Portside

Our goal should be a living wage, not zero job loss.

Upending the patriarchy was always a part of Powerpuff storylines, as trio demolished villain after cackling villain en route to saving the bumbling Mayor of Townsville (voiced by Tom Kenny). That’s not going to change. If anything, the new series will go further, providing commentary both nostalgic Millennials and younger viewers can grok.

Jane McAlevey is a union organizer and a critic of what is generally thought of as the U.S. “labor reform” movement. In this review of her article, I separate her criticism of labor—which I think has merit—from its attribution to Saul Alinsky—which I find without merit.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s strike today is a challenge to the rest of labor to break anti-union rules.

Martin Espada, “The Pablo Neruda of North American poets," according to Sandra Cisneros, turns his critical eye to the persistence of racist murders in our times.

The poet Martin Espada, called the North American Pablo Neruda, turns his eye to the continuing murders of non-white peoples and asks how people in the future will look back at our times, wondering "how we could have lived or died this way, how the descendants of slaves still fled and the descendants of slave-catchers still shot them."

Reading Thomas Frank's new book, Listen, Liberal, or What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?, I was reminded of the snapshot that Oxfam offered us early this year: 62 billionaires now have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population, while the richest 1% own more than the other 99% combined...In 2010, it took 388 of the super-rich to equal the holdings of that bottom 50%. At this rate...by 2030, just the top 10 billionaires might do the trick. [*]

“Which is worse: a poor, uneducated young man who sells drugs because he sees no other opportunity, or a multimillionaire executive, at the pinnacle of his power, who decides to subject his workers to a daily game of Russian roulette? ...

Most university teachers in the United States are part time, contingent employees. Their job title of "adjunct" is added to term designating academic rank (lecturer, assistant professor), but carries no job rights, benefits, or expectation of continued employment beyond the present semester. Most full time "academic" jobs are now held by administrators. How did we get here? Benjamin Ginsberg considers these questions, as Matthew Abraham explains.

DC37 Executive Director Henry Garrido announced that his union has endorsed Secretary Hillary Clinton. DC37 is the largest municipal union in New York City with 121,000 members and 55,000 retirees and is affiliated with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Emlpyees which has already endorsed her.