Portside

This year, the energy is palpable, because there is broad recognition that the chances of passing immigration reform are the best they have been in a decade.

Employers hope the guest-worker program will prevent low-wage Americans from getting a raise. With any increase in demand, employers can claim a "labor shortage" allowing in more guest workers, driving wages down. Because some 11 million undocumented workers are here, doing much of this work, the only way these undocumented workers can become organized -- and not undercut attempts to unionize legal workers -- is if the undocumented workers also become legal.

Fast Food Workers Stand Up on 45th Anniversary of Assassination of MLK; Readers Comments on: 1963 March on Washington; BRICS; NCAA; Labor Law Loses Its Watchdog; Media Bits and Bytes; Reader Apprciation. Rally for Immigration Reform - Jersey City - Apr 6; The Safety Net, Sequestration and Austerity Politics - NYC - Apr 8; US Prison Industrial Complex: A Labor Issue? - NYC - Apr 18; Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. In Memoriam: Leo Robinson; Stephen Coats; Harry Kelber

New National Drone Map * NRA's Jewish Enemies List * NYC Labor Chorus * Westboro Baptist Church Defectors * Gay Rights Bus Visits Christian Colleges * Anonymous Billboards Display Graphic Racial Inequity * Ad Campaign Redefines 'Jihad' * Coke Fights Obesity, Jim Crow * Class Appearances at Downton Abbey * Italians Still Love Il Duce * Gender Bias at Wikipedia * Day Laborers Fear Being Left Out of Immigration Reform * More

The Dignity Campaign is a loose network of more than forty immigrant rights and community organizations, unions and churches that has crafted an immigration reform proposal based on "human, labor and civil rights for all." The campaign's member organizations support it as an alternative to the political strategy behind the tradeoff because of what they call the bitter impact of earlier tradeoffs over the last thirty years.