Portside

BDS is neither motivated by anti-Semitism, nor is it, in effect, anti-Semitic. The "anti-Semitism" charge against BDS is false, intellectually lazy, and morally repugnant. The Israelis are fighting for their right to persist in settling, exploiting and stealing land; to continue breaking international law that prohibits settlement. For the sins of occupation, boycotts are a Light punishment. Commentary from an Israeli, American, and Orthodox Jewish perspective.

Reader Comments: Kalief Browder and Criminality of Prisons; Fight for $15; Edward Snowden - Hero; Ronnie Gilbert; Walmart Anti-Labor Activity; Suicide in Young Women; The Audacity to Win - Left Strategy Needed; Recommended Books - By non-white authors; Announcements: 62nd Memorial of the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Brooklyn Peace Fair

Propping up dictators, rigging elections and aligning with some of the world's more unsavory characters is an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy past and present. It's also a fair characterization of the narrow gamut of thinking for both the wise oracles who urge containment and the hawks promoting armed confrontation. The book focuses on these elite policy makers who have become not just complacent with, but complicit in, U.S. hegemonic crimes worldwide.

The new Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, was the child of migrant workers. His poetry sparkles with a luminous, richly inventive language and a technical prowess that draws from both traditional and innovative poetics. He is the first Latino to become the country's Poet Laureate, and is the most recent Poet Laureate of California. Here is a review of his New and Selected Poems (2008), and some useful links.

Pittsburgh Labor Board rules in favor of Duquesne adjuncts and rejects the university's religious objections. The vote for the union took place in 2012.

Chipotle will offer hourly employees benefits such as sick pay and tuition reimbursements starting July 1. The announcement comes as workers and advocates call for higher wages and benefits so that people in the restaurant industry can make a living without relying on public assistance.

The events in McKinney make a stronger argument than could almost any lawyer for why the court should affirm the importance of racially and economically integrated residential areas.

Assata Shakur writes about her incarceration at Riker's Island in the 1970s. Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party who went underground to evade police repression, joining the Black Liberation Army. She was captured in 1973 and held as a political prisoner until 1979 (one year after this article was written), when she escaped and made her was to Cuba where she lives to this day, despite increasing pressure from the United States for her extradition.

With their anthology Octavia’s Brood, Adrienne Brown and Walidah Imarisha evoke a world of radical possibility.

Numbers alone can't convey what the justice system does to the individual black body. Kalief Browder was sent to Riker's Island when he was 16 years old for a crime he did not commit. He spent three years there without a trial.