Portside

A cooperative model places union members firmly in the role of being innovators. It allows the labor movement not only to promote a positive vision of members realizing their best selves in the workplace, but also to provide the skills that will enable people to do that.

For all its vaunted efficiency, capitalism has foisted wasteful inequality and environmental ruin on us. There is an alternative.

More than medical care, it can open the door to the democratic empowerment of millions of poor Americans.

Robert Chrisman and the Black Scholar occupied the vanguard of the struggle for recognition of Black Studies as a serious academic endeavor.

Ten years ago, in March of 2003, Iraqis braced themselves for the anticipated "Shock and Awe" attacks that the U.S. was planning to launch against them.

The fact that employers have stopped providing good health insurance or good retirement benefits also has nothing to with technology or globalization or any of the other alibis. In a reasonable society, health insurance and decent retirement would be tax-supported and part of the basic package for everyone. The great hidden injustice in our society is the set of lead weights being placed on the feet of young adults. Your generation should be in the streets.

This is as noted by the New York Times, "a golden age for corporate profits." Corporations have simply stopped paying their taxes. Pay Up Now just completed a compilation of corporate tax payments over the past five years, using SEC data as reported by the companies themselves. The firms chosen are top-earners who have filed 10-K reports through 2012. Their US Tax figures represent the five-year total of "current" payments.

What should have been a model for health care reform faces an uncertain future. Because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tilts the playing field to disadvantage multiemployer plans, this decades-old gain of the labor movement may be irreparably damaged.