Portside

After years of struggle, El Salvador workers have won a victory with a new minimum wage that has made an enormous impact in people's lives. Corporate power has not given up, preferring to pay starvation wages they are attempting to roll back the gains made.

"It’s unclear exactly how many jobs are on the line. But public health experts at George Washington University estimate that 912,000 health care workers in the United States could lose their jobs if Congress rolls back the Medicaid expansion and removes tax credits to help people buy private insurance."

Lacino Hamilton has been locked up inside Michigan state prisons for over 23 years. He has “lived” in more than half of the state’s 40-plus prisons. Yet he has not wasted this time. He has become a powerful analyst, critical voice, an organic intellectual as some might put it. Here is one of his most profound contributions to our understanding of mass incarceration: Being Sane In An Insane Place. ~ James Kilgore

The battle over marijuana's legal status and will have consequences for the prospect of cannabis-derived drugs

Over the past few months, as the disturbing prospect of a Trump administration became a disturbing reality, I decided to reach out to Noam Chomsky, the philosopher whose writing, speaking and activism has for more than 50 years provided unparalleled insight and challenges to the American and global political systems. Our conversation, as it appears here, took place as a series of email exchanges over the past two months. - George Yancy

In her forthcoming book Invisible No More, author Andrea Ritchie chronicles cases of abuse and violence involving women of color and trans women, who often confront types of misconduct not typically associated with the use of force: being groped during stop-and-frisk, forced to perform sexual acts in lieu of arrest, and hit on during domestic-violence calls.

This new book joins a growing literature that takes a look at and tries to uncover the roots of today's right wing movement.

New Orleans is better for being rid of the monuments that commemorated the mythology and actual history of slavery and segregation. But elites still govern. The politics of representation dovetails with the reigning discourse of diversity and a local political economy based on marketing "cultural authenticity. To the extent that antiracism centers of pursuit of recognition rather than altering patterns of distribution it will remain trapped in neoliberal inequakity.

United Steel Workers Local 1999 President Chuck Jones grabbed headlines in December after he publicly accused then-President-elect Donald Trump of lying about how many jobs he was saving in a deal with furnace and air conditioner maker Carrier Corp. During a hyped-up announcement at its Indianapolis factory, had Trump inaccurately said that 1,100 jobs would be saved. The number was closer to 800.

Big picture: This moment in human history is not about Trump. It’s not about Putin. It’s not about whether you despise either or neither or both. What’s at stake in the dynamics between them is life on this planet.