Portside

The late AFL-CIO leader John Sweeney was an admirable figure who had a vision for reinvigorated US labor unions. But he only tried to reform a union movement that needed a more fundamental refoundation.

The Amazonification of logistics has created a new group of highly exploited workers: delivery drivers. Amazon itself increasingly relies on an expanding network of subcontracted drivers and independent contractors to deliver packages.

Joss Whedon won awards for his feminism. The women who worked for him say that’s not the whole story.

Mainstream culture denied Black children their humanity—so W. E. B. Du Bois created The Brownies’ Book to assert it.

New messenger RNA vaccines to fight the coronavirus are based on a technology that could transform medicine. Next up: sickle cell and HIV.

A metal recycling plant is due to open on the polluted Southeast Side months after the same firm shut a metal scrapyard in a white, affluent part of town

The CBO finds that the raise would boost the incomes of 17 million Americans, and most probably 27 million Americans—that is, close to a fifth of the entire American workforce.

These expansions would result in historic reductions of child poverty and provide timely income support for millions of people, including millions of essential workers.

Why make a relatively tiny outbreak of the coronavirus on the other side of the world front-page news at the New York Times? Like Donald Trump, the paper is certainly aware of the propaganda value of pointing to China as a scary danger.

The fossil fuel giants need to reduce emissions and maintain their share price so they’re investing in wind. For a “relative small outlay” they are greening their portfolio and extending their monopoly control over a major alternative energy source.