Portside

Reader Comments: Immigrants Have Always Come - And Not Always Been Welcomed; Women's March - Million Strong in Pictures; #TimesUp - Role of Celebrities in Our Struggle and Leftist Critique; Why Organizing Working People Is Not a "Lost Cause"; Taxing Puerto Rico to Death - Voices from Puerto Rico; What is Message of new Roseanne Show and Three Billboards; Memorial for Marcus Raskin; Resource: Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters; and more....

Reader Comments: Nuclear Disarmament - Again on the Agenda; Trump's Racism - recalling Martin Niemöller's dire warning in Nazi Germany; Radical lessons of Martin Luther King; #TimesUp; Traditional Labor Organizing - sharp disagreement with Portside Labor post; Sports in Colleges; Oprah - more disagreement with Portside posts; Grim Times in Austria; Announcements: The '60s-Years that Changed America; Concert for Puerto Rico; War or Peace with North Korea? and more....

For the #MeToo moment to become a meaningful movement, it has to focus on actual gender equality. Lewd stories about this or that man's behavior might make compelling reading, but they sidetrack the real crisis... Until we effectively challenge the ideological underpinnings beneath social policies that hem women in at every turn in this country, we won't get at the root cause of the harassment.

A press release about a labor dispute at the American Red Cross (ARC) is challenging perceptions of the venerable institution and how it conducts its mobile unit blood drives.

Retail work does not have to pay poverty wages. New study compares work in Europe and the U.S. For all the power of market forces, from automation taking over routine tasks to globalization squeezing retailers’ margins, there is nothing inevitable about low-quality retail jobs. Social norms and political institutions can make them better, or worse.

The so-called gig-economy is celebrated, maligned, fetishized, and qualified by analysts. Whether it is called the collaborative, platform, crowd-sourcing, or sharing-economy, the rise of peer-to-peer exchanges does raise important questions for workers. Do emerging ‘sharing-economy’ platforms such as Uber and Airbnb mark a significant shift in production and distribution systems? Are they emancipatory or exploitive?

Reader Comments: Single Payer; World Citizenship; Unions are NOT Created by Labor Law; Puerto Rico is Getting Squeezed, and that was Before Hurricane Maria; Confederate Statutes and the Myth of Robert E. Lee; Resources; Announcements; and more ...

Reader Comments: The Long Arc of Protest; DACA; Korea; KKK Terror; Differing views: How Should We Protest Neo-Nazis; Fukushima Leak; The Health Plan that We Need, With No Copays; Spam Filtering is a free speech issue; Resources: Healthcare Sector is Growing, But Workers Aren't Sharing; Children's Book Celebrating Labor Movement; Anti-BDS legislation impacts You; Announcements: Conversation: "The Color of Law"; 60 Years of Peace Action; and Union Day of Action - Oct. 19

Relying on the photographs, reporting and video in the mainstream media can give you a false idea about the marches and demonstrations against white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers in San Francisco and Berkeley last weekend. What role should the labor movement play in beating back the resurgence of fascism? Resistance, while a powerful concept, is far too vague. Local 10 ILWU demonstrates what can be done.