Portside

Invitation to the thirteenth biennial APALA Convention– Organizing In Solidarity, Building One Vision Forward! The convention will be at the Wyndham Bayside in San Diego, CA from August 13-16, 2015.

An abundance of data has fueled the reform movement, but from prisons to prosecutors, crucial questions remain unquantified.

Even if it were true that cell phone users “voluntarily” disclose their location, it strains credulity to argue that, simply by virtue of putting a cell phone in their pocket, they voluntarily disclose “a wealth of detail about their familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”

Emmy Noether's Theorem may be the most important theoretical result in modern physics.

If companies want to grumble about creeping socialism, they could always choose, at their own free will, that tried-and-true market-based solution to poverty wages: paying their workers enough to live on.

The exit from a dystopian future does not rest with a brave individual or a small group of high tech activists who undermine the state. Rather, it rests in winning the confidence of millions that there is an alternative to chaos and dystopia that is not to be found in one or another variant of authoritarianism. This is the challenge for the global Left . . .

Volkswagen is touting a University of Tennessee study that determined controversial incentives from the state of Tennessee for the expansion of VW’s assembly plant in Chattanooga are, in fact, a damn good investment for the state. The sunny conclusions of the report may even be mostly accurate, at least with some context. Problem is, Volkswagen paid for the study. Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First said he believed numbers for created jobs were exaggerated.

In its second season, Halt tells the story of two women laboring to bring a new, better technology to consumers with an assist from a houseful of gamers. Lean In, Gamergate, and the ongoing under-representation of women in tech hang heavy over the episodes.

On May 24th, the two parties that have ruled Spain since the late 1970s were dealt yet another substantial blow, this time in regional and municipal elections. They were defeated in the main by independent political forces rooted in prominent local struggles and committed to developing a coalition between new or smaller Left parties and community organizations around a common platform; one developed through radical democratic and grassroots participation.