Portside

Buses, trains, bikes, and walking represent more than an efficient means of getting from one place to another. They move us toward a brighter future because of the many social and economic benefits they foster.

We acknowledge that this was written in June, 2015. However we are posting it because it describes how tangled the lines are when it comes to US and British policy in the Middle East. Unless there is a real turn around in US strategy in the Middle East the only thing that will continue will be more death and destruction, and the repercussions are world wide. This should be a big question for the US presidential debates - but will it?

Alfred Hayes wrote it as a poem in upstate New York at a left wing retreat called Camp Unity during the Summer of 1936. Hayes met Earl Robinson there and upon hearing Hayes recite his poem Robinson instantly put the words to music as part of a campfire session celebrating the trade union icon. By that September the song had been published in The Daily Worker and became a popular song with members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting Franco’s fascists in Spain.

Pay attention to your DNA. The idea that you can't go home again assumes a different aspect in California poet Rebecca Foust's rendition: "Kansas one day will turn out to be Oz/and Oz Kansas."

Growing numbers of ‘millennials’ who are unaffiliated or atheists are causing vast changes in the American religious landscape, report says

A new study shows that two glaciers in Greenland are showing worrying changes, and that one has been retreating at an accelerating rate in recent years as it faces a dual attack by warm air from above and warm water from below. The glacier Zachariae has shrunk by 95 percent since 2002. The mass of miles-thick ice that covers most of Greenland could raise global sea levels by some 20 feet if it all melted.

Student activists held actions on some 120 campuses, demanding free tuition, cancellation of student debts and a $15 minimum wage for campus workers.

According to historian Mai Ngai, "the project was conceived and executed as though it was a military operation," with 800 immigration agents fanning out across the Southwest, apprehending as many as 3,000 immigrants a day at roadblocks and in raids on homes, farms and factories. Front-page Los Angeles Times headlines from that time touted the operation in demeaning language. "Wetbacks Herded at Nogales Camp," reads one.