Portside

A new front in the battle over retirement security for California’s public employees opened June 4 with the release of the language for a proposed ballot initiative that would virtually outlaw traditional defined-benefit pension plans for future state and municipal workers. The so-called “Voter Empowerment Act of 2016,” would effectively shift all new public employees from the various defined-benefit plans currently in place to 401(k) plans, beginning in 2019.

Speech delivered as a part of Women Cross the DMZ events at the Women's Peace Symposium on May 26, 2015, in Seoul, Korea.

Mississippi poet Philip C. Kolin sees analogies between the recent wave of police shootings and the old Fugitive Slave Act.

This is one of a series of articles published by Capital and Main focusing on the systemic dysfunction that plagues the care services provided to the elderly and disabled in California, with a focus on the current battle over funding In-Home Supportive Services.

Two-years of campaigning, with over one million people participating, has succeeded in securing $30 million in compensation for the garment worker victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse.

The videotaped assault and sexual harassment of 14 year-old Dajerria Becton by a rampaging white police officer after a pool party in McKinney, Texas makes it clear that it continues to be open season on black women and girls.

Chris Christie's epic screw-up: Exxon giveaway is even more of an environmental disaster than thought. As public opposition to sweetheart pollution deal mounts, Chris Christie can't be bothered.

The vote on "Trade Adjustment Act" portion of legislation to allow President Obama to "fast track" the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), failed because Republicans were opposed to giving workers who lose their jobs due to the TPP any additional aid. "Liberal Democrats" voted to kill the TAA bill in order to stop the passage of the TPP, in a Republican controlled House of Representatives.

The growing app-based service economy relies on legions of underpaid and underprotected contract workers. Today's self-employed workers pay an additional 7.5 percent in income tax and cannot qualify for an earned income tax credit. They have no guarantee of equal protection under laws mandating minimum wages, sick leave or family leave, nor do they have protection against workplace discrimination, harassment or injury, unless they prevail in a lawsuit.

In the second decade of the 21st century, it is high time that the Left rethink what it means to practice internationalism in this new world of collapsing states, extraordinary concentrations of wealth, and technologies that make the U.S.–the one world power, however much in decline—able to track or kill people, anytime and anywhere in the world.