Portside

Off the Charts -- The thousands of U.S. locales where lead poisoning is worse than in Flint. A Reuters examination of lead testing results across the country found almost 3,000 areas with poisoning rates far higher than in the tainted Michigan city. Yet many of these lead hotspots are receiving little attention or funding.

Forty years ago, shop workers in Britain developed the Lucas Plan to save jobs by converting arms manufacturing to industrial production. The struggle for economic conversion, and against the deskilling of work through computer-controlled technology remains relevant today in the search for solutions to the environmental crisis and the employment crisis.

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.