Portside

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.

On March 30, Mr. Abu-Jamal collapsed in the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy from diabetic shock before being hospitalized in the ICU at Schuylkill Medical Center. Despite his serious condition, he was transferred back to the prison just two days later. The medical attention given to Mr. Abu-Jamal thus far has been administered without adequate information and has raised questions of medical neglect.

Several of the biggest steps toward today's condition of mass incarceration and ever-more-visible lethal police violance against civilians were undertaken during Democratic Presidential administrations. Naomi Murakawa has written a history of these developments. Here, Mike Konczal shows us that changing the police-prison industrial system starts with an outlook that begins to think "not about how to make the system better, but about how to take it apart."

One explanation of why do many celebrities are Scientologists is hidden in plain sight: The way the cult mirrors the star-obsessed, profit-driven culture of Hollywood. "Going Clear" also posits the rest of the answer: Stars stick with Scientology because of the meticulously kept notes, recordings and videos from E-meter "auditing" sessions that are central to the religion's practice, and make for ideal blackmail material.

The conflict over fast track is fundamental. Organized labor wants to kill the legislation. Obama wants to sign it. The rough outlines of the bill would enable Congress to make its preferences known and receive updates while trade negotiations are under way in exchange for a clean vote -- no amendments -- on a final trade agreement.