Portside

For the past 50 years, some of this country’s most celebrated historians have taken up the task of making Americans less stupid about the Civil War.

During the 1970s women and people of color were organizing their workplaces at impressive rates — they just weren’t winning. Lane Windham in her new book recounts that history and its consequences.

November 7, 1917, the American writer John Reed said, was "Ten Days That Shook the World." A hundred years on, the anniversary of the October Revolution is celebrated and debated. But, for more than seventy years the revolution inspired millions around the world, in the belief in socialism, and for an end to colonialism. The failures of the Soviet Union have not however diminished the hopes, aspirations and renewed faith in socialism - a socialism of a different type.

As labor unions across much of the world struggle to increase their membership, how do workers get their employers to raise wages and assure safe conditions? That’s the question some of the world’s most innovative worker groups are asking. And they’re hopeful they have found a solution.

As labor unions across much of the world struggle to increase their membership, how do workers get their employers to raise wages and assure safe conditions? That’s the question some of the world’s most innovative worker groups are asking. And they’re hopeful they have found a solution.

Reader Comments: It's a New Beginning - Election Day Victories; AFL-CIO Delegates Support #BlackLivesMatter; Lessons for Democrats; Painters Union Support Nicaraguan Workers and their Families; Readers Debate: Why Soviet Union Collapsed; Workers' Tips; Lots of Announcements: Los Angeles, Pasadena, Culver City, New York, and Cuba; and more....

The so-called gig-economy is celebrated, maligned, fetishized, and qualified by analysts. Whether it is called the collaborative, platform, crowd-sourcing, or sharing-economy, the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges does raise important questions for workers. Do emerging ‘sharing-economy’ platforms such as Uber and Airbnb mark a significant shift in production and distribution systems? Are they emancipatory or exploitive?

By now the botched, indifferent response of the Trump administration to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico has been well-documented. Puerto Ricans, however, are not the only US citizens whose lack of democratic rights has affected its quality of life, and for the worse. The same can be said for the residents of Washington, DC, the nation’s capital.

Ending the medical tax break could be a ‘gut punch’ to the majority of the country. Eliminating the medical-expense deduction would end a source of relief that has helped millions of people cope with steep medical costs in a country without comprehensive, universal health coverage.

One day after the Revolution, the Soviet government issued a Decree of Peace -- a signal of the centrality of the struggle against war to the building of socialism.