Portside

No Backdoor to Iran War - sign the petition; Reader Comments on Labor's Turnaround; Keystone XL Pipeline; Happy Birthday, Dear Income Tax; Cutting the Military Budget and Palestinian Prisoners; Bradley Manning; labor cartoons; Portside's new email format. Announcements - Vieques Forum (New York); LaborArts Celebrates Women's History Month (online); Rachel Corrie - Ten Years After her Murder (actions around the world). Phillip Bonosky Presente!

The AFL-CIO, along with its affiliate unions, community partners and allies, are embarking on a deep evaluation of the future for working people and the labor movement and exploring innovations for the future of worker organizing. "The basic system of worker representation is failing to meet the needs of America’s working men and women by every critical measure," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Iraq itself remains a dangerous and unstable place. And so, happy 10th anniversary, Iraq War! A decade after the invasion, a chaotic and unstable Middle East is the unfinished legacy of our invasion.

Today, some people believe that Social Security will not be there for them even though there are equitable solutions that will fully fund Social Security for the foreseeable future. In planning for the future of Social Security, Social Security is not a private opt-in or -out choice like the decision to fund an IRA. Instead, for decades, it has involved employees and employers providing secure retirement benefits generation after generation.

You don't have to look far to see the connection between workplace and housing struggles. People lose their homes or get evicted from rentals because of unemployment, underemployment, low wages, or health care bills. Organizing works: activists consistently force the banks and mortgage lenders to back off specific homes.

The late Venezuelan president's Bolívarian revolution has been crucial to a wider Latin American philosophy - "History will affirm, justifiably, the role Hugo Chávez played in the integration of Latin America, and the significance of his 14-year presidency to the poor people of Venezuela" former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Student guest workers from Asia and Latin America stage strike at McDonald's in central Pennsylvania.