Portside

"in a world where war is the natural state of affairs," writes the New York poet David Lehman, the unthinkable surrounds us all--the ones with "dough," "the refugee who cannot lost his German accent," even those whose aim is "to live at peace."

Huffington Post editorial and HuffPost Live staff have signed cards to unionize and join the Writers Guild of America East. They have asked the Huffington Post for recognition.

Oaxacans in 2006 tied the repression of education workers to broader frustrations with official impunity and deep-seated social and economic inequality. Those frustrations continue to animate everyday life. In confronting today's new challenges, Oaxacans are doing more than simply “saying no.” They’re drawing from an array of experiences – including that of the Oaxaca Commune in 2006 – to imagine collective alternatives, and make them real.

Last year also saw the launch of Portside Culture, with reviews, news and analysis on the arts and letters. The service Portside provides is in greater demand. Thousands are discovering that there is a Left in the US, and our daily posts help give a sense of its real scope. We turn for you to help because as we grow, so do our financial needs. We will continue, but to measure up to a re- charged and re-vitalized movement, your contributions will make all the difference.

Like the people within, immigrant detention centers are often invisible as well. Photos and drawings of these places are rarely public; access is even more limited. Canada has three designated immigrant prisons, and it also rents beds in government-run prisons to house over one-third of its detainees. Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention begins to strip away at this invisibility.

Here is a necessary addition to the literature on FBI harassment of Americans and on U.S. social movements over the last century.

Chi-Raq begins with a devastating overture, Pray 4 My City, with the lyrics printed directly on the screen, impossible to ignore. 'I don’t live in Chicago, I live in Chi-Raq,' it concludes, using the controversial nickname given to the city where gun deaths outnumber those in America’s foreign wars. Narrator Dolmedes, Samuel L Jackson, explains that communities under siege aren’t a new phenomenon, and explains how previous authors wrote about such tales.

The service Portside provides is in greater demand than ever. Thousands are discovering that there is a Left in the US, and our daily posts help give a sense of its real scope, however diverse and organizationally diffuse. We turn for you to help because as we grow, so do our financial needs. We will continue, but to measure up to a re- charged and re-vitalized movement, your contributions will make all the difference.

The court is considering whether to overrule its 1977 decision allowing states to require public employees to join a union or pay a fee to cover collective bargaining costs. A win for the plaintiffs—a group of California teachers who say they oppose union efforts to increase pay and protect job security—could cripple public sector unions in about two dozen states that have “agency fee” laws.

To combat the voices of health advocates who expressed concerns on the health effects of the Standard American Diet, which is high in processed foods, the food industry cast doubt and reframed the conversation on processed foods.