Portside

The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, an umbrella entity representing 600,000 workers, has arguably reached a zenith of its influence under Durazo, its first woman leader. It helped land allies on the Los Angeles City Council and county Board of Supervisors and recently pushed through a minimum wage law requiring large Los Angeles hotels to pay workers at least $15.37 an hour, one of the nation's highest base wages.

The US Supreme Court decided that it's constitutional to exclude women from registering for the draft because they're banned from combat units. That ban ends in 2016.

Far from signaling the retreat of the state from investment in urban economies, this process has witnessed the shift of robust public spending on cities away from public goods like affordable housing and toward spaces and structures designed to provide the elite with new opportunities to consume conspicuously.

Why has the law been such a flop in a state that had so much to gain from it? When I traveled across Mississippi this summer, from Delta towns to the Tennessee border to the Piney Woods to the Gulf Coast, what I found was a series of cascading problems: bumbling errors and misinformation; ignorance and disorganization; a haunting racial divide; and, above all, the unyielding ideological imperative of conservative politics.

These efforts to curb young and minority voters come as youth -- and especially minority youth -- are becoming increasingly larger parts of the American electorate. Voters between 18 and 29 years old were critical to President Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012. In North Carolina in 2008, the only age group of which a majority voted for Obama was voters aged 18 to 29, according to CNN. Obama won the state by just 14,177 votes.

A book review by Michael Hirsch of Stanley Aronowitz's latest book, The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement, Verso 2014. Stanley Aronowitz is a former factory worker and organizer with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the Oil,Chemical and Atomic Workers. Mr Hirsch writes that Aronowitz argues for direct action, workplace democracy and that unions become partners in job and community struggles. He calls this a book of wonder.

‘People’s Assembly’ hope to unite those angered by the Government’s economic decisions

Microsoft/Google war; Wiretapping Act extended; Content made to order for advertisers; PBS Nova’s drone cover-up; Telecommunication Companies Hall of Shame Awards; Disabled sue for web shopping access; Web search and email scanning expanded; MIT asked to release all Aaron Swartz documents; Cable news is unbearably white

kids, ranging in age from 18 to 22 and branded with corporate logos, are producing this tidal wave of revenue—and they’re not receiving a dime of it.

Today, the Freelancers Union is one of the nation’s fastest-growing labor organizations, with more than 200,000 members, over half of them in New York State. Ms. Horowitz, who has never lacked audacity, says she expects to expand the organization to one million members within three years.