Portside

Currently, most students learn history as a set narrative—a process that reinforces the mistaken idea that the past can be synthesized into a single, standardized chronicle of several hundred pages. History is anything but agreeable. It is not a collection of facts deemed to be “official” by scholars on high.

#BlackWomensLivesMatter. It’s an affirmation that is essential in the face of the reality that Black women’s lives have been consistently devalued and erased. Not only has taking our labor and our lives been part of business as usual throughout this country’s history, so has violating our bodies through systematic criminalization, physical brutality and sexual assault by law enforcement agents, from slave patrols to present day police.

The strikers, dubbed the “Corinthian 15” after the now-bankrupt network of for-profit schools they attended, announced the strike with a simple message directed at the Department of Education: “We owe you nothing.”

Now and historically, it is the youth who reject taken-for-granted injustices. In this moment, young people are the social actors – the leadership, catalysts, the activists, and the organizers – who seized and defined a continuing travesty of North American life: the police murder of Black lives. Rising up against the thickening layers of institutionalized white supremacy, young people are insisting that Black Lives Matter.

Globalization and technology have gutted the labor movement, and part-time work is sabotaging solidarity. Is there a new way to challenge the politics of inequality? Tackling inequality is clearly going to require more than technocratic fixes from above. It isn’t likely to succeed unless workers themselves can reclaim some bargaining power, and the sense of political and social inclusion that can go with it.

With new leadership, the APWU could turn the tide if they build an effective national movement. Can the election of new officers in a single union, even one with over 200,000 members possibly save the post office? Certainly not if they try to do it singlehandedly but there’s a chance, just a chance they could turn the tide if they build an effective national movement. And that’s what they’re trying to do.

For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, “memory” goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion Euro “bailout.” Schauble wants that debt repaid. Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further.

Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. The corporate powers, from Seattle’s mayor to the Chamber of Commerce and the area’s Democratic Party, are determined she be defeated, and these local corporate elites have the national elites behind them. This will be one of the most important elections in the country this year.

#BlackLivesMatter’s founders; NYPD rewrites Wiki; Whitewashing climate change; Ferguson Confidential; Who’s poor?; Oppression and offense

"India’s Daughter", Leslee Udwin's stirring documentation of the brutal rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, has been banned by the Indian government claiming the film is an international conspiracy to defame India and incites violence against women. The efforts to suppress the film are backfiring, creating what is being called an 'Arab spring for gender equality in India'.