Portside

Open Source Radio has produced a three-part series about American work: what it is, what it could be, and where we’re all going together. Follow the link to hear the show and to read more about the content. The show features guests Steve Fraser: labor historian and author of The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power; and Hamilton Nolan: writer, editor, and union organizer at Gawker.

The comedian sneaked politics and policy—along with Captain America and Oreos—into his CBS debut.

When, in 1976, New Jersey was in a similar situation [to Washington], the Supreme Court shut down the schools for eight days. The fruits of that conflict remain with New Jerseyites to this day, for the need to fund schools more fairly is what led New Jersey in 1976 to adopt a state income tax for the first time.

Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko, a Korean-born Los Angeles poet, reveals the complications of immigration to the US from the point of view of a child, now an adult, who must sort out fiction from fact.

On Wednesday night 26,000 union members participated in a phone call with Bernie Sanders.

Seattle teachers strike for first time in 30 years. The Seattle Teachers Association represents 5000 teachers and other employees. The strike is mainly focused on salaries and social justice issues.

The grape strike succeeded where others had failed when Chavez, who led a well-publicized march from Delano to Sacramento in the spring of 1966, came up with a stroke of genius – the 1968-1970 grape boycott that spread worldwide. The boycott showed powerless people that they had power.

I celebrate Radical Reconstruction, a brief moment of glory, no matter how blindly and halfheartedly we, as a nation, did it. Did Reconstruction end racism? No. Does that make it a failure? No again. Considering it a failure is like considering the civil rights movement a failure because it only abolished segregation and not racism.

Many food and beverage marketers have started playing the clean label and sustainable card. Such terms as “artisan,” “clean,” “earth friendly,” “local,” “pure” and “simple” are being used on product packages and web sites. Avoiding ambiguity is a key issue for staying out of legal trouble.

The worldwide cultural revolution initiated by the invention of records and record players has been vast and helps define what it has meant to be both "modern" and "post-modern." In this new book, Michael Denning surveys the scope and breadth of this revolution. Noise Uprising, says reviewer Tim Barker, "offers an ambitious, if somewhat speculative map of the connections" between the dizzying array of styles and genres of modern popular, vernacular music.