Portside

As many as 400 workers at more than 60 fast food restaurants in the Detroit metro area walked off the job on Friday. The fast food strike in Detroit is the second major labor action to hit an American city’s fast food industry this week: On Wednesday and Thursday, more than 100 workers in St. Louis walked off the job at roughly 30 different restaurants. These rolling walkouts followed similar actions in New York, central Pennsylvania, and Chicago.

An account of the making of the new DSM questions whether psychiatry is -- or should be -- a science.

The detainees are screaming for justice from the outside world, and now they are being heard.

Bill Withers -- Ain't No Sunshine and Grandma's Hands. Elizabeth Warren: give students banker treatment. Wild Women Don't Have the Blues. Stephen Colbert interviews Congresswoman Donna Edwards. The Girls in the Band: documentary.

Eight people were killed when a fire swept through a clothing factory in Bangladesh on Wednesday, as the death toll from the collapse of another factory building two weeks ago climbed above 900. Meanwhile, multinational corporations are coming under growing scrutiny and facing mounting protests over their involvement in the exploitation of Bangladeshi workers. One U.S. union is targeting Gap, Inc.

The details of U.S.-North Korean relations are complex, the story is relatively simple. The U.S. government continues to reject possibilities for normalizing relations with North Korea and promoting peace on the Korean peninsula in favor of a dangerous policy of regime change. And, the U.S. media supports this policy choice with a deliberately one sided presentation of events designed to make North Korea appear to be an unwilling and untrustworthy negotiating partner.

Appeals Court rules NLRB cannot require employers to post notices informing employees of their labor rights. The decision, which comes less than three weeks after lack of regulatory enforcement led to a fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas that killed 14 and left about 200 injured, opens the door for businesses to challenge requirements that workers be informed of their health, safety and employment rights.

Reader's Comments - End of the War in Viet Nam; Paid Sick Leave Law in New York; Guantanamo; Dodging Corporate Taxes; Working Class; Education; Health Care; Songs for May Day; Interview with Rene Gonzalez; What Can I Do - Portside emails have suddenly stopped? Alert for Earthlink, Mindspring, IGC PeoplePC readers Announcement - New York City Troublemakers School, May 18; International Forum on Globalization - Peoples of the Pacific - Berkeley Teach-In - June 1 & 2