Portside

Moderator's NOTE: Bill Fletcher and Bob Wing's article "Fighting Back Against White Revolt 2016" http://portside.org/2016-12-05/fighting-back-against-white-revolt-2016 has sparked discussion from Peter Olney "Go Red" http://portside.org/2016-12-26/go-red-thoughts-labor-movement-age-trump-response-fletcher-and-wing-portside-december-5 and now this piece by Ruth Needleman. Please also read today's reply posting from Fletcher and Wing.

I argue that a defection of working class voters to Trump was key to the loss of historic battleground states, and thus the election. These are voters who have been voting for change at least since 2008 and they haven’t gotten it from a corporatist Democratic party. The problem in Fletcher and Wing's analysis of working class support for Trump is that they resort to income as a proxy for class.

This article first appeared in Sinistra Sindicale, an internal newsletter of the Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori (CGIL), the largest trade union federation in Italy. This article deals with the US election result.

Reflections on Prison Labor, Unions, and Whitney Benns' The Atlantic Article "American Slavery Reinvented"

Exciting plans are under way for the Labor Fightback Conference, to be held at the Rutgers University Student Center in New Brunswick, NJ, May 10–12, 2013.