Portside
Material of Interest to People on the Left
Portside
Material of Interest to People on the Left
Workers Seize the Shipyard That Built the Titanic
Why hasn’t Koch Foods CEO Joe Grendys Been Arrested?
Dear Politicians: Lower Drug Prices Now
In Order to Confront Climate Change - Cut the Pentagon
Dispatches From the Culture Wars - August 20, 2019
Countering Christian Zionism in the Age of Trump
Political Upheaval Over Tlaib and Omar: Power of BDS
Sanders: “Fundamentally Transform” Criminal System
Fighting Trump/Building Socialism
Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China
Culture
film
Ready Or Not, Here Comes An Entertainingly Gruesome Evisceration of the 1%
AV Club
The charitable reading is that Ready Or Not understands how moneyed entitlement knows no gender—that the only way to break the arbitrary yet destructive grasp of the super-rich is to chop it off, or possibly light it on fire.
food
What’s on school menus this fall? Trade mitigation
AP News
The Department of Agriculture is giving away the $1.2 billion in foods it’s buying to help farmers hurt by trade negotiations. Some U.S. school cafeterias expect free food shipments, one little known consequence of President Trump’s trade disputes.
tv
Succession Season 2 Review – Chilling, Despicable and Horribly Addictive
The Guardian
HBO's Succession peeled back the layers of the all-powerful Roy family, a Murdoch-like media empire built by despicable, ruthless people, and what it showed us was more putrid and awful than we ever could have imagined.
poetry
Outside from the Inside
Street Light
“Outside from Inside,” words found in a letter written from a Japanese American concentration camp, are transformed by New York poet Anne Whitehouse.
books
A World to Win: A Utopian Vision of Communism's Techno-future
Bookforum
Fascism may be resurging, but so is socialism. Yet what would a genuine post-scarcity, egalitarian, democratic, communist society look like? The author thinks he knows, offering tantalizing if evanescent glimpses that tweak the imagination.
books
This America: The Case for the Nation
NPR
Lepore argues, says reviewer Detrow, that "advocates for liberal democracy ceded the field of studying and interpreting American history to nationalists." Democracy's defenders must retake the initiative of telling our nation's stories.
film
How The Hunt Became a Political Rorschach Test
The Atlantic
After a series of tweets from President Trump, Universal canceled the release of a film that’s been alternately praised and decried by critics who haven’t seen it.
Labor
labor
Boeing Hit With Labor Charges in High-Stakes Union Fight
Bloomberg
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers scores significant, preliminary win against Boeing on alleged retaliatory firings. Boeing is expected to appeal.
labor
Why It’s Immigrants Who Pack Your Meat
The Atlantic
What Trump has called an “invasion” was actually a corporate recruitment drive.
labor
Organizing Railroad Track Workers in Yuma last week….
Stansbury Forum
Like most union workers, railroaders have been slammed with escalating health insurance costs – a reality lost on many Democratic Party candidates, we learned from the debates, who mistakenly think union members are in love with their employer-based
labor
Trump's Large Union Crowd at Shell
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
They were given the option of not showing up — and not getting paid
labor
Some Labor Unions Split with Biden on 'Medicare for All'
Politico
Labor leaders dispute candidates’ claims that single-payer will leave their members worse off. Unionists would benefit from a system that guarantees comprehensive benefits and takes health care out of labor negotiations.
labor
Why Eugene Scalia is the Wrong Person For the Job
Economic Policy Institute
Working women and men need and deserve a Secretary of Labor to protect them from unscrupulous employers, set strong health and safety standards, and safeguard their retirement security. Eugene Scalia is not that person.
labor
The New Servant Class
The Atlantic
“Wealth work” is one of America’s fastest-growing industries. It includes full-time retail and service jobs at nail salons and spas, as well as that nebulous network of people contracted through through driving, delivery and other online services.
Friday nite video
video
Daybreak Express | D.A. Pennebaker / Duke Ellington
Prelude: a generation before Woodstock (1953) D.A. Pennebaker's short first film created the visual accompaniment to Duke Ellington's Take the A Train. The music without lyrics and documentary without narrator broke ground by allowing a people's activity to speak for itself.
video
Jimi Hendrix | The Star Spangled Banner
We all know the lyrics; without a word Jimi Hendrix' rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock provided a searing commentary on the anguish of its failed promises
video
Country Joe | Fixin' to Die Rag
Vietnam was the longest war in U.S. history ... then. But the mad dream of world domination has since brought us war that never ends.
video
Jefferson Airplane | Volunteers
Not equal to the poetry of Grace Slick's White Rabbit lyrics (also performed at Woodstock), but a prescient generational shout out to some of the changes that Gen X is forging
video
Bernie x Cardi B
Cardi B takes one of the biggest social media followings in the world, won through music, into political engagement in this interview with Bernie.
video
The Dark Side of the Video Game Industry
Hasan takes a look at how the video game industry has grown into a $139 billion a year business and a cultural force. While gaming is more prominent than ever, some of the most popular video games are made under unfavorable working conditions. Hasan examines the exploitative labor practices at game developers like Epic and Riot Games, and the ways in which workers are finally fighting back.
video
Moscow Mitch, The Musical
Mangy Fetlocks, The Quasi-Intellectual Existentialist Cowboy (a.k.a, Bruce W. Nelson) imagines that someday, Mitch McConnell will receive the recognition he so justly deserves, perhaps in the form of a blockbuster musical. Until such time, Mangy takes it upon himself to immortalize "Moscow Mitch" from the humble concrete stage of his "man-cave" garage. Mangy sends his congratulations to Mitch. No one deserves this more than he.
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