Portside

Their is a connection between mass incarceration and mass deportations. The broken prison system is linked to the conditions in detention centers and the overall mass criminalization of communities of color. The labor movement is a movement of second chances and firmly believes the criminal justice system in the United States needs to offer people another chance to contribute to and be full members of our society.

Reader Comments: Contested Convention is Needed; and "#BernieorBust" Dead End; The Left in 2016; Stopping Israel's Occupation and BDS; Israel as the Last Remaining, Active Settler-Colonialist Project; Who's Afraid of Communism - Paul Buhle comments; Teamster and Other Multi-Employer Pension Plans; Teacher Challenges Low Evaluation in Court and Wins; Baldwin; Shakespeare; James Connolly - appreciated today; Just Released - Panama Papers Database...

'It's scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here,' Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan said during a Holocaust Remembrance speech. The lunatics who will now start to scream against him need to know: This is what morality and responsibility sound like. - Israeli opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog.

We lost one of the great social justice warriors of our time, Michael Ratner. While a law student at Columbia University in 1968 this empathy and compassion helped him find his political focus during student protests against the Vietnam War. "[E]vents like this created the activists of the generation and I never looked back; I declared that I was going to spend my life on the side of justice and non-violence."

In this exclusive interview, Prof Peter Kuznick speaks of: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagazaki; US crimes and lies behind the Vietnam war, and what was really behind that inhumane invasion; why the US engaged a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and how that war and the mainstream media influences the world today; the interests behind the assassinations of President Kennedy; US imperialism towards Latin America. . .the War on Terror and War on Drugs.

Bernie Sanders' call for political revolution has inspired grassroots groups to continue his work even after the election is over. In nearly every state, autonomous grassroots organizations began campaigning for Sanders months before his campaign established any official presence on the ground. Now, those organizations are beginning to build coalitions with labor, socialist and progressive groups to set a post-election agenda for the political revolution.

In left labor circles, it's been a settled question that the Haymarket martyrs, victims of ruling class justice, were framed, and May Day's radical origins are based on remembering the martyrs. The author of the books under review, using a close reading of the trial record, supports the court finding that the accused anarchists conspired to murder police during the epochal 1886 labor demonstration in Chicago. The reviewer strongly disputes the author's conclusions.

Sheri Lederman, the beloved fourth-grade teacher New York, won her battle to have her 2013-14 VAM score of “ineffective” rating vacated. Why this court ruling matters to more than Sheri Lederman.

As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data.

Michael S. Harper, who died on Saturday in Rhinebeck, N.Y. at the age of 78, was a major American and African American poet. He was a writer of complex poems that combined history and memory with a deep network of African American cultural, folkloric, and musical allusions and symbols. This brief biography of Harper is from the Poetry Foundation's website. A generous selection of Harper's work can be found on the Foundation's website.