Portside

Thirty-five thousand Los Angeles teachers may possibly strike. Their demands include a 6.5 percent pay increase, smaller class sizes, more funding for school counselors, nurses, and librarians, and a cap on the proliferation of charter schools.

Africa’s children are generally healthier, live longer, are better schooled, and can aspire to a better life than those before. However, this modest progress cannot hide the challenge that remains. Hunger and lack of schools is still too common.

Despite its weaknesses, writes reviewer Ó Broin, this book "is an important contribution to the strategic debate for those of us committed to political and socio-economic alternatives based on principles of democracy, equality and social justice."

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India and Zimbabwe: National Strikes, Germany and Nepal: The Fate of the Left, Sudan and Bangladesh: Showdowns With Power

Despite a crackdown on labor activists there, Chinese workers continue to strike. The strike wave continues to grow, and strikes are not only in the private sector or in companies that manufacture for export. Last year saw a large wave of teacher strikes, and as this article shows, nurses in public hospitals are also striking.

A farmland mapping project by a UC Merced professor indicates that most areas of the country could feed between 80 percent and 100 percent of their populations with food grown or raised within 50 miles. The study immediately generated comment, including positive accolades from author and influencer Michael Pollan (also a UC professor). Many have noted the importance of the study in filling a research gap about local food.

An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus.

While some communities are currently enjoying the fruits of the recovery, others have sunk further into poverty. According to the authors, this pattern of distress vs. prosperity not only “diverges between cities and states but even more starkly within cities at the neighborhood level." In the period of recovery following the Great Recession, the authors find, jobs in the median U.S. ZIP code grew at less than half the national rate.

The statistics about global inequality desperately need someone who can explain them in terms that can anger, mobilise and inspire people. If Corbyn can do this, it would mark an important shift in English politics.