Portside

Amidst a national flurry of immigrant rights initiatives, the Immigrant Worker Center Collaborative of Boston (IWCC) came up with a proposal that was radical in its simplicity: a demand that President Obama pardon all undocumented people in the United States.

Albert Murray (1916-2013), was the kind of intellectual for whom Duke Ellington would write a book jacket blurb. He called the African American writer and esteemed cultural critic “a man whose learning did not interfere with understanding," in praise of Murray's 1975 book Train Whistle Guitar, adding that Murray was "the unsquarest person I know." The Library of America has published new volume of Murray's writing. Greg Thomas takes a look.

This past July, the Federal Detention Center instituted a policy that makes inmate visits even more difficult: It limited visits to immediate family only. Practically speaking, the policy cuts off inmates from the people they love at precisely the moment they need those connections most.

Workers at Trump’s Vegas hotel voted to unionize last December after several months of campaigning. A labor agreement, though, was slow to materialize until last week, when over a few days, union representatives and Trump Organization executives negotiated a four-year contract, taking effect Jan. 1, that will cover roughly 520 housekeepers, bartenders, servers, porters and other staff at the hotel.

Former vice president Al Gore says, “Now more than ever we must rededicate ourselves to solving the climate crisis."

Facebook fakery; Media misery; Trump’s quid pro quo; Post election plenty; Science silenced; Stormy forecast

The response to Bernie showed that a socialist party in the United States is possible. But there is no shortcut to building power.

How student organizers and a state representative are campaigning to eliminate tuition in Illinois.

Do we need a new Schoolhouse Rock! to remind us how to run a democracy? “Many teachers were scared this year to teach on the election because of the polarization in the country,” Louise Dube said. “They were concerned because they felt that their administration would not back them up in teaching it.”

In 2000, UC San Diego professor Chalmers Johnson expanded on his observation in his book “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire.” Johnson, who died in 2010, argued that the United States would inevitably face the same sort of dirty tricks it had played around the world, paying a price for trying to dominate far-away lands.