Portside

Recently Richmond CA a majority "minority" city has been in the news with an innovative plan to take on the banks and fight blight and the banks have declared war on the city. Richmond is also the community that has taken on Chevron, and the soda industry, has passed "Ban the Box" and municipal IDs. This article describes the organizing that was critical to making all of this possible.

It’s easy to see that the crisis has wounded the country in ways big and small, and that the damage isn’t done even now. Here are five charts that capture the scope and struggles of the Great Recession, five years after it began:

Dimitris Psarras, a writer who has chronicled Golden Dawn's rise over almost four decades since the collapse of military rule, said: "Their agenda, clearly, is to create a climate of civil war, a divide where people have to choose between leftists and rightists."

There was lots of excitement about the AFL-CIO Convention last week, but were the proposals enough to rebuild the labor movement? Steve Early argues,"Given the extreme attacks both union and non-union workers are suffering, the convention’s heavy emphasis on conventional political strategies and growth through diluted forms of membership was not “transformative” enough to meet the challenges of the day."

An interview with the mayor of Richmond–a Green Party member who has been making corporations furious.

Davey D speaks with activist, scholar and freedom fighter Angela Davis about the 50th anniversary of the 16th street Birmingham bombings of 1963.

Any casual review of human history proves how deeply irrational it is to believe that powerful factions can be trusted to exercise vast surveillance power with little accountability or transparency. But the more they proudly flaunt their warped imperial hubris, the more irrational it becomes.