Portside

Seattle public school teachers go on strike. Here's why.

Centered in the homeless community in New York City, 'Time Out of Mind ' makes no excuses for Hammond's (played by Richard Gere) homelessness, and it avoids the Hollywood trick of pretending he's a man wronged, that in his case there's been a mistake. Instead, it asks us to accept him as a man, period, one of the millions who have found no purchase in the economic systems we're born into.

Open Source Radio has produced a three-part series about American work: what it is, what it could be, and where we’re all going together. Follow the link to hear the show and to read more about the content. The show features guests Steve Fraser: labor historian and author of The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power; and Hamilton Nolan: writer, editor, and union organizer at Gawker.

Claiming to be modern-day anti-slavery ambassador is a highly profitable cause that is increasingly popular in Hollywood circles. Most recently, hundreds of celebrities endorsed an open letter to derail Amnesty International’s draft policy to decriminalize consensual adult prostitution, equating it with "slavery". What does this say about the value placed on Black lives that fighting ‘slavery’ is only popular when it is whitewashed of any Black-led struggles for justice?

College is becoming a gamble. For a certain subset of prospective college students, the risk can seem especially daunting.

August 29, 2015, the United States Navy signed the Record of Decision (ROD) for the implementation of one of the largest "peacetime" military build-ups in US history. This will cost between $8 and 9 billion, with only $174 million for civilian infrastructure, which Congress has not released yet. A central aspect of the United States' foreign policy "Pivot to the Pacific," the build-up will relocate thousands of Marines and their dependents from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam.

A majority of Americans struggle daily to stay afloat on a sea of red ink, perpetually threatened by wave after wave of debt. This hasn't always been the case. The phenomenon can be traced back to 1978, when the US economy was sailing into dire straits.

Politicians and local editorial writers love Howard Industries of Laurel, Miss. Politicians shower the producer of electrical transformers with money—taxpayers’ money--to the tune of at least $60 million in local and state subsidies so far, plus a $20 million bond issue from the county. The only thing politicians asked of company CEO Billy Howard was that he use the money to create more jobs. And there’s the rub. What kind of jobs?

The Times buried the real story: active collusion between the agribusiness and chemical industries, numerous and often prominent academics, PR companies, and key administrators of land grant universities for the purpose of promoting GMOs and pesticides.

Thirty years ago, French secret service blew up Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior ship in Auckland, New Zealand, killing a Portuguese photographer, as the ship was preparing to head to sea to protest against French nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific. Now the French intelligence agent who led the deadly attack has come forward for the first time to apologize for his actions, breaking his silence after 30 years.