Portside

RIP Edward Herman, who co-wrote a book with Noam Chomsky that's now more important than ever

Images depicting the severe brutality of the Spanish police clashing with voters at the October 1st referendum in Catalonia spilled across social media and TVs around the world. Faced with these images, many asked: What is happening in Catalonia?

From the beginning of a day, any day, writes Colorado poet Jared Smith, taking a continental view of people at work, we all go through “the motions” and “the same work has to start and be filled each day…”

If it's enacted, the GOP tax cut now working its way through Congress will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history. - And this dire warning is from Forbes, the business publication.

It is important for as many people as possible to get involved in this next phase of the fight to end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen, because this is the world's best chance of ending this nightmare, as United Nations aid chief Mark Lowcock warned of Yemen experiencing "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims."

The trade treaty, now up for renegotiation, has displaced millions of Mexican workers, and many thousands of U.S. workers as well. A U.S. autoworker earns $21.50 an hour, and a Mexican autoworker $3, but a gallon of milk costs more in Mexico than it does here. People were migrating from Mexico to the U.S. long before NAFTA, but the treaty put migration on steroids.

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John Steinbeck was one of the most prolific and, in my view, significant American novelists of the twentieth century. He was influenced by and synthesized his own politics and personal experience with the political culture and movements of the 1930s.

A novel set in the context of the historic Gastonia strike of textile workers in 1929 and featuring labor songwriter and indigenous strike leader Ella May Wiggins, the book, based as it is on an actual struggle uniting black and white workers, speaks to contemporary concerns through a vivid portrayal of struggle against historical injustice.

When joined by family and friends for Thanksgiving, ask guests to tell stories about their very first food memory, or to recall any family member who was a farmer or a jolly cook. Invite people of diverse backgrounds and all ages. Ask a farm family to join you, or a cheesemaker or others involved in producing food. Then eat, talk, enjoy!