Portside

Many taxi drivers love the entrepreneurial nature of the work but they still want and need security and protection. Recent developments of the gig economy in the states of Washington and California are breakthrough moments for the potential to organize workers against companies like Uber. We can't wait for the courts to figure out the gig economy: we have to be organizing now, despite the challenges.

Remarks by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, during the closing of the 7th Communist Party of Cuba Congress.

The flourishing of soul food’s sub-genres has been fun to watch (and eat), but it has also meant that fewer African-American chefs are embracing traditional soul food. Some side-step the cuisine in order to avoid being pigeon-holed as a “soul-food cooks,” while others follow their passions for other flavors.

A years-long struggle to eliminate an undemocratic system of at-large voting in Whittier California has resulted in an historic victory for the community. Democrat Josue Alvarado has won a hard-fought electoral campaign to become the first person elected to represent Whittier’s newly configured Council One. He is only the second Latino to hold a council seat in that city in 118 years!

A conversation with Tony Romano of the Right to the City Alliance. What are the systemic challenges to democratic and equitable control over public space? What kind of popular mobilizations can build towards systemic alternatives guaranteeing the human right to housing? To help answer these questions, we spoke with Tony Romano, Organizing Director for the Right to City Alliance. Our conversation is below.

The SNL skit that never aired: Chuck Hagel confirmation hearing. Researchers reconstruct the common ancestor of mammals. Stephen Colbert reports on the state of the Rubio. Some of the awesome people who create Wikipedia.

Ten years ago people around the world rose up. In almost 800 cities across the globe, protesters filled the streets of capital cities and tiny villages, following the sun from Australia and New Zealand and the small Pacific islands, through the snowy steppes of North Asia and down across the South Asian peninsula, across Europe and down to the southern edge of Africa, then jumping the pond first to Latin America and then finally, last of all, to the United States.

Drugs are ubiquitous in this country, and yet we know that some people have the privilege of doctor-prescribed intoxication, while others are thrown into dungeons for seeking the same relief. We know that the war on drugs is heavily inflected with Jim Crow–ism, economic inequality, gun culture myths and political opportunism. The result: the war on drugs has metastasized into a war on children.

The explosion caused by the crash of a meteor in Russia rivalled a nuclear blast, but the rock was still too small for advance-warning networks to spot.