Portside

Why Are Urban Teachers Being Trained to be Robots? As my students entered the room, I was supposed to say: "In seats, zero talking, page 6, questions, 1-4." But I don't even talk to my dog like that. Constant narration of what the students are doing is also key to the NNN teaching style. "Noel is is finishing question 3. Marjorie is sitting silently. Alfredo is on page 6."

WashPost disgraces itself; LAT disgraces itself; NYT disgraces itself; Google tax; Yay Jon

Any country that would challenge neoliberalism inevitably will face the assorted weapons of international capital. The central question, then, is whether a government is “willing to mobilize its people on behalf of the policies that meet the needs of people.” And this was the question I posed about Syriza in 2013: “do the stances taken by the Syriza leadership foster or weaken the movements from below?

The UAW is back in bargaining with the Big 3 Automakers. Will they end the two-tier wage and benefit system they agreed to 8 years ago? And if they do, can they end it by raising up the bottom tier, rather than taking cuts for the top tier?

As his admirer James Dean probably knew all too well, Brando was a true rebel, partly because he thought being a star was absurd and partly because, as clip after clip in 'Listen to Me Marlon' shows, he always had a cause, whether it was civil rights, black power, Native American sovereignty or his own independence.

Phyllis Bennis' new book — the latest in her Middle East primer series — is on both ISIS and the new global war on terror. Like the earlier primers on Palestine and Afghanistan, the new book is written in a Frequently Asked Questions format -- great for use as an organizing tool..

The housing crisis is not over. Millions of families today face unjust eviction and foreclosure.

Sessions LA, which began organically out of an desire to introduce turntables to youth at SIPA’s afterschool program, is a DJing, music writing, digital music production and recording program aimed at youth ages 15-20 that live in and around downtown LA. Its core mission is to develop community, foster critical thinking and promote youth development through the process of creating music.

Jimmy Carter called war waged in Vietnam by the U.S -- a war that killed 60,000 Americans and 4,000,000 Vietnamese, without burning down a single U.S. town or forest -- "mutual" damage. Ronald Reagan called it a "noble" and "just cause." Barack Obama promotes the myth of widespread mistreatment of returning U.S. veterans, denounces the Vietnamese as "brutal," and has launched a 13-year, $65 million propaganda program to glorify what the Vietnamese call the American War.

In April every year, that pesky gender wage gap jumps to front-page news again as we mark Equal Pay Day. The date signifies the day when American women, on average, have finally earned as much as the average white American man did the past year. Last week is an equally important and depressing milestone: Black Women’s Equal Pay Day.