Portside

Celebrations marked the 50th Anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. The FSM, along with the Civil Rights Movement, the Southern Freedom Movement, and organizations like SNCC and CORE inspired a generation. Yesterday, marking the 50th anniversary, there were celebrations and a rally - today the struggle is continuing - in Berkeley, in the U.S., and worldwide, like the Hong Kong students are showing.

When President Obama spoke at the UN last week, it was as if climate change and war were distinct ontological categories when in fact climate change is both a catalyst of conflict and a result of it. Competition over resources - land, water, energy - has always been the ground of conflicts within and between nations despite the fact that they may be clothed in the trappings of ethnic, religious or national rivalries.

Israel is out of step with much of the world. Over time, nations have become more ethnically and religiously diverse; populations have become more urban and educated; and economies have become more commercial. In response to these social and economic changes, many nations have left behind the notion of a favored state religion. It is time for Israel to do the same. It must be a fully secular state.

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It's important that we don't just see working-class people as passive victims of neo-liberalism. Often it is precisely workers occupying the lowest rungs of the labor market who exercise both voice and agency. We need to recognize the shared humanity working-class people hold in common.

A union victory would be the beginning of an ambitious attempt by Volkswagen and the UAW to build a new model for the United States to compete globally. The election itself concludes one of the most innovative and important union-organizing drives in decades.

The Day We Fought Back: Hundreds of digital rights and privacy groups, thousands of individual Net users, in dozens of countries, have come together to protest surveillance by governments at home and abroad.

While Volkswagen has vowed not to interfere, however, outside forces have picked up the anti-union playbook and are telling workers that choosing union representation could endanger their jobs.

Cecily McMillan, 25, faces up to seven years in jail after being charged with assault in the second degree, a Class D felony in New York. Police allege that McMillan elbowed an officer in the head during a protest in lower Manhattan in March 2012.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has found that the J-1 Visa Exchange Visitor Program has been transformed into a source of cheap, exploitable labor for employers, undercutting U.S. workers and damaging the nation’s image abroad. Many students leave the United States disillusioned and deeply in debt.