Portside

Pro-Israel organizations are increasingly using the law to target Palestinian solidarity groups in the United States. Dima Khalidi, head of Palestine Legal, speaks with +972 Magazine about the ‘Palestine exception’ to free speech, and what her organization is doing to fight back.

Newly declassified documents reveal the extent of US government knowledge and support of Indonesia's 1965 anti-Communist massacre. Estimates of the number executed range from between 100,00 to 1,000,000.

There’s a new case against public-sector unions headed to the Supreme Court. But the challenges it presents are anything but new. The Janus v. AFSCME case just the latest in a in a long line of right-wing funded attacks on labor unions—but it would be a big one. And, yet again, the expectation of a unfavorable ruling has renewed a urgent debate about not only how public-sector unions should prepare but whether they should radically change their missions.

#WeToo; Blame sex; Operation Remap; Walkout; Rights disabled; Chasing voters

Conservative attorney Hans Bader exemplifies the love affair between extreme right-wing ideology and corporate influence in the Trump administration.

In earlier periods of U.S. history, progressive forces have been most effective in inflicting defeats on reactionaries when they coupled their resistance with a positive program that met the needs of millions of working people. Some of these campaigns achieved signal victories. Others fell short but are worth remembering today when many millions are mobilizing to defeat the right and looking to construct a better country out of the ashes of the Trump era.

Critics argue that NAFTA has accelerated the global “race to the bottom,” where governments dismantle workplace and environmental protections in order to attract capital investment. The tri-national participants in last week’s Chicago gathering protested outside the Mexican Consulate Friday afternoon, calling on the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto to listen to the demands of Mexico’s workers in the NAFTA renegotiations.

What are we actually fighting for? The loved ones of lost soldiers deserve more than comforting words. They deserve justice.

As much as the film taps into a venerable tradition of observational realism (witnessing, never editorializing), it’s not “objective.” An indisputable ally of the disenfranchised, Baker honors his subjects by telling their stories honestly, without Hollywood distortion or flattering embellishment, and through a gaggle of actors mainly plucked from the area, not central casting.

Chris Brooks talks with Gene Bruskin about the failed organizing drives in the South and lessons for the future.