Portside

It’s been almost a decade since the Great Recession, and America has witnessed a record 82 months of month-on-month jobs growth. The national unemployment rate now stands at a 4.3%, a 16-year low. But month after month, it is the low-wage sectors – fast food, retail, healthcare – that have added new jobs. Wage growth has barely kept pace with inflation. The national minimum wage ($7.25) was last raised in 2009.

In the new age of domestic terrorism, the right to display arms must be controlled.

NAFTA is back in the news this month: On August 16, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer met with his counterparts from Canada and Mexico, the other two NAFTA nations, to open talks on renegotiating the pact.

When Mr. Trump identifies statues commemorating Confederate leaders as essential parts of “our” history and culture, he is honoring that dark period. (The dismantling of Reconstruction and rebirth of White Supremacy) Like all monuments, these statues say a lot more about the time they were erected than the historical era they evoke.

The president’s decision to expand US military intervention condemns Afghanistan to escalating conflict, and its people to further misery and death.

Media face the ugly truth; VICE = Fox?; Google memo; Giant rightist media merger; Who’s killing Mexican journalists; Tracking attacks

Like countless other black men, Colin Warner was ensnared in a system that was rigged against him in every way. The police, the prosecutors, the prison guards and some of his own lawyers cut corners, rush to judgment and ignored the clear evidence of his innocence... He spent 20 years in prison.

The full text of the new Seattle city council member's inauguration speech. Despite recent talk of economic growth, it has only been a recovery for the richest 1%, while the rest of us are falling ever farther behind. To begin to change all of this, we need organized mass movements of workers and young people, relying on their own independent strength. That is how we won unions, civil rights and LGBTQ rights.

Reader Comments - Pardon for Snowden; BDS and Israel; Turkey; NAFTA; North Carolina; Bill de Blasio; John Handcox; Philadelphia schools; Art Spiegelman; Obamacare; Announcements - Memorial for Steve Kindred -NYC -Feb.8; Pete Seeger gets first Woody Guthrie Award -NYC - Feb.22; Student activists scholarships available; Preserve Mother Jones monument in Illinois; Save the Village photo exhibit -NYC; This week in history - largest slave revolt in U.S. history

Debate over Israeli policy on settlements in the occupied lands;, the on-going discrimination against Palestinians and Jews of color within Israel; negotiations with the Palestinian state; and peace with Iran are now hot items on campuses, in academic organizations and within the Jewish community. While there are disagreements on the tactics of BDS, this debate and discussion should be welcomed. Here Portside presents four different views of the BDS campaign.