Portside

On Sept. 9, exactly 45 years to the day after the uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York, prisoners across the United States went on strike.

“The original, Southern desire to preserve an exploited, economically deprived non-white agricultural labor force pinned to the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy continues to manifest itself full force,” Law Professor Juan Perea of Loyola University said. “The only difference today is now it’s brown and black people.”

A Globe investigation found that these workers, eager for a paycheck, are often paid below the prevailing wage and illegally, in cash. They are also the most likely to be subjected to unsafe work conditions, without insurance to cover medical bills or lost pay if they get hurt. And the unscrupulous contractors who employ them are too seldom caught and penalized.

In the New York Times, critic James Poniewozik wrote, “Representing more people in more ways is the right thing to do, and it has made TV better. But it happened largely because there was money in it.”

Between Trumka’s DAPL endorsement and the Fraternal Order of Police’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president, this week has shown a stark divide between parts of American labor and today’s social movements.

On September 16, 2004, Mt. Olive Pickles finally came to an agreement with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, ending a lengthy boycott of the company. This groundbreaking farm workers union launched one of the most successful organizing campaigns of the last 25 years in the South and demonstrate the continued vitality of farmworker unions in the present. FLOC was successful with these workers because they became a way for workers to express their own power.

Leaked court documents from ‘John Doe investigation’ in Wisconsin lay bare pervasive influence of corporate cash on modern US elections

The prison strike didn’t merit a single mention in NYT, Washington Post, NPR, CNN or MSNBC.

Just like taxonomists have debated over which physical characteristics warrant a new species designation, they’re conflicted over how much genetic variation you need to prove differentiation.

The U.S response to 9/11, which began with the Bush Administration’s shock-and-awe air strikes and invasions and continued through the Obama Administration, cost ten of thousands of civilian lives and trillions of dollars, and bombed and missiled a world of Islamist terror outfits into existence. At 15 years and counting the U.S. air campaign has spread across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa and shows no sign of ending, despite its spectacular failure.