Portside

45 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968 - the day before he was assassinated.

How does a worker cooperative with 1,050 members function? It’s hard enough for worker ownership to succeed at any size, because any company that competes in a market is subject to the same cost-cutting rat race as a capitalist firm. Yet the TRADOC co-op—translation: Democratic Workers of the West—is thriving.

Forty-five years after King was killed supporting their historic strike, some of the same men who marched with him still pick up Memphis' garbage - and now they are fighting to hold on to jobs that some city leaders want to hand over to a private company.

Russian activist Boris Kagarlitsky surveys and analyzes social protests in his country.

"If you don't have anybody following you," Cecil Roberts, president of the UMWA said at the rally, "you're not a leader; you're just taking a walk. When we walk out of this building today I'm going to be a leader because there is going to be 5,000 of you walking behind me."

Duke faculty, alongside professors from North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, held an eight-person panel discussion, “Save Our State: Scholars Speak Out on North Carolina’s New Direction,” titled to address issues including health, environmental and educational polices in a Republican-dominated North Carolina state government.

As pseudo-stateless workers, guest workers face all of the obstacles confronting any U.S. workers who try to organize, and then some.

Long time labor editor, writer and activist dies.