Portside

The Fight for 15 has grown into one of the nation’s largest progressive movements, alongside movements by undocumented immigrants, Black Lives Matter and environmental activists fighting global warming. Beginning with fast-food workers four years ago, the Fight for 15 now includes other groups, including childcare workers, home-care aides, airport workers and adjunct professors.

Words of warning; The urban/rural divide; Who’s white? Who’s working class?; Stripping voting rights (more); Resistance is local

“The inhuman exploitation on the peoples of three continents,” he said in reference to Africa, Asia and Latin America, “marked forever the destiny and lives of over 4.5 billion people living in the Third World today.” It was this history, he said, that left “the current victims of that atrocity” in poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and sickness. Castro’s words mirrored reality. He would not end there. It was hope, not despondency, that captured his personality.

Unfortunately, Chevron has taken no vacation from its longstanding, deep-pocketed work of rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies, often with greater success than in Richmond. A coalition of environmental, consumer protection, labor, and political groups released a damning report last week entitled The Chevron Way: Polluting California and Degrading Democracy. (available on line at: http://www.chevrontax.info/the-chevron-way).

Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel wrote, presciently, in her 1984 opinion overturning Korematsu’s conviction: “In times of international hostility and antagonism, our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to exercise their authority to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused.”

Every year, Portside asks our readers for their help and support. This, however, is not like other years. What months ago was a scary thought is now our, and the world's reality - a Trump presidency. We need to work together, to build, to organize, and to understand what works, and what doesn't. Portside provides reportage, inspiration, investigation and analysis that are needed more than ever. We promise to do our part. Will you help?

Because their traditional allies from the Democratic Party have obsessively embraced corporate-motivated innovations, teacher unions seem paralyzed, unable to respond with a new strategy. They criticize the overuse of standardized tests, but they keep electing Democrats to office who, once elected, more often than not join the corporate attack on education.

A skeptic looks at the human side of game theory.

If the top one percent were taxed at the same rate as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would raise $68 billion per year. Similarly, if the top 20 percent paid the same as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would generate $128 billion each year.

I don’t believe that we have confronted the legacy of our history in a meaningful way…Our interest is really in forcing the country to talk differently about this history,” -- Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative,