Portside

Missions and manifestos

Florida has not been lost because people stopped caring. Florida has been lost because too many institutions stopped investing, stopped organizing, stopped showing up. You cannot write off a state and be surprised when people feel written off.

Big news from Latin America

A new labor nonprofit called Union Now is trying to help workers weather firings, delays, and first-contract battles. We could’ve used their help in our Starbucks campaigns.

UAW recent organizing breakthroughs in auto manufacturing in the South, major nationwide strikes, and decisive contract successes raise questions about what lessons we can and can’t draw from the last few years’ record of wins and losses.

‘Power in the hands of people’: union leaders push to revive ailing US labor movement. Organizers unveil new drive to reverse decline in union membership as workers seek to combat growing wealth inequality

An organizer looks at a mass protest and sees something completely different than the cynic does. Scofing at people showed up and did the work to turn out millions while offering no alternative is just inaction with an alibi.

The labor movement is reviving the practice of “salting” to bring unions to huge new industries.

I never found the cure to cancer as a geneticist. But 30 years of organizing have led me to understand the work needed to stop this horrible disease — dismantling the oppression, corporate greed, environmental destruction destroying our communities.