Portside

“People always say, ‘Get off your phones,’ but social media is our weapon. Without it, the movement wouldn’t have spread this fast.”

Working women in New Jersey could soon have one of the nation's strongest laws guaranteeing pay equity after lawmakers moved Monday to pass a measure that would ban employers from paying them less than men for "substantially similar work."

The administration is mired in incompetence and calamity. So why aren’t his enemies presenting a hopeful alternative?

We, the undersigned, call on the authorities to ensure that Mr. Bell is allowed to leave prison, not only so that a respected elder who has served his time can go home, but also to ensure that the concept of parole remains legally valid.

What we refer to as “Western civilization” was built from centuries of enslavement, murder, and willful impoverishment of people of color.

This new defense of a humanities education is a must read, says reviewer Meranze, "for anyone concerned with the relationship between humanistic activity and American democracy."

I have been reading about what follows when institutions that are supposed to moderate extremist, demagogic leaders default in their role. And how easily those institutions are swept aside, at best complicit in their own irrelevance, at worst full partners in the brazen agenda of the demagogue.

The passage of a so-called "right-to-work" law in Michigan recently left the labor movement feeling gut-punched. AlterNet talks with Stephen Lerner, Jonathan Westin, Ruth Milkman, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jane McAlevey, Eric Robertson & Ben Speight for their suggestions on how labor can go on the offensive in the next year. Amy Dean, former president of the South Bay (CA) AFL-CIO Labor Council looks at best & worst developments of 2012 in the labor and social movements.

Just how long the songs will go on is anyone's guess. One person who isn't worried is Ballard, Chorus director, who credits Occupy Wall Street with raising awareness of labor issues."Very few young people would stop and listen to us, but now they do," said Ballard, who's confident that interest will spur a new generation to sing. "They'll be the next people who carry the torch."

This much is clear: the teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School reacted with astonishing courage to the unthinkable, the terrifying intrusion of a man intent on murdering them and their students. With no thought of their own safety, they defended their children. Everyone of them is a hero, those who died and those who survived....All at Sandy Hook Elementary School displayed courage. They did their jobs.