Portside

The Tuesday decision to strike—made with what the union describes as "an unprecedented, thunderous unanimous vote," closes schools on what would have been the first day of school for roughly 50,000 students. The problems the public school teachers say are driving the strike include those teachers across the nation have also cited, including an over-reliance on standardized testing and flawed methods for evaluating educators.

Across Europe, people are fed up with a monetary union that is inefficient because it is so profoundly undemocratic. This is why the battle for rescuing Greece has now turned into a battle for Europe’s integrity, soul, rationality and democracy by setting up a Pan-European political movement, inspired by the Athens Spring, that will work toward Europe’s democratization.

With disproportionate financial support from Orthodox and politically conservative Jews, much of the American Jewish establishment has aligned itself with Netanyahu against not just the Iran deal but also President Obama and American liberalism, too. In the process, it has also aligned itself against a clear majority of American Jews.

Formed in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense remains misunderstood and poorly represented – especially on film. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution tries to sort the fact from fiction.

As the new international president of my union, the Communications Workers of America, I hope other labor and progressive leaders will join me in helping to jumpstart Working Families Parties across the country. It’s a strategy we can’t afford to neglect.

Yoga Joes; Refugee rescue; Top of the (anti-arschloch) pops; Barenboim’s blues; Asians in Hollywood

A recent string of campaigns show that while unions at “legacy” newspapers are eroding, organizing still has a place in the digital space.

“There’s a Superfund for dirt,” Mazzocchi used to say. “There ought to be one for workers.”

This year the left must use the ideological opening created by the most anti-corporate political campaign in recent history to build political capacity that lasts well beyond this electoral cycle.

The criminal trial for the six officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray isn’t set to start until October, but this morning, the city of Baltimore agreed to pay his family $6.4 million in restitution. The Baltimore Sun reports that the city’s spending panel, the Board of Estimates, is expected to approve the settlement at a meeting tomorrow. Gray’s family had not yet filed a civil suit against the city.