Portside

News and analysis about and from movements and parties around the world

Sixty years ago today, hundreds of thousands gathered at the Washington Mall, where they heard Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Since then, we’ve beaten a retreat from the march’s vision of racial and economic justice.

John Lewis' 1963 speech bluntly assailed deficiencies in the civil rights bill others were championing — but succeeded in doing so without undermining the day’s unity.

What to make of the GOP debate, human rights for Juggalos, and more culture clash

Deadly weather in 2005. KKK run out of town in 1923. FBI informers mess up in 1973. The telephone industry discovers women workers in 1878. TV news is ready for prime time in 1963. Frederick Douglass frees himself in 1838. Ethnic cleansing in 1838.

The federal minimum hourly wage is just $7.25 and has not increased in 14 years, the longest period of congressional inaction in the history of the minimum wage. The real, cost-of-living-adjusted value of the minimum wage has fallen by 30%.

The move opens the door for postdocs and graduate students who want a union to push for better pay and working conditions

Every now and then, a voice can matter. Mahalia Jackson had one of them.

In “The Great White Bard,” Farah Karim-Cooper maintains that close attention to race, and racism, will only deepen engagement with the playwright’s canon.

The National Labor Relations Board just made it a whole lot harder to union-bust.