Portside

The Chamber of Commerce is basically a lobbyist for hire that reaches into other arenas of power to set the policy agenda for the nation in areas of central concern for its members. Major businesses hire the Chamber to carry out very particular legislative or other projects to change policies in ways that have big consequences for American consumers, American workers, international workers, the environment, and consumer regulations.

The Guardian is known for it's best of laundry lists. A recent list of the 100 best English-language novels came with a demurrer from culture columnist Rachel Cooke, saying in effect: The ladies not meant for spurning - and that just 20 books by female authors in a best-of-100 list covering a 300-year period--especially in a listing of authors of fiction--is incomplete bordering on bizarre. Cooke elaborates on what should be on, and what she says can surely be removed.

Today's conflicts in the Middle East is often played out in a language laden with stereotypes. This can also be true of how history is told and understood. Hasan Suroor offers a glimpse of history that breaks through these barriers, in a review of a new book by Seem Alavi. This book focuses on Islam and nationalism in colonial India, but it also offers a nuanced view of relations between Muslims and the West that contests received wisdom.

it's possible that Pixar’s obsessiveness about work and employment has somehow been effaced in the public eye by the imaginative diversity of their films’ settings: ant colonies, space, the ocean, a bizarre alternate-world inhabited by sentient vehicles, and so on. But in Inside Out, for the first time, the ground beneath Pixar’s ideological feet comes into view, and it’s the Bay Area, California.

The Black Labor Collaborative argues that to confront our foes "in the political Right and global capitalism, demands a transformed and energized labor movement that can fight back with more than slogans of solidarity. No tinkering around the edges! A transformed movement must be authentically inclusive because diversity carries the strongest seeds of change, of untapped creativity.”

Coca-Cola is indirectly spreading a controversial message that to lose weight, the food and beverages you consume don’t matter so much as long as you exercise.

Teachers at Chicago’s Urban Prep Academies voted to form a union—then a whole bunch of them got fired…

Angélica Rivera may have dazzled on the TV screen, but her shady relationship with a government contractor has wreaked havoc on her husband's presidency.

Amazon factories, with their insane, round-the-clock delivery schedules, are notoriously hellish places to work. But life at corporate Amazon isn’t exactly a picnic, either.

This three-part poem by Canadian poet Morgan Christie addresses a violent racial encounter, the response, and the consequence once upon a time, but something that seems contemporary.