Portside

Some critics, including some in the labor movement, suggest that unions have to abandon collective bargaining and pursue other strategies for worker gains, such as winning higher wages through legislation. But collective bargaining can still work, and it is still necessary.

Recent experiments show how sound can interplay with your sense of smell—and, thus, flavor—in the brain

From a flawed database that identified dozens of toddlers as gang members to an application process designed to provide deportation relief to young migrants, here are the systems that could hasten mass deportation efforts if used against immigrant communities.

On January 2, 2017 Portside posted "The End of Progressive Neoliberalism" by Nancy Fraser http://portside.org/2017-01-02/end-progressive-neoliberalism. Here is a reader response which call for a "critique of liberal multiculturalism and liberal feminism, while advancing a socialist-feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist vision. And let us try to leave behind the sectarian divisions that have hampered us and seize the opportunity to build a new left."

Many of the folks I know are getting ready to play serious defense in 2017, and they’re not wrong. Before we take up our three-point stance on the national line of scrimmage, however, maybe we should ask ourselves not only what we’re fighting against, but what we’re fighting for. What kind of United States of America do we actually want? Maybe, in fact, we could start by asking: What is a country for? What should a country do?

The Syrian tragedy is a key moral and political question today. Yet it has not been easy for leftists around the world to decide where they stand on Syria.To illuminate the history and nature of the Syrian conflict, Yusef Khalil for Jacobin conducted an extensive interview with Yasser Munif, a Syrian scholar who studies grassroots movements in the country.

“We don’t win anymore. As a country, we don’t win.” “We don’t want to use our military, honestly. We don’t want to use our military. But we’re being scoffed at right now and we never fight to win.” “It will change. We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning. Believe me.” Donald Trump on the state of America

Ebola facts; Black colleges in trouble; Unwholesome Whole Foods; Blue-state diaspora; Striking for the boss

To put it bluntly, when confronting IS and its band of lightly armed irregulars, a reputedly professional military, American-trained and -armed, discarded its weapons and equipment, cast its uniforms aside, and melted back into the populace. What this behavior couldn’t have made clearer was that U.S. efforts to create a new Iraqi army, much-touted and funded to the tune of $25 billion over the 10 years of the American occupation had failed miserably.

The international aid agency Oxfam warned last week that money pledged at the global donor conference “will languish in bank accounts for decades before it reaches people, unless long-standing Israeli restrictions on imports are lifted,” adding that “under current restrictions and rate of imports it could take more than 50 years to build the 89,000 new homes, 226 new schools, as well as the health facilities, factories and water and sanitation infrastructure people need.