Portside

Part two of a series looking back on the 20th anniversary the AFL-CIO’s New Voice movement. Most successful organizing is not done in a vacuum, existing members have to be front line apostles

The world as seen by Jose Guerrero is a world full of injustice and violence, a gritty and reeling place where people nonetheless rise up in resistance, solidarity and joy; where even death itself is vanquished by the grinning skeletal calaveras who continue celebrating life on the other side.

German-born co-founder of Lamaze International taught breathing and relaxation techniques to generations of expectant mothers

Our cultural narrative about bullying presumes that youth who are bullied are at greater risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. But research shows that bullies themselves are at risk as well. Bullying involvement of any stripe is harmful.

In 2013, for the first time, over half of public school students were low-income—and this poverty growth spurt shows little sign of abating.

The .01 percent includes wealthy individuals from both ends of the political spectrum, but there are relatively few in between and the numbers at the extremes are growing. And more money is coming from the right.

Mike Casey, who has led San Francisco’s UNITE HERE Local 2 for over 20 years, is stepping down. Casey was first elected president of Local 2 in 1994, after a tumultuous period in the 1970s and 1980s that resulted in large membership losses. He has presided over a period of stabilization, consolidation and growth. Local 2, once known as the Culinary Union for its many restaurant contracts that have long since disappeared, is now better known as the Hotel Union.

The establishment US media’s backlash against award winning journalist Seymour Hersh for his report in the London Review of Books on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden has fueled a perception that it has been wholly discredited. Yet, a key part of Hersh’s report has now been corroborated by the New York Times’ Carlotta Gall, a Pakistan newspaper, and partly by NBC News. Hersh’s report challenges the Obama Administration claims on the capture of Bin Laden.

Attacks on public employee unions, especially teachers unions, have become a permanent feature of the political landscape. One glaring example is the lawsuit filed last month in federal court in Los Angeles against six California and national teachers unions. The lawsuit purports to defend the “free speech” rights of four California schoolteachers, but its real goal is to silence the collective voice of union members on political and educational issues.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the coalition agreement with the right-wing extremist settler party, Jewish Home, he also agreed to appoint Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan as Israel’s deputy defense minister, responsible for the army’s “Civil Administration” of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Member of the Knesset (MK) Rabbi Ben-Dahan has publicly declared Palestinians “are not human.”