Portside

How the Super Bowl defines what it means to be an American: dueling ads. Stephen Colbert wrestles with bipartisan immigration reform. Republicans think CIA nominee Brennan gives the public too much information. The Union of Concerned Scientists says we can cut oil consumption in half, and who's standing in the way. Beasts of the Southern Wild imagines a surreal realm where little girls and mythical animals coexist.

The medical marijuana shop next to a tattoo parlor on a busy street in Los Angeles looks much like hundreds of other pot dispensaries that dot the city. Except for one thing: On the glass door - under a green cross signaling that cannabis can be bought there for medical purposes - is a sticker for the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW), the nation's largest retail union.

"Nurses care for patients every day who struggle with health crises aggravated by environmental pollution in its many forms," said NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN. "As a society we need to reduce the effects of environmental factors, including climate change, that are making people sick, and endangering the future for our children. That's why we oppose the Keystone XL pipeline."

New employment figures reveal young adults in the U.S. have nearly double (13.7 percent) the unemployment rate of the general population. We must face up to this moral crisis and demand the policies that will employ Millennials.

The Dignity Campaign is a loose network of more than forty immigrant rights and community organizations, unions and churches that has crafted an immigration reform proposal based on "human, labor and civil rights for all." The campaign's member organizations support it as an alternative to the political strategy behind the tradeoff because of what they call the bitter impact of earlier tradeoffs over the last thirty years.

While some of the world's economic and political elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum, a United Nations agency reported that there has been an increase in unemployment planet-wide of 28 million since the onset of the current economic crisis five years ago. One million jobs were lost in western capitalist economies last year alone and three million in the rest of the world.