Portside

My brother, who is coming home almost 36 years after being incarcerated, will come out becoming the emblematic figure of Puerto Rican unity in a country that has historically experienced deep political divisions that have totally torn families apart. My brother is coming out where every political party and every political tendency [supports him].

The film's creators may have the best of intentions, but their plea for greater understanding will likely fall on deaf ears since they’ve only inadvertently confirmed Madoff’s self-pitying defense by portraying members of the working class as collateral damage in the Bernie Madoff story. By normalizing Madoff’s behavior, 'The Wizard of Lies' thoughtlessly asks us to sympathize with a devil we don’t want to know.

Here’s how the scene plays out. As the sharply dressed god paces back and forth in front of the believers who summoned him, he lays out a terrifying vision of what the future holds for them and their descendants: slavery, torture, death, and hundreds of years of being screwed over by structural racism.

Elijah Armstrong, an organizer with the National Education Association, talks about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the push to privatize schools.

The TV show is striking a chord that the novel and movie did not. Maybe it’s because we’re starting to see bits of Gilead all around us.

Of particular interest is adoption of a proposed international policy for Québec solidaire based on the principles of opposition to imperialism and solidarity with the exploited and oppressed around a global justice (altermondialiste) agenda. The resolution has been debated for more than a year by the QS membership.

Fifteen years after his death, Stephen Jay Gould’s ideas have never been more vital.

The first, the WORK (“Worker Ownership, Readiness and Knowledge”) Act, would direct more than $45 million in funding to state-level employee ownership centers, aimed at providing training and technical assistance to current and prospective worker-owners. A second piece of legislation would establish something called the U.S. Employee Ownership Bank, via $500 million in funds for low-interest rate loans and financial assistance for workers who want to buy out the business

Workers are also frustrated that they are being asked to pay more of their health-insurance costs, he added, and that changes in retail workers’ commissions have limited or reduced their take-home pay. As part of its next contract, the union wants to bar AT&T from changing its commission structure unilaterally.

On May 15 crusading Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cardenas was gunned down in the streets of Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. He was the sixth journalist murdered in Mexico in 2017. Valdez reported on life under the rule of the drug cartels and the collusion between government authorities and organized crime. His final article was on the deadly attacks on teachers working in Sinaloa’s dangerous neighborhoods, six of which were killed this year.