Portside

Living Peace: Connecting Your Spirituality with Your Work for Justice, by Victor Narro 2014, a new book on the spiritual side of organizing, is just over 100 pages long. This little volume is broaching a topic that might raise cynical eyebrows in certain quarters in our labor movement. Narro's thesis intrigued me and in the spirit of self-mindedness I read the book and reflected on my own recent experience with ILWU Local 6 and the Campaign for Sustainable Recycling.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who once served as President Obama’s chief of staff, received more than $600,000 in campaign contributions from executives at investment firms that manage Chicago pension funds. The head of a New Jersey board that determines how the state invests its $80 billion pension fund was in direct contact with top political and campaign fundraising aides for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during his re-election bid.

The scientific body established by a law signed by President Lincoln released two groundbreaking reports today on geoengineering. The reports raise fundamental questions regarding efficacy, safety, economy and governance.

Regulations serve a public purpose. It may not be necessary to maintain the same scope of regulation in all cases, and it certainly is not necessary to maintain the regulations in their current form, but it does not make sense to have one set of rules that apply to incumbent taxi services and a whole different set that applies to Uber. The appropriate policy going forward should be to modernize the regulatory structure and establish rules that apply equally ...

In the face of aggressive attacks, a wide range of national organizations have come together to create A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service. These organizations are united in the demand that the public good must not be sacrificed for the sake of private investment and profit. A strong public Postal Service is our democratic right. The Alliance is fighting to protect and enhance vibrant public postal services now – and for many generations to come.

There is nothing new about Republican opposition to teachers unions, but in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that some Democrats have turned against them as well. In the following post we hear from a union leader, Bob Peterson, the president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, about how he thinks teachers union must change to keep alive public education.

The aftermath of the murder of the three American students in Chapel Hill reconfirms the truth that Muslim lives matter only when they're villains not victims. But the responsibility extends beyond the media. Government-run programs targeting Muslims as "enemy combatants", "national security risks", and "unassimilable", affix the state seal of approval on the vilification of Muslim Americans, stirring Islamophobia and spurring violence.

Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about the NSA’s global surveillance practices sparked outrage around the world, but nowhere more than in Latin America. Now that the dust has settled, we should ask: Did the Latin American response to the NSA disclosures represent a historic break in hemispheric relations? Or was this just business as usual, another insult added to the ongoing injury of U.S. hegemony in the Americas?

Private U.S. corporations, taking advantage of lucrative opportunities created by the intentionally crippled tax base of local governments, are grabbing public assets and resources, particularly water. But water is not a commodity; it is a human right. And in the U.S., as around the world, the onslaught of corporate privatization is being countered by a powerful backlash to reclaim that precious resource for the public sphere.