Charles Koch Gave $90 Million to Influence Higher Ed in the South

Alex Kotch Facing South
The proposed center at WCU is part of a long campaign by Koch to influence higher education. The Charles Koch Foundation along with three other groups led by Koch gave nearly $108 million to 366 colleges and universities from 2005 to 2014, finds an Institute for Southern Studies investigation, building on research by Greenpeace.

Portside Needs Your Help

Portside
Once a year, Portside Labor asks all of our readers for support. Every year our readers come thru. We run these appeals for just two weeks. If you have already contributed, many thanks! If you haven't... what could be a better time than over the weekend. If you have thought of going to our donate page, but haven't...please do. Here's why we are asking for your support.

Everybody Hates Ted Cruz

Texas senator and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is rising in the polls, but he may also be the the man most hated by his congressional colleagues.

Movie: Spotlight

Reporters at the Boston Globe (Mark Ruffalo, Matt Carroll, Sasha Pheiffer) stuggle to uncover a coverup by the Catholic hierarchy of sexual abuse by priests. 

Friday Nite Videos -- Singing Out 2014

Portside
Hong Kong Ode to Joy Flash Mob. Stevie Wonder: 'Hard Time Mississippi.' Handel's Messiah: A Random Act of Culture. Pete Seeger -- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. Mary Poppins Really Needs a Raise.

Hong Kong: Ode to Joy Flashmob

The Hong Kong Festival Orchestra gives a flashmob performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy in 2013. A spiritual prelude to Occupy Hong Kong and the Democracy Encampments? 

Handel's Messiah: A Random Act of Culture

The Opera Company of Philadelphia Chorus, together with singers from a cross section of community groups, infiltrate a department store as shoppers and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah," in one of 1,000 Random Acts of Culture. Watch the performers, delighted children, spontaneous videographers, and the entire public within earshot together "create culture."

Pete Seeger -- Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

For a biographical account of America in song, look to Pete Seeger (1919-2014). This song of Pete's is the one he chose to sing on national TV in 1968, ending his more than decade-long blacklist, and showing that he hadn't made peace with war and injustice.