Portside

Born into a poor, mixed-race Amazon family, Marina Silva is on the verge of a stunning election win after taking over her party

Eric Hoffer was a conservative who only had the time to write because he was represented by a powerful leftist union.

Born into a poor, mixed-race Amazon family, Marina Silva is on the verge of a stunning election win after taking over her party

Our aim is to build an independent base of political power that can put forward our progressive, populist values and mean it. America actually needs a political movement that can say that increasing union density is a good thing, without blushing. One that knows that declining wages and eroding retirement security are not a “new normal” we must adjust to; that market solutions are not always wise; and that an increasingly financialized economy only benefits the top.

Most liberals continue to pay lip service to unions and their importance to the Democratic coalition. But in private, many will tell you that they have little use for them. Julian Zelizer, a Princeton political economist, argues that the marriage between liberalism and organized labor “took a terrible turn starting in the 1970s,” when global competition moved manufacturing jobs from the unionized Northeast and Midwest to the non-union South and, ultimately, abroad.

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The crisis shows that realpolitik remains relevant -- and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

For 20 years workers at the Rocky Mount Engine Plant have worked with the United Electrical Workers (UE), using the minority union strategy to get management to hear their demands, address problems, and improve pay. They have fought for and won a wage scale, raises, and paid holidays—all through petitions, sticker days, and other group actions.

The article examines the tapestry of "plutocratic fallacies" used to justify exploitive wages and foster irrational division among low-wage workers., such as the threat that "robots will replace you."

Today’s headlines are filled with similar stories of the spread of death and destruction in the Middle East and Africa. American commentators worry that these plagues will burst their borders and somehow spread to these shores. And, as in Camus’ novel, these diseases point to something larger, not the imposition of a new malignant system but the breakdown of the existing order.