Portside

Our society’s tendency to idealize local food allows small farmers to pay workers substandard wages, house them in shoddy labor camps, and quash their ability to unionize to demand better working conditions.

Imagine how much stronger the U.S. antiwar movement would be today if its major formations joined together to issue a Call for united demonstrations on both coasts to demand an end to U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Enforcement is not the solution to the latest version of the United States’ immigration issue. To stem immigration, if that’s indeed what is desired, the United States needs to make Central America habitable again, especially since the U.S. government has been the major instigator in the region for at least the past century.

In this moment of reactionary politics, I am reminded of words from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the moral imperatives that anchor public policy: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Unfortunately for the governor, waging a competitive re-election fight against Democrat Mary Burke, the data on job growth in Wisconsin keep providing his opponents with political ammunition.