Portside

Persnickety about Picketty; ALEC’s anti-choice clone; Rolling Stone’s rape story, two takes; Geeks reek; We are how we eat

Unions historically have supported minimum wage and occupational safety laws that benefited all workers, not just their members. But they also have recently begun investing major resources in organizing drives more likely to yield new laws than new members. Some of these campaigns seek to organize workers who, rightly or wrongly, aren't even designated as employees or lack a common employer, such as domestic workers and cab drivers.

We will likely hear these false appeals to an imaginary history a great deal with the release of the Senate report on CIA torture. It seems to me self-evident that most of the members of the Constitutional Convention would have voted to release the report and also would have been completely appalled at its contents.

Report released by Senate after four-year, $40m investigation concludes CIA repeatedly lied about brutal techniques in years after 9/11

What has made these protests stand out is not their size, though some have been quite large. And this is not the first time protesters have used their bodies to block bridges, tunnels, intersections, and roadways around town. But I can’t come up with another time when protesters have engaged in as much spontaneous and simultaneous disruptive action as they have in the two weeks since Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for shooting Michael Brown.

Tonight President Obama issued an Executive Order to reform some of the broken immigration system in the country. This is not unprecedented - previous presidents have also used Executive Orders to accomplish their goals. Here is Pres. Obama's speech; along with responses from immigrant and immigration activists around the country, many outlining what more is needed.

'We are determined,' said students organizers in a joint letter, 'to build a movement too big to ignore that puts free, accessible and public education back on the political agenda.' Thousands marched supporting those demands yesterday.

Victor Grossman, an American who has lived in Berlin for more than sixty years, gives his reflections on the German Democratic Republic (GDR), responding to two recent posts by Portside.

Rep. John Conyers wanted to block U.S. funding to neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to help.

Reader Comments- Keystone XL-What Next; Mexico; Elizabeth Warren; Voter Suppression; War and Democracy; A White Manifesto?; US-China Climate Accord; Responses to Naomi Klein; Schools and Prisons; Housing Discrimination; FBI Plot - Martin Luther King Suicide; Net Neutrality; Global Economic Divide; COSATU and NUMSA; Announcements - 2014 & Looking Forward to 2016- New York- Dec 2; Voter, Civil & Workers Rights- New York- Dec 11; She's Beautiful When She's Angry- showings