Portside

The speakers and the workshops at the Labor Notes conference celebrated labor's new potential both in fighting the boss and becoming more active in pro-worker electoral struggles. The 2,000 or more participants overfilled the Hilton Hotel and spread out into two other nearby venues. The young workers definitely outnumbered those with more seniority at these kind of events, and the diversity of participants was great. Special reports by Judy Atkins and Dan La Botz.

Reader Comments: Fukushima Five Years Later; Clinton and Black Voters; Trump - Fascist; Bernie and Women; Misrepresenting the Working Class: Protest and Trump; In Praise of Impractical Movements; Why Virginia's Open Shop Referendum Should Matter; Protest Against Closing Down the Lukács Archives; Announcements: Welcome Federation of Cuban Women; CUNY Writers Against Austerity; Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Commemoration; "Food Chains" Film Screening; and more...

Bill Fletcher's powerful speech at USLAW's founding in October 2003 is still on target. That founding conference launched USLAW and set the course to the 2005 AFL-CIO convention where we succeeded in putting the federation on record in opposition to the Iraq War - the first time in its then fifty year history it publicly opposed the commitment of US military forces anywhere in the world. His remarks show us how far we have come and how far we have yet to go.

Strip clubs have provided me and many other dancers with steady income for our entire adult lives. I’m thankful to have enjoyed decades as a paid entertainer. But we deserve the same protections and respect given to any employee in any other work force.

If this attack is successful it would decimate the National Treasury Employees Union and leave IRS staffers without union representation. More that than, it would weaken federal unions generally by making them all vulnerable to a similar assault.

Unlike many in his party, Eugene V. Debs believed the struggle for black equality was critical to realizing the promise of socialism.

Just as in the 1850s (with the Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave Act), the Southern labor system (with low pay and no unions) is wending its way north.

Local 1021’s model Strike School, which In These Times has obtained and posted online (links below) as an open source document, is designed to educate workers about the true nature of class politics and class conflict, the power of the strike, how to organize and win a strike and how to use the strike as part of a larger social movement. It is divided into three modules: “Economic Power,” “Striking for Our Communities,” and “Strategic Planning,” ...