Portside

It’s important to highlight the people who put their bodies on the line in front of Walmart stores around the country over the years to get the company to take this incremental step. Conservative pundits are spinning the Walmart move as a evidence that the free market will get corporations to do the right thing. Actually, the stock market gave the move a harsh negative judgement, with Walmart stock prices dropping 3 percent.

The polar jet stream – a fast river of wind up where jets fly that circumnavigates the northern hemisphere – has been doing some odd things in recent years. Rather than circling in a relatively straight path, it has meandered more in north-south waves. These long-lived shifts have been responsible for some wicked weather this winter, with cold Arctic winds blasting everywhere from the Windy City to the Big Apple for weeks at a time.

The long-standing bipartisan support for Israel even as it continues to flout international law and undermine the possibility for peace has long been an anomaly in U.S. politics. That’s why those of us who have long advocated change in U.S. policy towards Israel see the growing backlash against the speech as a hopeful sign.

The Fox News host has said he was in a "war zone" that apparently no American correspondent reached.

In this article Kristof acknowledges he was wrong about unions - As unions wane in American life, it’s also increasingly clear that they were doing a lot of good in sustaining middle class life — especially the private-sector unions that are now dwindling. "To understand the rising inequality, you have to understand the devastation in the labor movement,” says Jake Rosenfeld, a labor expert at the University of Washington and the author of “What Unions No Longer Do.”

Right-wing governments in Europe's periphery are terrified of a Greek success at the negotiating table. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders writes, 'If Syriza succeeds in rolling back the EU-mandated measures...It could encourage dissident political movements in other parts of Europe...'

Here's an astonishing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, one of just two African-Americans to have ever served as federal judges in Mississippi. He read it to three young white men before sentencing them for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling "white power" as they drove off.

Lesley Gore, whose song "You Don't Own Me" in 1964, became a rallying cry, proclaiming that men did not own women, "so don't tell be what to do". "The power of women just saying that phrase together: "YOU. DON'T. OWN. ME." Not to our special someones ... but to our government. Until now! Dayum! Gauntlet thrown!" (Upworthy). Gore died on February 16 after a bout with cancer.

Portside is sharing the following eight point proposal that was sent to us by the authors, because it is part of Portside's tradition to promote discussion and action by the left. We hope there will be a broad discussion on this proposal, a discussion that involves the wide variety and experiences of left activists and socialists today.

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