Portside

Socialist democracy, essentially superior, still has a long way to go. Being revolutionary is participating with a perspective of committed criticism. Criticizing is not reporting a known fact; it is acting on it, pushing toward its solution... Radicalism in understanding and in action; the revolutionary seeks the root of a problem, even when it cannot be extirpated immediately, even when one errs in pointing it out and moves rapidly into action....

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was feted as a visionary man of peace, but his legacy is more complex and nefarious. He bears prime responsibility for the Oslo Accords, which created a Palestinian Authority without authority and enshrined Israeli control over all aspects of life in occupied Palestine. He launched the military operation that resulted in the Qana massacre of civilians in Lebanon, and sold nuclear weapons to the South African apartheid regime.

All 1,100 low-income residents in the West Calumet Housing Complex in the East Chicago, Indiana are being forced to move due to the high levels of lead. And many are outraged about why the dangerous soils weren't identified and removed earlier and why a branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had assured them they and their children were safe. Test results released in August show alarmingly high concentrations of lead on every street in the complex.

Bernie Sanders says he is "prepared to run for president of the United States." That's not a formal announcement. A lot can change between now and 2016, and the populist senator from Vermont bristles at the whole notion of a permanent campaign. But Sanders has begun talking with savvy progressive political strategists, traveling to unexpected locations such as Alabama...

Washington raised the minimum wage in 1998 linking it to inflation. In the 15 years that followed, the state's minimum wage climbed to $9.32 - highest in the country. Meanwhile job growth continued at an average 0.8 percent annual pace, 0.3 percentage point above the national rate. Payrolls at Washington's restaurants and bars, portrayed as particularly vulnerable to higher wage costs, expanded by 21 percent. Poverty has trailed the U.S. level for at least seven years

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"Moral Mondays" movement spreads in South as a coalition of the NAACP, other activist organizations, including unions, rallied Monday in Tallahassee, one day ahead of the opening of Florida's 2014 legislative session.

The air pollution in Beijing in mid-February was more than 10 times the WHO-prescribed safe limit. It led to the authorities shutting down chemical, metallurgical and other such industries, besides banning outdoor barbecues and even asking people to stay indoors.

With new strategies, the Working Families Party is shaking up the two-party system.Bertha Lewis knows perhaps better than anyone else how hard those fights can be. But she thinks they're worth it. "Sometimes, in years past, you couldn't tell a Democrat from a Republican. No one wanted to talk about race; no one wanted to talk poverty. This conversation that we're having nationally about inequality is because [groups like WFP] kept to our principles and our ideas...' "