Portside

Reader Comments - "I Question America" -- Remembering Fannie Lou Hamer; The Coming Race War Won't Be About Race; Ferguson - Politicians and AFL-CIO - Both Missing; Israelis in US: An Open Letter to American Jews on Gaza; Minnesota Home Health Care Workers Unionize; Ukraine and Neo-Nazis; Sanctions & the Dollar; Economic Democracy Project's first event: Economic Democracy And The Struggle For Black Independence - Sept. 3 - New York

Market Basket employees — who are not unionized — ran a grassroots campaign that included walk-outs, rallies, and online actions. The New York Times describes the saga as "one of the strangest labor actions in American business history," and the Boston Globe notes that these activities "stunned longtime observers of the grocery industry and captured the imagination and attention of a region."

This open-ended cease-fire is fragile. Some of the goals of the two sides will be very hard to attain. And, at root, the Israel-Gaza war won’t really be over until there is a comprehensive peace settlement with either a two-state or a one-state solution to Palestinian statelessness.

Our attempt to build a stronger, more democratic union isn’t an attack on the UAW — it’s an attempt to make our union as strong as possible, to win the best contract, and to most effectively play a role in ongoing struggles for social justice. It demonstrates not weakness or a division within our ranks, but a deep well of support on campus for a stronger stance with management.

“Ralph Fasanella was a consummate New Yorker and self-taught artist who represented the very best of American ideals,” says Dr Anne-Imelda Radice, executive director of AFAM. “He cared about people who did not have a voice, so he gave them a voice through his paintings.”

Trade union delegates to the US-Africa summit stressed that economic ties and growth are not enough. They stressed that there needs to be "a more complex view of development," that addresses the issue of growing inequality. As an example, delegates noted that it is not enough to talk about job creation, attention must also be paid to the kind of jobs being created.

27,000 home health care workers vote to unionize and join the Service Employees International Union. This is one of the largest organizing efforts in Minnesota since the great depression.

Israel and the Palestinians agreed Tuesday to a plan to end the fighting in Gaza after 50 days of combat in which more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, 64 Israeli soldiers and five civilians in Israel were killed. In addition to a cessation of hostilities, other immediate steps include the opening of some of the Gaza border crossings closed by Israel and Egypt. Further indirect discussions are to take place within a month.

The chaos enveloping U.S. foreign policy stems from President Obama’s unwillingness to challenge Official Washington’s power centers which favor neoconservatism and “liberal interventionism”, writes investigative reporter Robert Parry. Obama's failure to confront "neocon absolutism" and "liberal interventionists" has resulted in a foreign policy that is unrealistic, hypocritical, and deadly.

In the repressive one-state reality of today's Israel, which Mr. Netanyahu clearly wishes to make permanent, we need a joint Israeli-Palestinian movement to attain those rights and the full equality they imply. Only such a movement can lay the groundwork for the necessary compromises that will allow the two peoples' national cultures to flourish. They should know that Israel is not Judaism. Jewish history did not culminate in the creation of the state of Israel.