With BDS Order, Cuomo Imports Anti-Democratic Spirit, from Israel and France

Jonathan Ofir Mondoweiss
Executive orders are meant to avert imminent or existential crises that cannot await legislation. It's as if we are being asked to believe that BDS is some deplorable enemy endangering our very existence as a free society, and that only those who really care, take action on behalf of the rest of us, who have not yet awoken to the grim reality. For Cuomo, fighting this fight on behalf of Israel is all about "freedom, liberty and democracy".

And a Union

Stephanie Luce Jacobin
After Occupy in 2011, and the wave of fast-food strikes the following year in New York City, the movement to raise wages took a new turn and a bolder stance: $15 an hour and a union. When the campaign first began, that pay demand seemed like a pipe dream. Yet the call for $15 resonated. Now, the movement has scored victories in two of the biggest states in the country.

Free College for All: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Again)

Stephen Brier The Indypendent
The ideology and practice of neoliberalism, resulting in rising inequality and the imposition of austerity policies, brings us to the national debate about whether it is appropriate for public funds to underwrite the costs of public higher education or whether higher education is essentially to be seen as a private good and an individual (or familial) responsibility.

books

Patti Smith: Her Private Papers

Geoffrey O'Brien The New York Review of Books
Legendary rock star Patti Smith's look back expresses supremely well the tentativeness of every movement forward, the sense of following a path so risky, so sketchily perceptible, that at any moment one might go astray and never be heard from again, never perhaps even hear from the deepest part of oneself again. For a book that ends in success, it is acutely sensitive to that abyss of failure that haunts the attempt to become any kind of artist.

labor

NY Assembly Passes Universal Health Care Bill

Dan Goldberg Capital New York
The bill, Gottfried said, would lower costs by getting rid of insurance companies. It would lower administrative costs and allow doctors to focus their time on treating patients instead of fighting for reimbursements.

Tidbits - May 28, 2015 - California Oil Spill; Baltimore; Bernie; Waco White Riot; Freedom for Oscar López Rivera New York - May 30; and more...

Portside
Reader Comments - California Oil Spill; Baltimore; Bernie Sanders Campaign; Waco and White Riot; Freedom for Oscar López Rivera - New York March May 30; Why Libraries Matter; Cold War Modernist; Announcements - Last Cold War Spycase - film showing - Washington - June 7; National Healthcare Strategy Conference in Chicago Oct. 30 Today in History - The Paris Commune - 144 Years Ago; Today Marks 5 Years in Confinement for Chelsea Manning

Tidbits - May 7, 2015 - Baltimore; Cities as "Occupied Territory"; Bernie Sanders; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out...more

Portside
Reader Comments - Baltimore, other cities as "Occupied Territory"; Drop the Charges against those arrested; Government-Sponsored Segregation; Bernie Sanders - a Long Tradition of American Socialism; Alberta NDP Victory; $15 per Hour or Bust; Israeli Soldiers Speak Out-Gaza Atrocities Were Orders; Labor Union Membership Now Just 11%; Feliks Tych - R.I.P.; Announcements - New York, Boston
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