Portside

On the line are the lives of decent hardworking Americans, trying to cross over into the dignity of work but still caught in the barbwire of an historic global recession. The jobless rate for young African Americans (16-19 years old) was 35.5 percent in December.

Reader Comments - ACTION NEEDED - Stop Iraq Executions; Voting Rights Act; Martin Luther King and Nonviolence; Our Postal Commons; De Blasio's Election; Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA; Tuition-Free Public College Education; New Orleans Teachers and Katrina; Announcements: Muste Institute 40th Anniversary concert; South Africa Today - Online Meeting; Book Talk-Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York; Vandenberg's Role in US Global Domination

Actress Scarlett Johansson is an Oxfam Goodwill Ambassador and the new Global Brand Ambassador for SodaStream - the Israeli manufacturer. Their main production facility is in the industrial zone of Mishor Edomin, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. An international boycott is being waged by The Interfaith Boycott Coalition - a group of individuals from faith-based organizations and institutions who share a common goal of bringing justice to the Palestinians.

Once again our readers have come through in support of Portside Labor.

Once again our readers have come through in support of Portside.

New poem from Marge Piercy, how the rich and the rich in Congress despise and hate the poor..."If they could push a button, if they could war on the poor here at home as they do abroad directly with bombs instead of legislation, think they'd hesitate?"

Fast track or not, TPP is a bad deal for the country. You'll hear a lot in the coming days about free trade creating jobs. Never mind the rhetoric. The first question you should ask is, "Who's going to get rich?" The short answer is: not you. This "deal" is just the latest example of corporate interests stacking the deck against working families. It's happened before, and it's happening again under our noses.

Three years ago, when the Cambodian minimum wage was $61 per month, 200,000 workers took to the streets to ask for a raise. It was the largest-ever strike in the garment sector, but, after just three days, it came to an anticlimactic halt due to police violence and threats against union leaders. Then the "neak ta" appeared. Mass faintings in factories spread throughout Cambodia, and employers' took notice.