Portside

For Valentine's Day, Philadelphia poet David Moolten's poem--for better or worse--says it all.

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted...Last night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke out against the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for attorney general, reading a letter from Coretta Scott King. In a highly unusual move, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) led a vote to silence Warren?-?a rebuke not extended to several of her male colleagues. It follows an old and very sexist playbook.

Donald Trump's draconian immigration enforcement efforts face a basic challenge: the United States operates within an economic system that profits off immigrant labor. Immigrant labor is more vital to many industries than it's ever been before. Today, about 57% of the country's entire agricultural workforce is undocumented. But the list of other industries dependent on immigrant labor is long.

Hope belongs to the left. Social hope entails searching collectively for public solutions to our public problems rather than pretending that everything is up to the solitary individual. Hope creates action, but it is equally true that action creates hope. It is the action of movements, rooted in people's needs and longings, attempting to change the world in small ways and large.

The danger of Donald Trump resorting to military action to prop up his failing policies cannot be over-looked. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn threatened retaliation against Iran, which for those of us of a certain age sounded like the Gulf of Tonkin incident (used as justification for War in Vietnam) - later proved to be a fabrication. What really is Iran with a population of 82 million people? Here is a report on what is actually happening in Iran today.

Reader Comments: Resisting a Dictator; Moringa; Free Speech, Hate, Anarchism and Mass Movements; Building Trades and Labor; Working Women; Labor and Climate Convergence; Announcements; and more...

Labor sould figtt the proposed National RIght to Work Law. But it is more imortant to continue to build alliances among other progressive groups to fight other reforms that have a serious chance of passage. In particular, labor should put its resources into organizing government workers who are under attack on all sides.

Forget that Donald Trump said something commendable about Frederick Douglass--perhaps a first for Trump--the autobiography of Douglass is a classic, and reading it again is a fit way to commemorate Black History Month. Washington Post book editor Ron Charles gives ample reason why.

The alliance that some labor leaders made with Trump is built on sand. The author believes they will come to regret it.

The road to secularism began with how-to books, claims William Eamon, who takes us on a tour of how this happened. Among the most famous how-to books is the first modern political instruction manual.