Portside

A gradual increase in California’s minimum hourly wage from $10 to $15 by 2023 would raise wages of 5.6 million workers by an average of 24 percent, according to a brief released today by UC Berkeley.

President Obama’s trip to Cuba this week accelerated the warming of U.S.-Cuban relations. Many people in both countries believe that normalizing relations will spur investment that can help Cuba develop its economy and improve life for its citizens. But in agriculture, U.S. investment could cause harm instead.

this is the reply of Yanis Varoufakis to the Open Letter by George Souvlis and Samuele Mazzolini about the Democracy in Europe Movement 2015 DiEM25, which appeared earlier this week on LeftEast. George and Samuele raise crucial questions about DiEM25 and our project to democratise Europe.

It might surprise unionists here, that Vietnam not only has a labor newspaper, Lao Dong (Labor), but that it has a staff of about 200. It's a mainstream publication and the second most widely read newspaper in Vietnam, with a print run of 40,000 and another 200,000 digital subscribers. And Lao Dong has deep roots, having been published since 1930. This is in remarkable contrast to the United States, where we have no national labor newspaper.

Instead of seeking out farms growing delicious fruits and vegetables, chefs look one step deeper into the food production system—to the plant breeders who provide farmers with seeds.

Fed up with inequality, unemployment and labor reforms — and increasingly outraged at the financial and political elite — tens of thousands across France are taking to the streets and the squares.

The European Union is disintegrating – but leaving is not the answer.

Clint Eastwood’s iconic character spawned generations of vigilante cop fantasies.

The Sun-Times previously has reported that, over the past seven years, the police have spied on anti-Olympics protesters, the Service Employees International Union, critics of the visiting Chinese premier, the Occupy movement and NATO Summit demonstrators. Following nationwide protests over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police here monitored black demonstrators and kept logs of events led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other groups.

The Treasury Department is often a limp watchdog when it comes to policing arcane tax dodges, but this time, Treasury grew some fangs by tightening its regulations, which led Pfizer to call off the deal. Pfizer’s loss is a potent win for small-d democracy. It can provide a starting point for reinvigorating reform politics.