Portside

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which occurred fifty years ago this August 28, remains one of the most successful mobilizations ever created by the American Left. Organized by a coalition of trade unionists, civil rights activists, and feminists—most of them African American and nearly all of them socialists—the protest drew nearly a quarter-million people to the nation’s capital.

The average black household that experienced unemployment had zero cash to fall back on. The history of our latest economic recession is full of stories of families who had to cash out their retirement accounts or savings for a child's education to make regular payments on rent and bills. But what about families that didn't even have those options?

Employers hope the guest-worker program will prevent low-wage Americans from getting a raise. With any increase in demand, employers can claim a "labor shortage" allowing in more guest workers, driving wages down. Because some 11 million undocumented workers are here, doing much of this work, the only way these undocumented workers can become organized -- and not undercut attempts to unionize legal workers -- is if the undocumented workers also become legal.

The US working class has not succeeded in developing a class-based political party to contend for political power, making working people particularly vulnerable. Wealth and power are concentrated increasingly in the hands of a globalized elite. It's hard to identify a period of US history where the need for a labor-based political party was greater than now. Yet the short-term prospects of an independent, pro-worker political movement emerging are virtually nonexistent.

People in the UK now fit into seven social classes, a major survey conducted by the BBC suggests.

Unionized government workers in Texas — including firefighters, police and teachers — don’t have the right to be accompanied by a union representative while being questioned during internal investigations, a divided Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. Such representation is a basic right for unionized private sector and federal government employees.

From ancient times until the advent of antibiotics, physicians used maggots to help clean injuries and prevent infection. Because the maggots feed solely on dead flesh, doctors did not have to worry about bugs feasting on healthy tissue. The arrival of antibiotics relegated medical maggots to an ancient artifact. Widespread antibiotic resistance, however, rekindled interest in the use of medical maggots, and in 2004 the FDA approved them as a valid “medical device."

No non-profit does buccaneer profiteering quite like the NCAA.