Portside

Two weeks ago Portside published an essay by Michael Brie, The Tragedy of Party Communism. Here Kurt Stand, David Cohen and Jack Radey reflect on their participation in the socialist movement, what lessons there may be to draw on, as well as which to forget. For today's and tomorrow's socialists, they see socialism as a system that could be reformed, capitalism a system that needs to be abolished.

Thousands of peace, social justice and environmental activists from around the world will gather in New York City from April 24-26 for the Peace and Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World - challenges articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King. Peace and Planet convenes prior to the April 27 - May 22 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations, bringing the voice of civil society to the governmental confab.

Anatomy of a cultural product with the potential to ameliorate social inequities but threatened by digital corporate conglomeration and hijacking by the security state. Book covers the implications for cultural democracy in various sectors-music, film, news, advertising-how battles over copyright, piracy and privacy laws have evolved, counterpoints to invasive data-mining and a "People's Platform" supporting the politics of a fightback.

Reader Comments - Police Killings are Epidemic; Jewish Establishment Tries to Silence Critics; Yavon Kaplan - new Israeli refusknik; New Video - Feeling Good About Apartheid; Guatemalans Infected with STDs; US Cold War with Iran; Indiana; Islamic State - Cancer of Modern Capitalism; US Trains Neo-Nazis in Ukraine; Announcements - Worker Rights Conference; #BlackLivesMatter; 79th Annual ALBA Celebration; Today in History - Paul Robeson - Born 1898

We should not to romanticise the work of the past, indulge in ‘smokestack nostalgia’, but equally we need to acknowledge a world we may be losing. While the ‘job for life’ may have been a fleeting experience for a few, the social patterns that that stability engendered were profound for generations of workers and can still be seen working their way through the contemporary workplace

The victory by the car wash workers is the ninth negotiated since the Wash New York Campaign was launched three years ago.

For the first time in Ferguson, Missouri's history, half of the city council will be black. The city's residents are predominantly black, but their council members have been predominantly white.

We can no longer ignore the fact that members of law enforcement have become a threat to the lives of black men and women.

The Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights is the result of four years of organizing work by the Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers, which campaigned on behalf of the estimated 65,000 domestic workers in the state. The law went into effect on April 1 in Massachusetts.

For years McDonald's new products, business ventures, even social media attempts have gone wrong. It has spectacularly failed to attract or even hold on to millennial customers, who’ve fled in droves. It’s the most visible target of an alliance of workers fighting for $15 an hour and its food is seen as anything but sustainable, fresh or healthy. A result has been a whopping 15 percent drop in its United States operating income in the last quarter of 2014.