Portside

Experts on banking and labor markets offer their reasons for optimism and pessimism going into 2016.

Brooklyn poet Ally Malinenko offers a sardonic/graphic expose of East Germany's nostalgia for the old days.

Turkey’s major trade unions called for a one-day strike on 29 December to protest the government-led military operations against the Kurds. Union representatives declared that they would persist in struggle against those who are trying to destroy the hope of both peoples [Turks and Kurds] to live together and build a common future.

A bill being introduced in the City Council Monday would require all employers to put contracts in writing, impose civil and criminal penalties for taking longer than 30 days to deliver payments, and award double damages plus attorneys fees to contractors who’ve been stiffed — similar to the protections now enjoyed by regular employees.

It may be something of a stretch to claim, as Malcolm Harris does, that "anarchists get the artists and tacticians, Marxists get the theorists and politicians." Yet this remains an insightful review. It surveys the history of anarchism and its relationship to Marxism as it considers how adherents of these historic modes of thought might find themselves acting in this political year.

The millions of service members who live on military bases around the world experience a kind of economic and social security that is foreign to most of America’s middle class. In the military, clothing, food, shelter, and medical care are guaranteed. And although it offers less choice about what to wear or where to live than the private sector, there’s a baseline of care for service members that doesn’t exist in the civilian world.

We deserve to know, and we are obligated to know, the cost of America’s love for football.

Although 44% of all consumers—and 84% of foodies—really enjoy cooking, easy-to-prepare foods are still the favorite for more than half (53%) of U.S. meal preparers.

Workers had a big 2015, and next year could be even bigger.

In recent months, Loyola students and workers have been waging a campaign for campus workers to receive a living wage, and for the administration to roll back what student activists say is a draconian demonstration policy, which requires students to request and receive approval from the Office of the Dean of Students for any on-campus protest not being held on the campus’s Damen North Lawn three days prior.