Earth

Sociologist Theda Skocpol tells what drives the angry right -- and what comes after the government shutdown. The Right in this country, over the last half century, has recognized that fighting across many localities and states is worth it. And they've developed mechanisms for doing that, and that turned out to have a big payoff in Congress. The real problem that you've got right now on the Left is how to defeat this stuff, how to contain it, how to beat it.

In the popular imagination, opposition to the Vietnam War was driven largely by the privileged, while supposedly reactionary blue-collar workers supported the war effort. That memory is wrong.

As Republicans insist on tarring an idea they came up with as the resurrection of Lenin, Democrats find themselves defending a policy they would have scoffed at a decade ago.

“I don’t think you have to make this choice about being on one side or the other side. My feeling is that when we are committed to growing the economy and making sure that our public employees have a place at the table through collective bargaining, everyone wins.” -- Mary Burke

Asked whether the court had gotten its ruling wrong, Judge Posner responded: “Yes. Absolutely.” Back in 2007, he said, “there hadn’t been that much activity in the way of voter identification,” and “we weren’t really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disenfranchise people entitled to vote.” The member of the three-judge panel who dissented from the majority decision, Terence T. Evans, “was right."

Anti-government hysteria has fueled everything from congressional kamikaze attacks on Obamacare to actual kamikaze attacks on federal buildings, and those who get hurt are inevitably people doing their jobs.