Portside

Midwest farmers douse their fields in chemicals as insects grow resistant to Bt Corn

As long as workers could wrest gains from capitalism, the system was safe. But with production offshored, that bargain blew up.

How a poor New Jersey town and its teacher's unions turned around its schools.

30,000 California Prisoners on Hunger Strike

"Union struggles reflect on all jobs," said Jane Smith, 30, a data scientist from San Francisco. "Unions won the struggle for a 40-hour workweek, and we are all benefiting from that still. Unions also fight for higher wages, which translate to higher wages for all Americans." The BART strike is a symptom of "the income and wealth inequality that is plaguing our nation," she said. "I can't believe that people are missing the point."

Bert and Ernie Outed; Commie Camp Profiled; The Blind Will Get Their Books; Chipotle Rejects GMO Ingredients; Race and Class in Evidence At the Zimmerman Trial; Kansas Takes a Sharp Turn to the Right

The New York Times reports on the growing trend of workers getting paid via fee-laden debit cards. In a letter to Portside, historian Stephen Brier notes the "eerie parallels" to the 1800s.

Melville, who had been a sailor on clipper ships and whalers, was keenly aware that the wealth of industrialized societies came from the exploited of the earth. “Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans,” Ishmael says of New England’s prosperity. “One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea.”