Portside

Despite the widespread use of the scanners, the amount of contraband found is low. Some school officials believe the daily security checks actually lead to behavior problems among the students. The metal detectors send a message to the students, says one principal, that “we don’t trust you. And even if we trusted you, we don’t necessarily trust the guy behind you.” That message, she said, runs counter to what her school is trying to teach and “it’s alienating.”

Candidates can get easy applause by lambasting journalists. Nevertheless, as a scholar concerned with the critical functions journalism fulfills in a democracy, the author argues that the highest imperative for journalists is to serve the needs of audiences and the democratic process for critical information. Journalists moderating presidential debates must function as journalists.

Nothing more clearly shows the absurdity and evil of the Vietnam War and yet the subsequent successful invasion of capitalism in a country ostensibly an enemy state than John Daniel's new poem.

Last month a majority of Republicans said they would rather see their habitat destroyed by rising sea levels than agree with President Obama.

Since the early 1970s, the right has conducted a sustained drive to gain power and set policy in the 50 states. The left, by contrast, has been far less effective at the state-level. The sustained determination on the part of the conservative movement has paid off in an unprecedented realignment of power in state governments.

"The proletariat of each country must, of course, first settle matters with its own bourgeoisie," Marx wrote, but the corporate class formatively battles internationally, including locating fake corporate headquarters to low-tax nations, in effect bleeding their home sovereign nations of tax dollars, starving state services and aiding in turning both governing and opposition parties into austerity regimes. This book and film chart the practice and ways to combat it.

The idea of Israel has long been an integral part of Jewish-American identity. But with a generational change among American Jews and increasingly stark political differences with Israel's leadership, could this be the dawn of a new era?

The Working Families Party has pushed the political debate to the left in the states where it's already active. Now-in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders-it's ready to take that fight nationwide. The WFP's agenda-frankly redistributionist and devoted to social equality-targets a class of Democratic elected officials who, in the view of many liberals, seem to listen more to their moneyed donors than to the left-wing rank and file.

Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist for peace, civil rights, labor rights and the environment, left us just two years ago - January 27, 2014. Recently, Seeger's FBI file has been released. Included in the file is Pete's correspondence with Victor Grossman. The Editors of The Volunteer, founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, asked Grossman if he had any recollections of Pete's visit to East Berlin in 1967. Here's his story.

The Portside moderators send our heartfelt thanks to our readers, for coming through in response to our annual appeal! We don't do a lot of fundraising -- just this annual appeal. We are grateful, and gratified, that the response allows us to keep to this bare minimum. Again, many thanks from the left side of the ship - the portside. Full speed ahead in the new year.