Portside

Democracy depends on a free and independent press, which is why all tyrants try to squelch it.

Many workers in Austria's rust belt, once a center of Socialist and Communist strength, are supporting a far right candidate for president. Many express disappointment with the E.U., immigrants, the government’s stalemate locked in an eternal grand coalition, the desire to change the system.

Four years ago a few hundred workers went on strike to demand a minimum hourly wage of $15. On Tuesday, in 340 cities across the U.S., thousands went on strike and protested under the Fight for 15 banner.

The North Dakota governor issued an evacuation order, but protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline do not intend to leave the area. In fact, nearly 2,000 veterans will be joining them in the coming days

Today’s sanctuary-cities movement shares the convictions of this campaign of the nineteen-eighties, but the means of resistance are quite different.

Tondalo Hall was sent to prison for 30 years for failing to protect her children from child abuse while the abuser received two years in prison and eight years of probation with credit for time served.

Every year, Portside asks our readers for their help and support. This, however, is not like other years. What months ago was a scary thought is now our, and the world's reality - a Trump presidency. We need to work together, to build, to organize, and to understand what works, and what doesn't. Portside provides reportage, inspiration, investigation and analysis that are needed more than ever. We promise to do our part. Will you help?

Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel wrote, presciently, in her 1984 opinion overturning Korematsu’s conviction: “In times of international hostility and antagonism, our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to exercise their authority to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused.”

Unfortunately, Chevron has taken no vacation from its longstanding, deep-pocketed work of rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies, often with greater success than in Richmond. A coalition of environmental, consumer protection, labor, and political groups released a damning report last week entitled The Chevron Way: Polluting California and Degrading Democracy. (available on line at: http://www.chevrontax.info/the-chevron-way).

“The inhuman exploitation on the peoples of three continents,” he said in reference to Africa, Asia and Latin America, “marked forever the destiny and lives of over 4.5 billion people living in the Third World today.” It was this history, he said, that left “the current victims of that atrocity” in poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and sickness. Castro’s words mirrored reality. He would not end there. It was hope, not despondency, that captured his personality.