Portside

Sanders’ candidacy is less a test of the power of the populist message than a test of populist energy and independence. The biggest obstacle is less to convince voters that he’s right than to convince them that he’s a serious candidate, worth supporting. He has to find ways to get a hearing. And he has to find ways to overcome understandable cynicism. That is the challenge to the emerging populist movements.

The six Baltimore police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray - who died after being injured in police custody - have been charged criminally, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday. "Where are the jobs for the young people some so swiftly label "thugs?"" Len Shindel worked at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point Plant in Baltimore for 30 years and for most of that time was an activist and USWA representative.

"I learned how to fight the long shifts, the bashed fingers," writes poet David Salner of his mining experiences, but he also sees the beauty of sorrow. An appropriate lyric for May Day.

Two years after we last investigated the the foreclosure crisis in most affluent black county in America, things aren't exactly looking up—except, maybe, for the banks.

Lorain unionists are searching for the best way to assert the political power they clearly possess, separate from the Democratic Party.

Are there (short term) political alternatives to the wealth tax to limit or reverse inequality?

Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen of The Nation offer a peek at their recent interview with Edward Snowden. Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian reviews Citizenfour, Laura Poitras' new documentary on Snowden.

According to those intimately involved in the response to the West African Ebola outbreak, NewLink Genetics owns the rights to a piece of the puzzle needed to quickly test and deploy one of two likely Ebola vaccines and they are holding up the entire process because they are not entirely sure they are going to get rich on it. Others suggest it is incompetence. NewLink seems to be claiming it is just a lot of paperwork.

As city police hauled away about two dozen of his casino union brethren in handcuffs at a mass protest last week, longtime Trump Taj Mahal bartender Al Messina couldn't help but wonder aloud:Is this what 24 years comes down to? What happened to the bond between the casino industry and its workers?

As city police hauled away about two dozen of his casino union brethren in handcuffs at a mass protest last week, longtime Trump Taj Mahal bartender Al Messina couldn't help but wonder aloud:Is this what 24 years comes down to? What happened to the bond between the casino industry and its workers?