Portside

Dozens of workers in Byhalia, Mississippi who work for one of the country's leading producers of cereal and baked goods voted Wednesday in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, known as UFCW.

In a time when the murder of African Americans in plain sight terrifies the news, Poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson captures the feeling of capture.

Ten private-sector union pension funds have applied to the U.S. Treasury Dept. for the green light to slash retiree payouts, the Pension Rights Center says Among them are labor organizations affiliated with the auto industry, several from the trucking industry and others from the iron workers and bricklayer unions. Sixty-eight plans are listed as having “critical and declining status,” meaning they too will soon have to apply for permission to cut retiree payouts.

Preemption is a legal term that allows corporations to boost their profits by suppressing local government power, community groups and citizens.

Let me take this opportunity to thank J Street for the bold voice that they’ve provided in support of American leadership in the Middle East and efforts towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I understand that, given the political climate in this capital, that has not always been easy. I also applaud them for being part of a broad coalition of groups that successfully fought for the historic nuclear agreement between the U.S. and its partners and Iran.

Ultimately the only long-term solution to the problem of national leaders launching a nuclear war is to get rid of the weapons. This was the justification for the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, which constituted a bargain between two groups of nations. Under its provisions, non-nuclear countries agreed not to develop nuclear weapons, while nuclear-armed countries agreed to dispose of theirs.

It isn’t necessarily automation itself that should be feared—just Puzder and other executives’ version of it, where jobs and unions and social services are dismantled. Like Hamon, authors such as Paul Mason and Peter Frase argue that job-killing automation should go hand-in-hand with a universal basic income. “A low-work society,” Mason writes, “is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing reward via work.”

Media con; Filtering news in China; The net over Africa; FCC under the rabid right; Fight for net neutrality; Fallon on hard times; Screwed at the border

Barry Jenkins’s movie is a brave, brilliant work of art that also happens to be a black, gay story. What a shame if the announcement gaffe is what people remember about its victory. There were echoes of Hattie McDaniel, 76 years ago, who had to walk up to collect her Best Supporting Actress Oscar from a table way down the back of the hall and was seated separately from the rest of the Gone With The Wind stars. A moment of triumph tranished.

Arkansas poultry workers, Brooklyn warehouse workers and house cleaners, Twin Cities roofers, and thousands of students in places like Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Charlotte, North Carolina. They were all among the tens of thousands who stayed home from work or school across the country during Thursday, February 16’s “Day without Immigrants.”