Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it.

NAFTA, The Cross-Border Disaster

David Bacon The American Prospect
The trade treaty, now up for renegotiation, has displaced millions of Mexican workers, and many thousands of U.S. workers as well. A U.S. autoworker earns $21.50 an hour, and a Mexican autoworker $3, but a gallon of milk costs more in Mexico than it does here. People were migrating from Mexico to the U.S. long before NAFTA, but the treaty put migration on steroids.

John Steinbeck, The Dust Bowl, and Farm-Worker Organizing

Harry Targ Portside
John Steinbeck was one of the most prolific and, in my view, significant American novelists of the twentieth century. He was influenced by and synthesized his own politics and personal experience with the political culture and movements of the 1930s.

Don't Trust Putin's Kleptocrats -- Russia Needs Socialism

John Foster Morning Star
Veteran Russian communist Dr. Slava Tetekin noted that Putin has been in power now for 18 years -- longer than Brezhnev had been. During that time he has presided over rising inequality and the destruction of Russia's industrial economy. This makes it all the more important to redevelop working-class mobilisation and to ensure that the current reawakening of enthusiasm for the October Revolution is converted into a wider political movement for socialism.

What You Need to Know about ACA Enrollment

Jose Jimenez The Praxis Project
There seems to be breaking news everyday on how the ACA is now “dead” but don’t let that confuse you! The enrollment period is STILL coming up this November 1st and many of our friends and family may not even know. Here are the basics you need to know.

The F.B.I.'s Dangerous Crackdown on 'Black Identity Extremists'

Khaled A. Beydoun and Justin Hansford The New York Times
The 12-page report, prepared by the F.B.I. Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit in August, and later made public by foreignpolicy.org, both announces the existence of the “Black Identity Extremist” movement and deems it a violent threat, asserting that black activists’ grievances about racialized police violence and inequities in the criminal justice system have spurred retaliatory violence against law enforcement officers.

700,000 Women Farmworkers Say They Stand With Hollywood Actors Against Sexual Assault

Alianza Nacional de Campesinas TIME
In the lead up to “The Take Back the Workplace” march in Los Angeles on Nov. 12, Latina farmworkers have written a letter of solidarity to the brave women and men in Hollywood who have come forward with their experiences of sexual harassment and assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Cartoons and Class Struggle

Kenneth Bergfeld and Mark Bergfeld Convergence
In 1941, Disney animators walked off work to demand that the New Deal be brought to the Magic Kingdom.
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