Portside

"It's fair to say that agriculture has never, ever faced bigger challenges than today"

For every industrial robot introduced into the workforce, six jobs are eliminated. – Since a few days, Amazon has started Amazon Go. The idea is simple: a shop where you go in, take whatever you want from the shelves, and the cost goes automatically to a magnetic card that you carry.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has been focused on expanding oil, gas and coal development and sweeping away Obama-era environmental initiatives that the administration contends hurt America’s energy industry.

The Labor Movement Should Follow Their Lead.

The Pentagon’s Office of Economic Adjustment mostly missed its chance to wean communities off America’s dependence on defense economics.

As Iraq prepares for its first post-Islamic State elections, the Iraqi Communist Party has formed a singular alliance with the movement led by activist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And it is a move that is not as bizarre as it may first appear.

Nurses as Housekeepers at Vanderbilt Medical Center: An Untold Story Behind the Story.

Forty years after founding the Children’s Defense Fund, which advocates for federal and state resources for children, Edelman is still at work in the fund’s red brick building on E Street NW, displaying at 74 the same passion she had in 1967, when she was a 27-year-old civil rights attorney leading Sen. Robert F. Kennedy through the Mississippi Delta.

We need to be a nationally networked movement of many local, regional and issue-focused groups so we can unite into one mass movement. Research shows that nonviolent mass movements win. Fringe movements fail. By ‘mass’ we mean with an objective that is supported by a large majority and 1 percent to 5 percent of the population actively working for transformation.”

In today’s United States, labor unions and Latino voters are two key pillars of progressive politics. Yet when Eliseo Medina worked for the UFW from 1965-1978, the situation was very different. The UFW was the only union that prioritized grassroots electoral outreach, and among the few groups focused on registering Latino voters and getting them out the vote. Medina would play a key role in expanding this UFW model nationally, and through the broader labor movement.