Portside

Reader Comments- 2014 Elections; Jim Crow Returns; Toni Morrison, Angela Davis; U.S. Used 1,000 Nazis; Syrian Labyrinth; Draft Could Be Next; Responses to Joel Klein; Nobel Peace Laureates Call Full Torture Disclosure; Activists Block an Israeli Shipping Ship; Women of Afghanistan; Saudi Arabia and ISIS; Fukushima; Announcements-Miners Shot Down-Film Screening-Nov 10; Elections-Who Won? Who Lost?-Nov 14; Folk music greats honor David Amram-Nov 20; PM Press Book Sale

Election day round up shows a few union victories in local races and in referendums even in conservative states despite the over all tide of labor defeats. When voters saw working-class issues directly on the ballot, like raising the minimum wage or guaranteeing sick leave, they voted for them.

San Francisco and Oakland pass minimum wage propositions.

San Francisco voters approved Proposition J. This will increase the minimum wage to $15 by July 2018.

Why vote for someone hesitantly and semi-apologetically tacking toward the right when you can just vote for someone who goes balls-to-the-wall rightward and is damn proud of it? At least that person gives off the sense of actually enjoying his own beliefs.

It will likely be months before we have the data to assess the full impact of new voting restrictions on yesterday’s elections. But we already do know that their impact is far more than the number of hot races they could have turned.

“I didn’t expect a full slate victory, but it’s a clear statement. I hope it means that this kind of money won’t be spent the same way again, that maybe it will change how corporations buy elections.”

“Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been more serious about trying to showcase the diversity within the Republican Party. And Mia Love is potentially the poster child for diversity in the party.”

A nationwide push for minimum wage ballot initiatives will not only give working people a much-needed raise, but will serve to bring out the young people, people of color and working-class voters the Democrats will need to win office. If Democrats offer a more robust economic plan, many of those ballot voters may stick with the party.

Unions exist in only a handful of schools, all of them Conservative movement-affiliated or pluralistic, and the number is dropping. Over the past year, three Conservative Jewish day schools have effectively eliminated their teachers unions. Perelman Jewish Day School, an elementary school just a few miles away from Barrack, and the Solomon Schechter School of Greater Boston have both declined to negotiate with their teachers unions.