Portside

The slow advances we made in the early 20th century through unions, government regulation, the New Deal, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning us—as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories—into disposable human beings. They are building the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history to keep us submissive. It's time to pick up the pitchforks.

Jeff Crosby and Bill Fletcher Jr. analyze the September AFL-CIO Convention, stating, "This convention marked a long overdue strategic shift. The shift is to speak for the whole working class." Peter Olney responds, suggesting the federation may just be avoiding the hard questions they need to address.

Our federation and its affiliates are not ready to confront the challenges of using our existing base in certain industries to grow in non-union sectors of those industries and linked industries. Those discussions and strategies require challenging the inertia of the status quo. They are difficult discussions that challenge the power and positions of our elected trade union leaders. The interplay of the old and the new is one of the keys for renaissance. . .

Since the beginning of the summer, the Mi’kmaq sacred fire has become a place for French-speaking Acadians, Anglophones and members of the Elsipogtog First Nation to gather and organize actions. It was around this ceremonial fire that people from all three groups built their alliances, learning to work and pray together. Despite the cruel history between settlers and natives, all parties have joined together to become nonviolent protectors of the water and land.

Snowden and Manning taught Americans skepticism, and not a moment too soon. Knowing Congress would not vote to authorize intervention, the Obama administration turned to diplomacy as a face-saving measure, resulting in a rare example of a people rising up to stop a war before it could start.

Play-with-music visits three generations of a family employed as porters and sets the action on June 22, 1937 a time of celebration and great hope for African-Americans. That night, Joe Louis beat James J. Braddock for the World Heavyweight Championship in Chicago. Later that year, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters signed its first collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company, improving work place conditions and increasing wages for the porters.

Dmanisi provides the best window we have as to what normal variation looks like in the early Homo fossil record. Dated to between 1.81-1.76 million years, the site sits in the midst of some of the most important fossil sequences in the human fossil record (i.e. Koobi Fora and the Turkana Basin, Olduvai Gorge).

The Government of Netanyahu continues to build in settlements and to make it harder to reach a peace agreement. Anyone who cares about Israel and the success of the current efforts to resume the negotiations for a two state solution must be very concerned about the ongoing construction in settlements.