Portside

The story behind the Wisconsin Uprising in 2011—the struggle of class forces--has been told in some detail in several books, but a new film, Divided We Fall, supplies the crucial elements of drama that few of us in the marching crowds understood at the time. It is also a wonderful re-enactment of the whole scene, bringing to life the drama and months’ long glory of a fightback that mirrored and mirrors so many anti-austerity struggles across the world.

That states can pass laws banning mandatory union dues is not new. Congress amended labor law in 1947 to allow individual states to pass right-to-work laws. “How it affects the workforce is really simple: It lowers wages,” said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center. “If you strip it to its core, this is about reducing the power of workers to bargain for a decent living.”

Recent experiments show how sound can interplay with your sense of smell—and, thus, flavor—in the brain

Some critics, including some in the labor movement, suggest that unions have to abandon collective bargaining and pursue other strategies for worker gains, such as winning higher wages through legislation. But collective bargaining can still work, and it is still necessary.

In its first episode of the new administration, the NBC sketch show skewered Vladimir Putin, Kellyanne Conway, and the “lower-case KKK.”

As inequality and its consequences mount, even more struggles and progressive formations will emerge. They are likely to be imperfect and messy, but from them useful ideas as to the future of collective worker action will become clearer. One thing is sure, though: Such a vision will not come from Andy Stern.

"Labor and community groups supporting the efforts by Boeing workers to form a union will also be in attendance," the IAM's announcement states. Evans, the IAM's lead organizer in North Charleston, and Ken Riley, the longtime president of the local longshoremen's union, are scheduled to speak at Friday's event.

Extinction: Lisa Allen Ortiz, child of Mendocino county, California knows a thing or two about birds and about how precarious are the lives of many species, speaks of our impending "civic sorrow."

Through the use of family archives and other new sources, the grandson of Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci seeks to reconstruct the cultural and political saliance of his grandfather's contributions to building and defending the Italian working class movement and international socialism in the face of Stalinist distortions, capitalist enmity and today's reactionary Russian regime.

King’s strategic advice to the striking Memphis sanitation workers is still useful: winning requires placing the struggle in a larger context that challenges elected officials and government at every level to make America a better nation!