Portside

For decades, the military and the VA have repeatedly turned to one man to guide decisions on whether Agent Orange harmed vets in Vietnam and elsewhere. His reliable answer: No.

The phone bank on Florence Avenue near Western is fully staffed on a Thursday afternoon. Its 20 callers could be hawking solar paneling or copper water pipes to anyone who answers. Instead, the men and women here are selling change in the most populous city in the most populous state in the nation. On this day, shortly before the election, they are contacting potential voters about three of California’s 17 ballot propositions.

The following is not intended to be definitive and it is inevitably incomplete. It’s more about raising questions than answering them. The sole goal is to add to and deepen the ongoing discussion. If you find this useful, please share widely and credit simply to Howie Machtinger and other Durham, North Carolina-based social justice activists.

Catastrophically high lead levels in the West Calumet Housing Complex will force over a thousand residents to leave by July 2017

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Please call the following agencies now! Governor, Morton County Sheriff, ND National Guard. Demand that law enforcement STAND DOWN on Highway 1806. There is no room in a democracy to fire hose, tear gas or use rubber bullets on peaceful, unarmed water protectors.

Governor Pat McCrory is crying voter fraud, and rumors are swirling about a possible bid to pack the state Supreme Court.

Ultimately, a new left politics in the United States will have to involve recapturing the energy of some of those pre-New Deal labor, agrarian, and socialist radicals who held on to the promise of a party of their own.

Influenza kills around 36,000 people annually in the U.S. but they are the least effective of all our vaccines. The influenza virus is constantly changing, and there is a lot of guesswork involved in choosing which strains to use in each year’s vaccine.The benefit to the population depends on individuals getting the vaccine. They may not benefit personally, but they indirectly benefit others by reducing transmission rates in the community and increasing herd immunity.

As one union staffer told me: “What they seem to have missed is that the way to reach blacks, Latinos, and women is the same way you reach the white working class: progressive economics, and knock on their doors. And guess what? The allegedly ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ white working class is cool with a multicultural coalition as long as you give them the progressive economics..."