Portside

This Martin Luther King Day comes just weeks after a year that’s been dubbed ‘the year of the strike’ because in 2023 there were well over 300 such work stoppages involving 450,000 union workers willing to take the risk of walking out . . .

Martin Luther King's speeches from 1954's Montgomery Bus Boycott to the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike. Compiled by Abdul Alkalimat, Prof Emeritus Dept of African American Studies and School of Information Sciences, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Corporations used the “crying wolf” strategy to claim that raising the minimum wage would harm the poor, that Social Security was a slippery slope towards socialism, and that the government has gone “too far” in regulating carbon emissions.

I am your warrior, I am your justice, Donald Trump told the crowd. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. The first Trump term was deeply alarming, a second Trump one will be far more alarming, with many fewer errors

After a year of fierce battles over the judicial coup, Israel’s Supreme Court seems totally subservient to the state’s policies since Oct. 7. What's changed?

U.S. to World Court: Drop Dead! (in 1983). ACT UP shuts down FDA (1988). Secrecy runs amuck (1973). Stars and stripes fly over Dixie (1863). GIs strike against Vietnam War (1968). SCOTUS prefers civil wrongs (1883). Athletes protest racism (1968).

Hundreds of new state laws come into effect on 1 September, including attacking trans rights, further limiting abortion and pushing back climate efforts

Critics of the Supreme Court think it has lost its claim to legitimacy. But proposals for reforming it must strike a balance with preserving its power and independence, which remain essential to our constitutional system.

The 1870s laws passed by the Reconstruction Congress to enforce 14th Amendment rights and to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, are now being used against Trump.