Portside

“The proposal to reduce the 60-hour overtime threshold threatened to regulate New York’s family farms out of existence,”

"Surging billionaire wealth hits a painful nerve for the millions of people who have lost loved ones and experienced declines in their health, wealth, and livelihoods."

In a difficult year, species were brought back from the edge of extinction; new protected areas were created; and Indigenous women leaders got long-overdue recognition. Mongabay looks back at some of the top positive environmental stories from 2020.

Today Abraham Lincoln is widely revered, while many Americans, including historians, consider the militant abolitionist John Brown mad. Yet, according to two authors of new books on Lincoln and Brown, their chosen paths eventually seemed to converge.

The goal of a new Federal Writers Project would be economic and cultural, putting writers to work capturing stories of the pandemic and this broader moment, while also serving as an archive for the existing work of local newspapers and non-profits.

The pandemic is making clearer the historical and social problems of society, how it is deteriorating to the point of triggering its own decline. Fighting for another society that cares for women and life is a necessary task for our future.

Marin County’s “Game of Floods” teaches citizens how to make tough decisions for the future.

Picasso painted Guernica eighty years ago this spring. It still stands as a searing protest against the brutality of war and fascism.

Three women, all clearly desperate for jobs, arrive for "orientation" at the work room of a meat processing plant. They have been sent by an employment agency as "temporary workers" - a euphemism for low wages, no benefits, short-term contracts with uncertain payroll dates and the most appalling work conditions. So begins Alexander Zeldin's remarkable "immersive" soul-stripping production of "Beyond Caring."

Few state tax trends are as striking as the rapid decline of state corporate income tax revenues. As recently as 1986, state corporate income taxes equaled 0.5 percent of nationwide Gross State Product (GSP) (a measure of statewide economic activity). But in fiscal year 2013 (the last year for which data are available), state and local corporate income taxes were just 0.33 percent of nationwide GSP- representing a decline of over 30 percent.