Portside

This is not the history of a climate refugee family. It is the history of capitalism in America—disaster capitalism-- with an alliance of police force and wealth, where machinery is supreme, where honest labor is not enough, and where the family is secondary--a worthy reread in modern American times.

While Flint battles a water crisis, just two hours away the beverage giant pumps almost 100,000 times what an average Michigan resident uses into plastic bottles.

September's #RenterWeekOfAction made clear that the new 21st century renter movement is organized, coordinated & visionary. As renters from small rural towns to large urban centers continue to be squeezed by rising rents and low wages as resurgent renter-led movement is uniting around a city and state strategy to build power from below, win universal rent control, and advance a vision of community control over land, housing and development.

Union members step up to provide assistance to Puerto Rico.

The military is one of the country’s largest polluters, with an inventory of toxic sites on American soil that once topped 39,000. At many locations, the Pentagon has relied on contractors like U.S. Technology to assist in cleaning and restoring land, removing waste, clearing unexploded bombs, and decontaminating buildings, streams and soil.

Here are two articles about the Wall. An Israeli arms maker has been picked by the US Department of Homeland Security to build a prototype of the wall President Donald Trump has vowed to build along the full length of the US-Mexico border. After delays — due in part to contractor battles — preliminary work on construction has begun in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, leading to concerns ranging from states’ rights to environmental destruction.

A whole new genre of food videos, focusing on specific intense sounds like crinkling, chopping, sautéing and stirring, is becoming popular. These eating sounds trigger pleasing tingling sensations in the brains of viewers who experience ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

The Republican rising star struggled for two days to get clarity with regard to his appearance at a "white pride" - Ku Klux Klan event in 2002. Initially, his office tried to keep things vague, suggesting it was "likely" Scalise attended. He was a veteran state legislator then, elected from the same precincts where David Duke once ran strong. When it became clear he was not just present but a presenter, Scalise started spinning scenarios that might explain it all away.

Kenworthy thinks that capitalism working at its best—an Americanized version of the Nordic model—would be worth fighting for. I agree.

When unions serve the interests of the few, they lose their way and their ability to be forward-looking. But one of the better-kept secrets is that invariably, they also quietly become alienated from their own members. Inevitably, if the leadership of the PBA continues to ignore and fail on this challenge, new leadership will be destined to take it up.